[Matt Bacon]

I had not considered creating the projects on the Unity and then transferring them, great idea Michael.

Any other insights you have will be greatly appreciated.

The Internet is the best–er–the helpful and knowledgeable crew at Creativecow is the best.

-Matt

[Matt Bacon]

Hey Michael, thanks for the response.

We have adopted the import/export of ALEs because we have a problem transferring bins from MediaLog. Our media loggers create unique MediaLog projects on systems which are not part of our Unity environment, when bins from these MediaLog projects are placed inside projects within the Unity environment, and then used to capture clips, media is created on the Unity server with a project association to the original MediaLog project, not the project which exists on the Unity server. Importing ALEs ensures that media captured in a given project is associated with that project.

An alternate solution for this problem is to create new tape names once bins have been placed in a Unity project (since project association is derived from tape name metadata) but the ALE method proved less work for our assistants.

The character limit is the only chink. I suppose we could force our loggers to be more concise, but an alternate solution would be amazing.

Thanks again,

[Matt Bacon]

Hi Jeremy,

Thanks for your response.

Yes, apparently doing exactly what I want is a job for Batch Lists and XML tweaking.

I don’t have the knowledge or the time to tackle cracking open an XML file. Oh, the things I could do if I had time to learn how to do them… i’d just have no time left to do them.

Anyways, for people looking in the future, the answer is a program called exceLogger for FCP.

https://assistedediting.com/exceLogger/

This software costs, but it will (ostensibly) parse a Batch List file with an XML export of the entire project and then let the user enter new data into a spreadsheet file, including subclip information, and finally turn out a modified XML and Batch List for re-import. I haven’t tried it yet, and it sounds kinda… long-winded, but it’s worth investigating if you want to log in a spreadsheet and your editor insists upon true subclips.

FCP 7.0, MacBook Pro, OS X 10.5.8, 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3, NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT 512 MB

[Matt Bacon]

I appreciate that none of my concerns really influence my final product when i’m compressing for the web (typically I use h.264 or Sorenson 3), so I probably shouldn’t have stated ‘high quality web video’ as my primary concern.

Mostly, i’m a detail freak, I am looking for conformation of my assumptions (only if they are correct, mind you), and an explanation of how QT Conversion and Compressor render/transcode and/or render/transcode differently from one-another.

As far as details go, for the immediate future I will be working with Standard def DV footage and 8-bit graphics in FCP 4.5; however, I’m hoping for answers which I can apply to my workflow regardless of my output destination.

A better example than web video might be: what happens when I use QT Conversion to create a 720×480 file with the Animation codec (at Best quality, millions of colours) from a 720×480, DV NTSC compressed timeline?

Thanks again.