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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Same file names

M

mytherapy

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I have just received a job for transfer that was shot on 2 RED One's over 2 days of shoot. There is a ton of rushes that we need to process quickly which should be no problem but I have just found that each camera was creating identical file names. That means that I have same clip name twice sometimes 3 times.
As we are going to have to do conform in DPX later in the week I just want to protect ourselves from relinking to wrong r3d files.
What is the best solution for this problem? Should I rename r3d files before processing?

many thanks

Dado Valentic
www.mytherapy.tv
 
mytherapy said:
Should I rename r3d files before processing?
Click to expand...

I don't think that will be enough, as the metadata will still refer to the original reel name.

Renaming it will help, as will changing the reel column in the Final Cut browser, or the Tapename in Avid. That way at least you will be able to generate an EDL with the B camera reel names.
With a bit of work in a spreadsheet, you could go isolate the B camera cuts, create a 2nd EDL with only those cuts, rename the B's to A's in the EDL, render them, then batch rename the output reel folders from A's to B's.
Nasty but it would work.

Unless there is a tool to alter the R3D metadata...
 
Nigel,
it sounds very complicated. It could work but I don't think that I would want to do it every day.
I am glad that you have noticed my post as actually your software might be able to solve this challenge.
Currently - all we are able to do is point to a single folder with all r3d files. What I propose is not to change the names or meta data of r3d files - they are best left the way they are. Instead, we actually need to add additional data like, unique reel number and unique clip number.
The easiest way how to do it would be to save files on specific location and use this piece of information to identify reel and clip.
We could have folders numbered A001, A002, A003 ( reel numbers ) and sub folders 001, 002, 003,...
Then trick would be only to link this to the reel name inside FCP. So Reel A001002 - gets interpreted by Monkey as ../A001/002

What do you think ?

Best

Dado Valentic
www.d-cinelab.com
 
I wouldn't want to do it at all :) Hopefully this will be the only show that this happens on.

So your immediate problem is getting the footage into Final Cut and then changing the reel name? How many B camera reels / shots are there? I think whatever programmatic way you come up with would probably be slower than renaming manually in Final Cut.

So Reel A001002 - gets interpreted by Monkey as ../A001/002
Click to expand...
If the reel was A001C002, Monkey Extract would usually make it come out into the EDL as /A001/ or /A001C001/ depending on your settings. But you can make custom naming so that it would be /[reel]/[clip]/[clip].0000000.dpx

Would that help?
 
Just out of curiosity... were they on Build 16? If so, I thought that the two characters in the A001_C001_0925xx space were uniquely generated? If they were on Build 15, I could see how that would happen and points to the need to post knowledge on set as file based workflows emerge.

Michael
 
Nigel_Monkey said:
If the reel was A001C002, Monkey Extract would usually make it come out into the EDL as /A001/ or /A001C001/ depending on your settings. But you can make custom naming so that it would be /[reel]/[clip]/[clip].0000000.dpx

Would that help?
Click to expand...

Hi Nigel,

what you are mentioning is to do with your output side of the clips. What I was talking about was the input side. ie where does monkey look for clips to relink?
At the moment all we can do is point to one pool of clips and all of them have to have different names. But what I propose is for us to be able to look into specific location to relink to the clip.
When I create an edl in FCP or Avid with reel name A001001 - then monkey will look to relink to this file on location Project/A001/001/xxx_whatever.r3d.
This way it wouldn't matter what name the file is but where it is being stored.
Is this something you would be able to do?

I have already started writing small script that automatically generates folders and sub folders and puts each r3d file into its separate directory. There might be a way as well to generate an ALE that would automatically create reel name from location name.
I think that this would make things rock solid.
This problem can happen on both build 15 and 16 as 2 cameras can't talk to each other and it is matter of luck to have all clips different names.

Best

Dado
www.d-cinelab.com
 
mytherapy said:
This problem can happen on both build 15 and 16 as 2 cameras can't talk to each other and it is matter of luck to have all clips different names.
Click to expand...
Any reason why those shooting it didn't force reel the mags to different numbers and change the slate so you had A and B cameras? It's not luck that gives them different names :)

Paul
 
mytherapy said:
Hi Nigel,

what you are mentioning is to do with your output side of the clips. What I was talking about was the input side. ie where does monkey look for clips to relink?
At the moment all we can do is point to one pool of clips and all of them have to have different names. But what I propose is for us to be able to look into specific location to relink to the clip.
When I create an edl in FCP or Avid with reel name A001001 - then monkey will look to relink to this file on location Project/A001/001/xxx_whatever.r3d.
This way it wouldn't matter what name the file is but where it is being stored.
Is this something you would be able to do?

