FCP->XML->filemaker pro

Howdy

I am working on an animated feature and have found CinemaTools to be decidedly lacking in features/configuration - doesn't give counts in frames only, cuts off filenames, etc.

We are now considering creating a "codebook" on Filemaker Pro by exporting XML data from FCP and bringing it into Filemaker and parsing the data we need - shot length, shot name, take number etc - into the database.

Can anyone point me in the right direction regarding FCP->XML->Filemaker Pro? It would be helpful to find information that is not too high-tech but rather written for general consumption.

thanks in advance

b

Hi,

>> It would be helpful to find information that is not too high-tech but rather written for general consumption.
Unfortunately that doesn't exist

Depending on the FCP version you're working with you can use my XML2Text to transport XML data to tab delimited text, which can be imported into FMP.
The newer version (still not released) does even a better job, since it does read far more data from the XML and can handle even huge XMLs.

The other thing you could do is to write an XML style sheet, which tells Filemaker how to convert a FCP XML, there are some examples on the FMP site how to do for other things, but I didn't had any luck with my trials to create those files (except some simple stuff).
Next thing you can do is to write some AppleScript Studio application which will use the system XML parser or any other OSAX to parse the XML and then script FMP to load the clip (or whatever) data. This can be very effective since you can create a record in FMP with relational data (file, reel etc.)
To learn more about XML and how to retrieve values have look at [www.w3.org] - this on the first look is a nightmare site.
It's also helpful to read the FCP XML documentation.

You also can contact me off-list, if you got questions.

Kind regards
Andreas