Filenames?

[Stephen Webb]

Since updating to Build 16 the filename structure seems to have changed. The "date" portion has dropped the year, shuffled the month and day forward and now randomly generates two digits at the end.

For example, Instead of A001_C001_080629 as a clip name I'm now getting A001_C001_0629KF.

I haven't seen this documented anywhere, so am wondering is this a deliberate change or is something else is up?

 

[Deanan]

Deliberate to add more uniqueness to a clip name. The last two digits
in the date field are random.

 

[Stephen Webb]

What happens if they're randomly the same? :innocent:

 

[Scott Mason]

I liked the year being part of the file name, as I plan to use this for years to come It is a file naming structure we have been using for years in many types of mediums and I was happy red adopted a similar pattern. Can we add the year back and place the random digits after that. P.s I liked the year being the first part of the digits as it allows you to organize by date created much easier. I am fine with the real and clip number being first but I liked the date being 080629. Just my thoughts.

 

[Stuart English]

file names

file names

I liked the year being part of the file name, as I plan to use this for years to come It is a file naming structure we have been using for years in many types of mediums and I was happy red adopted a similar pattern. Can we add the year back and place the random digits after that. P.s I liked the year being the first part of the digits as it allows you to organize by date created much easier. I am fine with the real and clip number being first but I liked the date being 080629. Just my thoughts.

Well that was the original thought too, but we were persuaded of the merits of swapping out the year digits for two random digits to avoid some practical issues of duplicate file names.

There is a legacy file sytem compatibility issue that needs to be considered when dealing with file name length - this prevents just adding two digits.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I see some potential issues with the new filenames. If the two "random" characters are alphanumeric, that's only a total possible 3844 combinations if using both upper and lower case letters in conjunction with 0-9. 1296 combinations if only uppercase plus 0-9. Does the system ensure that no 2-character combination is repeated until all are used? ...Space is limited in the filename, do we really need to waste two characters by making them random?

Instead of random, could we have maybe the 2-characters represent the minute of the day in which the record button was pressed, based on timecode? I know it's an abstract representation, but with 1440 minutes in a day and the potential for over 3800 code combinations, it may be useful. Certain combinations could be reserved for clip marking or errors. Pushing record at 10:15AM could generate a 2-character code of 9U as a potential example.

Another possibility would be user-definable 2-character codes for in-camera slating. Or increase the camera ID from a single letter to a 3-character tag, or....

I also like the idea of the date at the beginning of the file name, before the camera and reel data. Whether or not the year is there... That way, the clips should stay in chronological order regardless of being sorted by filename or by date.

 

[Deanan]

Does the system ensure that no 2-character combination is repeated until all are used?

Instead of random, could we have maybe the 2-characters represent the minute of the day in which the record button was pressed, based on timecode?

The problem of uniqueness spans across multiple cameras so there
is no practical way yet to ensure that a combination is not repeated across cameras. We considered seconds, minutes and other metadata for the two char replacement and they all had concerns. Ie, on a multicamera shoot, minutes might still be able to have duplicates if the clocks were set the same. In the end, random was the best choice out of all the options in our opinion.

 

[Paul Leeming]

Of course on multi-camera shoots you should be naming them uniquely as well, i.e. A cam, B cam etc...

Paul

 

[Stuart English]

Duplicate names

Duplicate names

Of course on multi-camera shoots you should be naming them uniquely as well, i.e. A cam, B cam etc...

Yes you SHOULD, but people have forgotten to do that ...

 

[amrrahmy]

why not add an option to make a predefined file name(the whole file name) with sequential #s.
that would be cool, and people can add there own preferred file names. that would work with every situation and to people liking.

 

[Martin Preiss]

Have a suggestion can the Cxxx the "shot count on one reel"...can steadily rise, from 1 to 999 over all REELS? so it will be A001_C001...C002...C003 and A002....C0004....C0005....C0006 etc...can that be set? As if you using clap with sync numbers, they are always rising from first shot no matter what the scene is.

In short: can the SHOT numbers continue from previous REEL?

(Hope I explained it well...)