I have already started writing small script that automatically generates folders and sub folders and puts each r3d file into its separate directory. There might be a way as well to generate an ALE that would automatically create reel name from location name.
I think that this would make things rock solid.
This problem can happen on both build 15 and 16 as 2 cameras can't talk to each other and it is matter of luck to have all clips different names.

Best

Dado
www.d-cinelab.com
Click to expand...

The chance of a collision between clips is very slim, I think 1 in 1,296. So you might look over your clips, but if you start changing filenames you will do more harm than good.

It's unfortunate that you have duplicate reel numbers, but as long as all of your filenames are different, and they most likely are, then your only fear should really be of reel number and timecode collisions in an EDL workflow. Are you having any of these?

IBloom
 
mytherapy said:
Hi Nigel,

what you are mentioning is to do with your output side of the clips. What I was talking about was the input side. ie where does monkey look for clips to relink?
At the moment all we can do is point to one pool of clips and all of them have to have different names. But what I propose is for us to be able to look into specific location to relink to the clip.
When I create an edl in FCP or Avid with reel name A001001 - then monkey will look to relink to this file on location Project/A001/001/xxx_whatever.r3d.
This way it wouldn't matter what name the file is but where it is being stored.
Is this something you would be able to do?

I have already started writing small script that automatically generates folders and sub folders and puts each r3d file into its separate directory. There might be a way as well to generate an ALE that would automatically create reel name from location name.
I think that this would make things rock solid.
This problem can happen on both build 15 and 16 as 2 cameras can't talk to each other and it is matter of luck to have all clips different names.

Best

Dado
www.d-cinelab.com
Click to expand...

What are you grading with? If the only way to get your footage in is EDL, you're going to have to rename the reels in FCP and hack the EDLs as described above...
 
Well the job is finished. I have eye-matched duplicated shots into the sequence. This always works :-)
I have also asked why is that we had same reel names and the blame was put on the camera. I guess it is easier to blame the gear than admit lack of experience :-)

But still, this experience has made me think how fragile things still are. One wrong file name and you are in trouble. I would like to be able to rely on more than just file name in the future. If I was to take a scenario of stereoscopic feature film production. Than existing naming convention might be a problem. It is simply impossible to guarantee that reel name settings on the camera are going to be correct each time. Mistakes happen and when they happen we need to be able to fix them. Renaming r3d files is not an option I would like to take.

I came into this game with some visual effect post production experience. And what I always liked there was the folder structure. Every shot would have it's own folder and there you could find for example your r3d files, any LUTs or color preset files, proxie files, dpx files ...
Then we would link our timeline to folders and by filtering file types be able to switch from quicktime to dpx sequence in a go. This also always meant that the files in folder were the latest version that we were looking at.

I really think that this system would work well. Even my film database works with reel name and shot names. We don't need to reinvent the wheel. Also I could give files names that I like something more user friendly :-)

All it is missing at the moment is that Crimson and Monkey do something like that and allow us to relink to files at specific location and not just select one folder with all files.

Dado Valentic
www.d-cinelab.com
 
Maybe Red should have the camera serial number added to the file name.
 
File names

File names

Whoever was responsible for not naming the cameras a, b should never be hired again.

A disrespect of the basics is just the tip ofthe iceberg and user ignorance does not call for a change in system.
Click to expand...

I sympathize with that, but people can forget. So at the end of the day, what do you do about it?

Hence the change we made at Build 16.

Substituting the YY digits for two random digits was the least disruptive solution, as it maintains the overall file name format
 
File Names

File Names

So what happened in this case. Were there really duplicated file names or not?
 
Stuart English said:
So what happened in this case. Were there really duplicated file names or not?
Click to expand...

Depends on the build I guess... but even with the new system, anyone using EDL workflows can come unstuck.

It's a shame that there is no standard XML schema that would replace EDL. Maybe you should come up with one Stuart, and bash the various manufacturers over the head with it :)
 
Avid and FCP both export XML with plenty of metadata. Coming to a standard is usually an exercise of semantics for similar fields. Then it is an issue of how deep the metadata should go - scale from simple to complex.

I always thought that the cameras should have some sort of bluetooth or similar wireless communication technology to recognize another camera in the area and force unique camera ID's.

Michael
 
MichaelP said:
I always thought that the cameras should have some sort of bluetooth or similar wireless communication technology to recognize another camera in the area and force unique camera ID's.
Click to expand...

That's one for Red to consider for Scarlet/Epic. And if the timecodes could jam sync wirelessly too, even better.
 
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