Wanted: Canon 5D Mark 2 Video Files saved in their own Folders for FCPro.

[smf]

OK, Here's the deal. I shoot video and stills on my Canon 5D Mark 2. At this moment in time PM (Photo Mechanic) lets me click the edit button to launch the video MOV. clip into FCP. Unfortunately once in FCP the .MOV file cannot be edited because it didn't render on import.

There is another way, not a good way but a way, in FCP, File, Log and Archive will allow you to Click on the EOS_DIGITAL (essentially your CF card), and Archive to a folder on your HD or External HD. and below is the folder naming convention that u end up with on your  HD or external drive.

File #1 EOS_DIGITAL
File #2 DCIM
File #3 100EOS5D with the video files inside.

With the above folder combo, FCP will let you render the Video files in the Log and Transfer window in FCP.

Ok, This is what I'd like PM to do…

What I'd like PM to do is add a check box to the Ingest window, Copy Videos to folder sequences (2 additional Sequences) 1 for the "DCIM" folder and 1 for the EOS1005D folder.

PM would also have to make the ingest software recognize the video files.
5D Mark 2 files have three extensions, .MOV, .THM, and .XIP.

Reason, Well the reason is to allow for quick downloads and to say in one application during ingest.
Reason 2, You won't have to pay a digital tech 400 dollars to help with ingest.

Reason 3, why not, PM software is for convenience isn't it?


PS. it would also be sweet to scrub (with your mouse) video clips in the PM window.

[Kirk Baker]

OK, Here's the deal. I shoot video and stills on my Canon 5D Mark 2. At this moment in time PM (Photo Mechanic) lets me click the edit button to launch the video MOV. clip into FCP. Unfortunately once in FCP the .MOV file cannot be edited because it didn't render on import.

There is another way, not a good way but a way, in FCP, File, Log and Archive will allow you to Click on the EOS_DIGITAL (essentially your CF card), and Archive to a folder on your HD or External HD. and below is the folder naming convention that u end up with on your  HD or external drive.

File #1 EOS_DIGITAL
File #2 DCIM
File #3 100EOS5D with the video files inside.

With the above folder combo, FCP will let you render the Video files in the Log and Transfer window in FCP.

Ok, This is what I'd like PM to do…

What I'd like PM to do is add a check box to the Ingest window, Copy Videos to folder sequences (2 additional Sequences) 1 for the "DCIM" folder and 1 for the EOS1005D folder.

PM would also have to make the ingest software recognize the video files.
5D Mark 2 files have three extensions, .MOV, .THM, and .XIP.

Reason, Well the reason is to allow for quick downloads and to say in one application during ingest.
Reason 2, You won't have to pay a digital tech 400 dollars to help with ingest.

Reason 3, why not, PM software is for convenience isn't it?

I take it you're using the Canon FCP plugin?  Take a look at this:

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-10049-10590

-Kirk

[smf]

Yep, The E-1 Plugin.
It's sweet, but my problem is with the way you have to render the video files and how you access them.

[Kirk Baker]

Yep, The E-1 Plugin.
It's sweet, but my problem is with the way you have to render the video files and how you access them.

The plugin converts the video stream from H.264 to ProRes which supports better editing so there isn't much that can be done about that.  If you don't want to wait, don't use the plugin, but your editing experience will suffer.

Hopefully at some point Canon will fix their plug in to deal with the files directly (wherever they are) instead of requiring a specific directory structure.  We're not going to make a major change to Ingest to support a flawed plugin.

-Kirk

[smf]

Sounds good to me.
Yeah, It looks like I'll just have to ingest images and video files into one folder and then manually create the folders needed for FCP to see the vid files.

Oh well, That's video for you. To many codecs and cameras.

Thanks.

[smf]

Now that i've read your post again, I think you are still not understanding what I want.

I'd like for PM to create a file sequence that will separate the vid from stills.

This way when I'm finished shooting and ready to edit video using the Canon E-1 plugin to convert from H.261 I can simply go to the correct folder sequence and in FCP Log and Convert into a project .

Sorry I know it's confusing, dealing with video is a mess.

[Ben Curtis]

You guys might be interested in these two articles I wrote about possible workflows with Photo Mechanic and the Canon E1 plugin.

This one is rather lengthy and deals with the exact folder structure required by the plugin, plus a possible PM workflow, albeit rather inelegant. It doesn't, however, separate the stills from video files:

http://www.snappertalk.com/index.php/20100328/canon-e1-plugin-workflow/

This shorter and later article covers my realization that it may just be better to forget having a specific ingest structure and re-create one later at editing time:

http://www.snappertalk.com/index.php/20100328/canon-e1-plugin-workflow-ii/

Generally speaking, I'd love to see more video-type features in PM, now that so many of us have cameras shooting both. Most of the "video" workflows out there are for people using the cameras to shoot only video... or only stills... coming up with a nice solution for those of us who shoot both pretty simultaneously would be great.

On another note, I know it's been mentioned before, but I'd love to see the ability to play videos directly from the preview window and/or contact sheet window without opening an external editor. Whether that could be done by tapping into the Quicktime framework, or the use of open-source libraries such as ffmpeg, I don't know.

[Kirk Baker]

Ben,

You guys might be interested in these two articles I wrote about possible workflows with Photo Mechanic and the Canon E1 plugin.

