R3D Metadata spec

[mfuhlendorf]

Is it possible to read the red clip metadata directly?

I mean, open the R3D files directly using PHP, for example, and read the file header with all the metadata? The idea is to write a web interface software to sort RED files on set before sending them out to the editor.

Thanks in advance

[Mark L. Pederson]

Sure. As long as you have REDLINE installed on the computer. If you launch Redcine Pro (download from RED website) - under HELP there's an option to install REDline as well as a complete guide to how to use REDline under the HELP menu - example:

1. Launch REDLINE. Refer to LAUNCHING REDLINE.
2. Create a destination folder that your modified files will be saved to.
3. In the command line type:
”redline --i /Users/user.name/Desktop/A014_C001_0209H8_002.R3D --outDir /Users/user.name/Desktop/test -o test_file --printMeta 2”.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Or if you don't want to interface with Redline and you're writing your own web interface plugin, all the tools to query metadata are in the SDK. It's pretty straight-forward. One of the code samples does exactly that, pulls all the metadata entries from the target R3D file.

[mfuhlendorf]

Thanks!
I'd never used redline before, it does EXACTLY what I need.

I can't solve an issue though:
I'm using Applescript to interface with Redline; I wanted to get the metadata off the shell command return value, like this:

SET variableX TO (DO SHELL SCRIPT " redline --i /Users/user.name/Desktop/A014_C001_0209H8_002.R3D --outDir /Users/user.name/Desktop/test -o test_file --printMeta 2 " )

And it always just freezes the script, even though the redline command above works perfectly in a terminal window. I have no idea why.

Any thoughts?

[Mikael Lubtchansky]

To make sure applescript gets the output from the REDLine shell script command, you need to add "2>&1" at the end of the do shell script command and enclose the command itself inside a "try /on error / end try" statement. HTH



try
do shell script "redline --i /Users/user.name/Desktop/A014_C001_0209H8_002.R3D --outDir /Users/user.name/Desktop/test -o test_file --printMeta 2 2>&1"
on error errMsg
set variableX to errMsg
end try

[mfuhlendorf]

Thanks!
I'll try that later today and report back if it works.
I'm still learning (and learning to hate) the Applescript syntax.

[mfuhlendorf]

Thanks for all the help, I got exactly what I wanted from Redline and now I'm gonna work with it in PHP.

One more question regarding redline: is there any way to export TIFF images without an exact frame number? For example, if I wanted to export the first, last and middle frames from each clip, regardless of duration, is that possible without previous knowledge of the clip length?

Thanks!