[Sandeep Sajeev]

I don’t, but if you find that it helps you stay organized then you should go for it 🙂

Best,
Sandeep.

[Sandeep Sajeev]

Hi Scott,

Yes, labelling your Disk Images in that way sounds good. Assuming that they reside in a Master Directory that gives you some indication as to what the project was. It may make sense to flip the order, instead of A001_130504, 130504_A001 will ensure that all your disk images/folders etc line up sequentially. Ultimately your system needs to work for you, not just today, but 2 years down the line, when that client comes back with a new project, but wants you to use footage from the cool film you made last time…you should be able to find that footage quickly. So pick one naming convention and then don’t change it, unless absolutely necessary.

Yes, Shotput Pro will let you copy to Multiple Destinations. I’m not sure about Daisy Chaining, as we dump one set onto a FW800 field drive, and one onto a USB drive.

The folder segregation is just for us to quickly identify various Audio Segments. There is no separate naming convention for this, it all belongs to the same reel, and the folders are ignored once we’ve classified the various audio files. It just helps us sort through this faster without hunting through a large number of files, all in one folder. Obviously this info is fed into FCPX so that we know what’s what.

Best,
Sandeep.

[Sandeep Sajeev]

Scott,

a quick note on wrangling your data on set. Apologies if you’re already aware of all this, but just in case you’re not, this may save you some grief at some point.

It’s good practice to have multiple cards on set. They should all be labelled in some way, to distinguish them from each other, so there’s no confusion.

If production is small, then there usually isn’t a dedicated person on set who’s offloading/archiving/duplicating CF data. So it’s crucial that
there’s a robust system in place for this. It’s far easier than it should be to make a mistake and lose hours of work.

• Always back up your Card Data to 2 Drives on Set.
• Keep recorded cards physically separate from fresh ones.
• Copy the entire Directory Structure on to the Drives, don’t be selective, even of it appears that folders may not contain anything.
• Do the same with any External Audio Data.
• I always tell Production to use the different folders on the Audio Device when they’re recording on Set, to make it easier for Post to recognize what is what.
• Try and Slate whenever possible. It really helps.

Best,
Sandeep.

[Sandeep Sajeev]

do you just treat your cards as a Reel? Once a card fills up you call it a reel and the next card, or the same card formatted, as the subsequent reel?

No. The Reel field needs to have more than just the card information. It needs to tell Post which camera, which card and the date. This ensures that there is no duplication anywhere in the pipeline.

So it’s not enough just to say my Reel is CF1, it’s much more useful to say my Reel is A001_130504. This way it’s clear that this footage is from CamA, CF1, and the shoot date was 04 May, 2013. That is a unique identifier, and that’s basically what we want our Reel to be.

Best,
Sandeep.

[Sandeep Sajeev]

Hi Scott,

I use Magic Bullet Grinder to embed Timecode into the clips. It’s very straightforward – you drag your clips into the app, specify whether you want Time of Day or Straight (1:00:00:00 onwards for example) Timecode.

You then specify an output folder and Grinder spits out new versions with embedded timecode, leaving your master footage untouched. As you are not encoding these clips into another format (ProRes for example, although you can if you want to), the process is very fast.

I rename these clips in the Finder using Better Finder Rename, although you can Batch Rename in FCPX and it will link back to the original media. However, some old habits die hard, and I don’t have the courage to do my renaming inside my NLE.

The Reel information, I do Batch inside FCPX – select all the clips from a specific reel (which is how I organize my footage at the Finder Level) and type that info into the Reel field. This is updated across all selected clips.

You should watch this video for an taste of the possibilities:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viDC5XR35GE

See the above link for the quickest way to input additional metadata into FCPX as well.

There is no automated way to input MovieSlate data into FCPX. It has to be done manually, so it’s a bit of a grind. Hopefully someone at MovieSlate is on this.

With regards to Audio, often we have multiple units recording sound as well. So in this case, I use ZA to identify my First Unit Sound, ZB for Second Unit etc. This is probably unnecessary in most situations, but I like to keep things consistent through different projects (as much as possible anyway!) so this is how I do this.

However, there is one caveat – if you are relying on Date Stamped Audio files then Modifying them in anyway results in the loss of that information. So if you need that, then don’t touch the audio files until you’re inside FCPX, where you can using a Z in the camera angle field if necessary. Again, the above link has an example of how this works.

Best,
Sandeep.

Some contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!

This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Google Youtube” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.

[Sandeep Sajeev]

I’ve totally skipped over archiving, as you mentioned that you’ve got that sorted. I also forgot to add that when Production hands over MovieSlate data, I feed that into FCPX as well.

I deal with external audio in a similar way, but the device identifiers start at Z, to make sure Audio is always at the bottom of any Synchronised or Multi-cam clips.

Sandeep.

[Sandeep Sajeev]

Working with DSLR footage, while problematic a couple of years ago, is now pretty straight forward. A ‘solid’ workflow usually involves the following 2 steps right after acquisition:

1) stripe Timecode and Reel information into the footage.
2) batch Rename your Timecode striped footage.

Once inside FCPX, there are a lot of ways to use organise your footage and add/deal with metadata. This is my system when dealing with DSLR footage:

– run the footage through Magic Bullet Grinder, using the .THM files to embed Time of Day Timecode into the footage.
– run the Timecode(d) footage through Better Finder Rename to embed the following metadata into the clip names: CameraID, Mag/CF card #, Clip Number, Production Date. So when I see clip A001_C005_130502, I know that this is clip#5, from CameraA, CF card 1, and that it was shot on the 2nd of May in 2013.

I also organise my folders at the Finder level using a similar convention: A001_130502 for instance is one folder containing A cam footage shot on the 13th. This becomes my reel metadata within FCPX.

Once inside FCPX, I don’t Rename my clips. I do fill in additional metadata such as Reel and Angle etc if necessary. I use keywords, ranges and smart collections to add an additional layer of edit focused metadata onto my footage. So I am always aware at all times of my production metadata, which is pretty crucial when dealing with agency work.

With how well FCPXML performs, I find the transfer of metadata between X, Smoke and Resolve to be smooth as well. Going out to Flame or iQ is a bit more complicated, but in that case I take my Timeline into Smoke and do it from there.

Hope that helps,
Best,
Sandeep.

[Sandeep Sajeev]

Michael Wohls series was very comprehensive for me, coming from FCP legacy. I actually purchased his videos, Ripples and Larry Jordan’s. I’d rate them as a Wohl first, Ripple second and Larry a very very distant third.

Sandeep.

[Sandeep Sajeev]

I’m pretty sure Mike posted about this (here, or there was a link to his blog) some time ago, and was totally shot down. Back when this forum was particularly rabid.

[Sandeep Sajeev]

If I’ve paid upfront for a year then it’s ridiculous that I’d have to do this.

And personally I’m not at all comfortable with the blase way in which these statements ‘Oh just call us and we’ll work something out’ (I’m paraphrasing) are made.

This makes 2 assumptions – 1) that the standard of support is the same globally and 2)that the vendor is actually capable (legally, corporate directives etc) of making an allowance for your particular situation.

Sandeep