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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 :)

Who's writing an EDL import Lua script?

B

Bruce Allen

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Hey folks

Obviously with RedCine-X's Lua scripting support, PRIORITY NUMBER ONE is EDL import.

I will write this myself... unless 10 other people are doing the same thing!

So, if you are writing a script to do this, please just PM me or reply in this thread and I won't waste my time duplicating your work.

At the same time, I am surprised at the lack of basic tools out there. So that's why I'm leaning toward "just write the damn thing".

For example, yesterday I had to write my own script to gather all R3Ds used by an EDL file across multiple drives. What the hell does everyone else do - carry 7TB of their feature dailies with them to the finish? I know Clipfinder is fantastic, but it's Mac only and geared towards FCP. I tried exporting a FCP XML and conforming that but it didn't work (probably my user error). Monkey Extract looks good but expensive. There was a free web script I found but it didn't work for me (again, probably user error ;). But it took me less time to write it myself than it would have taken me to figure out how to get results from the tools available.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
Bruce Allen said:
Hey folks

Obviously with RedCine-X's Lua scripting support, PRIORITY NUMBER ONE is EDL import.

I will write this myself... unless 10 other people are doing the same thing!

So, if you are writing a script to do this, please just PM me or reply in this thread and I won't waste my time duplicating your work.

At the same time, I am surprised at the lack of basic tools out there. So that's why I'm leaning toward "just write the damn thing".

For example, yesterday I had to write my own script to gather all R3Ds used by an EDL file across multiple drives. What the hell does everyone else do - carry 7TB of their feature dailies with them to the finish? I know Clipfinder is fantastic, but it's Mac only and geared towards FCP. I tried exporting a FCP XML and conforming that but it didn't work (probably my user error). Monkey Extract looks good but expensive. There was a free web script I found but it didn't work for me (again, probably user error ;). But it took me less time to write it myself than it would have taken me to figure out how to get results from the tools available.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
Click to expand...

Hi Bruce,

I do not have any programing knowledge and since I am facing the same issues.

While reading I thought "does Bruce plan to share this gathering media script?"


Thanks.
 
Bruce, I had the same idea as you. Once the LUA scripting interface will be enabled in the next Windows build, I will write a little script to import an EDL from Premiere, as I'm working on a feature film and therefore have quite a lot of r3ds... Maybe we should stay in touch ? What are your plans ?
 
Is there a specification for REDCINE-X that describes what happens once an EDL is imported (regardless of mechanism) - is there an automatic relink, new timeline, organization by day, shot, etc?

Michael
 
MichaelP said:
Is there a specification for REDCINE-X that describes what happens once an EDL is imported (regardless of mechanism) - is there an automatic relink, new timeline, organization by day, shot, etc?

Michael
Click to expand...

From the samples Deanan has posted, and from my experiments with it, the Lua scripting in REDcineX only allows automation of what you can do manually. So it cannot import an EDL as such, and re-linking is not relevant, as REDcineX currently has no mechanism for dealing with or re-linking offline media.

What an external application needs to do (and which the alpha version of Clipfinder does) is take an EDL/AAF/XML edited with proxies or ProRes/DNxHD media and find the the corresponding R3Ds. It then exports a Lua script which essentially tells REDcineX:

create empty timeline;
add R3D for EV001 with in/out;
add R3D for EV002 with in/out;
etc.

For testing I manually created a Lua script from an XML, but Clipfinder can automate the process.
 
Nick Shaw said:
From the samples Deanan has posted, and from my experiments with it, the Lua scripting in REDcineX only allows automation of what you can do manually. So it cannot import an EDL as such, and re-linking is not relevant, as REDcineX currently has no mechanism for dealing with or re-linking offline media.
Click to expand...

From what I've seen by reading these samples, you can write a LUA script which will directly read an EDL list (which is just a text file) and automate Redcine-X. There are reading and writing file operations in LUA.

I would love to start writing, even for free, but I need to wait for this LUA feature to be enabled for the Windows build (it won't be the 158 one Deanan said).
 
What EDL format is mostly used? CMX3600 or XML? Writing something to convert an EDL or XML file to a LUA script is pretty simple, but the many different EDL formats makes it a bit of a daunting task. Would be pretty easy to make a webservice, where you upload an EDL and get a LUA script back a few seconds later.
 
Bruce Allen said:
For example, yesterday I had to write my own script to gather all R3Ds used by an EDL file across multiple drives. What the hell does everyone else do - carry 7TB of their feature dailies with them to the finish? I know Clipfinder is fantastic, but it's Mac only and geared towards FCP. I tried exporting a FCP XML and conforming that but it didn't work (probably my user error). Monkey Extract looks good but expensive. There was a free web script I found but it didn't work for me (again, probably user error ;). But it took me less time to write it myself than it would have taken me to figure out how to get results from the tools available.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
Click to expand...


That's one of the things I use CLIPFINDER for. I import the fcp xml into CLIPFINDER than simply select all, copy and paste into finder onto an appropriate drive. Just another piece of awesomeness that clipfinder provides.
 
The next step after this is to add a socket to a lua shell. Then another app could "connect" to RCX and tell it to build the timeline remotely.
 
trying to cook something...

trying to cook something...

A while back I wrote a simple applescript to convert FCP EDLs so they have the RED 16 character clip name as the reel instead of the truncated one...

I'm now working on a simple EDL to RCX LUA Applescript. It's a bit complex to get all the timecode and framerate calculations right... I'm only half-way or so into getting a first working beta.

Obviously it will be mac only (applescript being the only language I can code in), it will only handle very basic EDLs since RCX timeline cannot deal with dissolves, time stretch effects or use any non R3D file.

Not being a real developer, I'm just trying to make it work on my spare time, so don't hold your breath yet : but I'll post a test version when it's ready.

First beta will only support FCP EDLs but feel free to PM me to send some sample EDLs (from FCP, CS4, Avid or whatever you use to edit your red stuff) so I can try to make them all work with future versions of the script.

btw ClipFinder just rocks and can do so much it's crazy !

Mikael
 
yeah and i love the new paid version. Pretty much solved all my conform problems.
 
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