This one is rather lengthy and deals with the exact folder structure required by the plugin, plus a possible PM workflow, albeit rather inelegant. It doesn't, however, separate the stills from video files:

http://www.snappertalk.com/index.php/20100328/canon-e1-plugin-workflow/

This shorter and later article covers my realization that it may just be better to forget having a specific ingest structure and re-create one later at editing time:

http://www.snappertalk.com/index.php/20100328/canon-e1-plugin-workflow-ii/

I referenced your blog entries in a roundabout way by referencing a Rob Galbraith article that talks about your postings above.

Generally speaking, I'd love to see more video-type features in PM, now that so many of us have cameras shooting both. Most of the "video" workflows out there are for people using the cameras to shoot only video... or only stills... coming up with a nice solution for those of us who shoot both pretty simultaneously would be great.

It is possible to separate video and stills using {variables} and Code Replacement, though it may not be immediately obvious.  In 4.6.x we added the {mediatype} variable that evaluates to things like:

still
video
audio
meta
other

So you could use the Folder Name field in the Ingest dialog with the {mediatype} variable and a Code Replacement file.  Here is what the Code Replacement file would look like:

still   Photos
video   DCIM/Video
audio   Photos
meta   Photos
other   Photos

It may not look like it, but there is a single 'tab' character between the code and the replacement value, not spaces.

You'd create that Code Replacement text file and then load it into the 'Set Code Replacements' dialog.  Then in the Folder Name field you could do something like this (let's say your Code Replacement delimiter is '=' (equals sign)) :

={mediatype}=

Then when you Ingest, your videos should be saved to the DCIM/Video folder and everything else should go to the Photos folder.

On another note, I know it's been mentioned before, but I'd love to see the ability to play videos directly from the preview window and/or contact sheet window without opening an external editor. Whether that could be done by tapping into the Quicktime framework, or the use of open-source libraries such as ffmpeg, I don't know.

We're looking into adding features like that for our next major release.

-Kirk

[Rick Baumhauer]

Kirk - your reply piqued my interest, so I played around with Code Replacements for the first time.

Based on my experiments, it appears that code replacements can't use variables themselves - is that correct?  I use a custom year/year_month/year_month_day folder structure, and it doesn't appear that there's any way to use code replacements that contain the variables that I normally use to create the folders during ingest.

[Kirk Baker]

Rick,

Kirk - your reply piqued my interest, so I played around with Code Replacements for the first time.

Based on my experiments, it appears that code replacements can't use variables themselves - is that correct?  I use a custom year/year_month/year_month_day folder structure, and it doesn't appear that there's any way to use code replacements that contain the variables that I normally use to create the folders during ingest.

That sounds right.  We could extend it to perform an additional variables evaluation pass which would then work.

-Kirk

[Rick Baumhauer]

Rick,

Kirk - your reply piqued my interest, so I played around with Code Replacements for the first time.

Based on my experiments, it appears that code replacements can't use variables themselves - is that correct?  I use a custom year/year_month/year_month_day folder structure, and it doesn't appear that there's any way to use code replacements that contain the variables that I normally use to create the folders during ingest.

That sounds right.  We could extend it to perform an additional variables evaluation pass which would then work.

-Kirk

Hmmm, now that I have an idea what I'm doing with Code Replacements, that could be a handy feature.  If you could implement the same thing on file naming, that would also allow different naming between video and stills, which has some practical applications.

I'll look forward to seeing if this is something you can add to PM down the line.

Rick

[Ben Curtis]

Thanks Kirk for the code replacement and mediatype variable tips. Seems like I have some experimenting to do...
One question, does the mediatype=video variable also catch the .THM, and .XIP files?

[Kirk Baker]

Ben,

Thanks Kirk for the code replacement and mediatype variable tips. Seems like I have some experimenting to do...
One question, does the mediatype=video variable also catch the .THM, and .XIP files?

It should.  The .THM, .XIP, .WAV, etc. are considered to be 'attached' to their owning file, in this case the .MOV file with the same base name.  So they should go wherever the movie file goes.

-Kirk

[Ben Curtis]

Hi Kirk,

I've followed your instructions but can't get it to work. The Code Replacement and Variables are essentially working fine, in that PM is reading the mediatype from the file correctly and substituting the 2nd column text for the 1st column text in the code replacement file, and creating folders during ingest based on that.

The problem is the "DCIM/Video" is not getting translated into "create folder DCIM and subfolder Video". Instead it's getting translated into a single folder called "DCIM-Video". I assume PM is viewing the "/" symbol as an illegal filename character, and substituting a "-" for it.

Any ideas?

Thanks, Ben

PS - This is with PM 4.6.3 running on Mac OS X 10.6.3

[Kirk Baker]

Ben,

I've followed your instructions but can't get it to work. The Code Replacement and Variables are essentially working fine, in that PM is reading the mediatype from the file correctly and substituting the 2nd column text for the 1st column text in the code replacement file, and creating folders during ingest based on that.

The problem is the "DCIM/Video" is not getting translated into "create folder DCIM and subfolder Video". Instead it's getting translated into a single folder called "DCIM-Video". I assume PM is viewing the "/" symbol as an illegal filename character, and substituting a "-" for it.

Any ideas?

I'll look into it and get back to you.

-Kirk