A huge export workflow question

Hi All,

Here's the deal. I am working on an animation project and am currently cutting together an anamatic. When the anamatic is finished, I am going to have to send the animators an individual quicktime for each shot used in my sequence as a guide for animating (since it's an anamatic, all of the shots are jpegs at this stage). There are about 1400 shots that will need to be exported as quicktimes, and I'm currently deciding on the most efficient workflow. Here's what I'm thinking:

1. Set up an individual sequence for each of the shots to be delivered (there will be aprox. 1400 sequences)
2. I need to add 5 seconds of heads and tails to each shot for animation purposes. We are also contemplating superimposing a scene and shot number on each shot.
3. Set an in and out on each sequence and set it to a batch export.
4 Batch export overnight.

Is this the most efficient way of going about this? Has anyone had to do this before? Is there a way to automate this process, as setting up that many sequences to batch can be quite an undertaking? Can Final Cut automatically display the filename of the clip? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Rob

If you are going to do this alot you might want to look into Traffic. It can automate outputs and a bunch of other cool stuff that might be right up your alley.
Check out the three demos.

ak

i;d second looking into traffic.

i;ve also been getting into QuicKeys,
which can be used to automate certain patterns of key strokes in FCP.

it takes a bit of wrangling, and may not be perfect for such a big job.

good luck,
nick

aslo..

you should look at XML2Title from spherico filmtools.

that could be what you need for the individual overlays.

most text overlay processes would probably rely on extracting info from the clip name.
are your clips named appropriately?

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thinking about nesting each shot:
that'd be very easy with QuicKeys.

copy your sequence, and delete all sound.
(it helps to have no jagged edges)
then the steps would be:

apple 9 (item properties)
apple v (copy clip name)
escape (close item props)
x (mark in to out on clip)
option a (select in to oit)
option c nest selection
apple v (paste clip name as name of nest)
you can program writing in some additional text to the nest name if you want
return
down arrow (go to next clip)


the trick with QuicKeys is adding pauses:
it goes at the speed of light,
and sometimes it gets ahead of the computer, and commands conflict.
adding slight delays at just the right point of the process is what makes it work,
and that requires road testing.

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adding extra text blocks head & tail could also be automated given enough time to set up and trial run.

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speaking of time...

it sounds like you or your coleagues think / hope this will be a quick process.
it wont.
it could take up to a week. (!!!)

if it needs to be done faster,
then money needs to be thrown at it in the form of more hands on deck.

or getting someone on now to explore all these processes / softwares.

just a heads up...
i wouldn't want you to be killing yourself for an erroneous deadline.

all the best,
nick