Exporting EDL issue

Good Morning You Lucky People - working in the glamor of the movie business and all ...

I am working on a project which requires me to physically join up rolls of 16 and 35mm film which are stored in a completely disorganized archive of some 100 hours or more of footage, digitize them and then go through each assembled (say) 1000ft reel and provide Scene descriptions, T/C, film edge numbers, condition etc.

This stuff was all shot prior to the advent of barcoded edge numbers.

So, once this stuff has been telecined direct to ProRes I am going to go import each (say) 1000 foot QT file into FCP and make FCP CUTS where the film cuts occur.

Then I'm going to have an assistant editor across the room who will have the original celluloid footage up on a rewind bench yell out the "in" and "out" edge numbers for that particular cut. I want to enter the edge numbers in MASTER COMMENTS which are numbered 1 through 4 under the LOGGING tab within ITEM PROPERTIES.

HOWEVER --- When I go to EXPORT EDL to prepare the EDL, it will only allow me to export ONE of these MASTER COMMENTS.

I need to export all four of these fields, using two for edge numbers and the other two for miscellaneous comments like "Badly scratched" or "fogged" etc.

Can anyone help me with this or perhaps suggest an alternative work flow?

Love

Harry The Idiot.

hi Harry.

why does it need to be an EDL?
what do you hope to achieve with this?


other options could include creating a CINEMA TOOLS database,
which can track the keycode of the film against timecode of the Video.

i havent used it in a deep way for a long while now,
so i cant remember if you can add comments that will export in a Cut List along with the Keycode.

alternatively, you could break your film into SUBCLIPS,
then enter keycode and other comments,
and export a BATCH LIST from the browser.


cheers,
nick

Hey, Nick. Thanks for the reply.

I really just need to record the data of the film edge numbers, much as one would create a list for a negative cutter. This has to be done manually, since the material to be logged does not have edge numbers in modern bar code format, so we can't just run it though a bar code reader to generate a list.

So I'm calling it an EDL for that reason. But it could just as easily be done in Excel or something like that.

I would prefer to do it in FCP because the original negative is going to be scanned and I will end up with "x" number of reels of Quicktime movies. At that stage I will have to go through the scanned QT movies and manually make cut marks with the blade tool where the cuts in the movie's negative occur visually.

Then I will run this QT movie up to, say, cut number 2. My assistant will have the original negative on an inspection bench next to me. He will read off the edge numbers where cut number 2 starts and I will type it into the FCP database. We will proceed through the whole film in this labor intensive manner.

It's the only way I can think of for us to create a record of time code numbers which will correspond to the original negative's edge numbers.

This is for a restoration job of archived film materials for the Academy.

I wanted to create the database within Final Cut rather than Excel, because Final Cut can automatically make a cut list according to T/C numbers.

My little problem is that FCP will only allow me one field for MASTER COMMENTS. I will, it seems, have to use that one field and put both edge numbers into it PLUS any observations about the condition of that little piece of camera negative. And that's a bit messy.

FCP seems to allow me to enter details into four of these "master comments" fields, but when one goes to export that EDL it will only in fact produce ONE of those fields.

Is that any clearer - or does that make it even more incomprehensible?

Any further help appreciated.

Harry.

Harry,

This isn't a specific answer, or solution, but you may be able to use something like CatDV Pro.

It is a really good logging tool. It has simple editing capabilities. It is compatible with FCP. One of its strengths is that it can handle lots of custom metadata (for you, this would be separate fields). It seems like it could do what you want. Before you start your laborious process, it would definitely be worthwhile to drop the developers a note and see what they say...

CatDV Pro

CatDV Pro is not difficult to learn to use, especially with some guidance from the developers.

Frameline 47 is another tool that may work well for your project.

Another option, which I am not sure about, would be to check out Final Cut Server. It's not something that I would approach causally. It may be too involved for a one-off project like yours.

There are other tools that may work well but I can't speak from experience, except for CatDV Pro. FCP is probably not the best tool for this kind of work, but then again, there may not be an off-the-shelf tool that is...

Send the CatDV Pro or Frameline 47 folks a note and see what they say...


-Dave

Hey - thank you very much for the suggestion. I will definitely look into this.

Harry.