Archive non-TC project media to tape with useful TC?

I'm not sure that subject line helps at all.

I have a potential client with about 150 hours of mixed consumer format tapes (VHS through mini-DV). Here's what they want me to do:

1) "digitalize" (yes, that was the word), trim, and tag an estimated 10 hours of usable material
2) create a kiosk or web access library of that footage (spinoff project)
3) archive everything (the ~10 hours) at highest rez to hard drives and to DigiBeta
4) use this library in production of a 1-hour broadcast doc

My current issue comes at #3. Assuming I bring in the useful analog bits as uncompressed, going to DBeta represents a small step down. No biggie. I also am not convinced that tape, or specifically DBeta, presents a useful archive under the circumstances. But sending all those nicely trimmed and named clips to tape would seem to lose anyone's access to the valuable trimming and naming.

Is there an established way (there must be!) to create time coded archival tapes for digital media, along with EDL or FCP project file that will properly reference them? In this case I'm talking about a creating set of FCP projects that would each reference part of the 10-hour set of source media - from disc or from the new tapes.

This reflects a question I've had in the back of my mind about FireStore or P2 media that doesn't begin life on tape at all. is there such a way to put that media off to tape and keep it referenced in projects or EDLs?

Does this make any sense?

Thanks,

Steve

digitise, digitalise, what's the diff?
it's an esoteric term that non-editors don't use every day.
correct your client and move on.

ok, so, archive to tape.
it's pretty simple, process, actually, made difficult by the amount of material.

1st thing id suggest is do it in avid.
avid does this automatically

to do it in FCP requires you to
lay your selects out in timelines
do an edit to tape back to the digibeta, so that the tape TC matches the Sequence TC
confirm the edit was accurate,
then go thru your timeline modifying each clip's TC to conform to the Sequence TC.

start this with park playhead at head of 1st timeline, and Canvas selected then:
tab tab (move to Canvas's TC field)
apple c (copy)
tab (de-select timeline's TC feild)
return (open clip in viewer
Control T (open modify TC window - this is not a standard shortcut and needs to be created)
Apple V (paste Sequence TC to clip's TC
Return (to confirm that)
Q (to switch back from viewer to Canvas)
Down arrow (move to head of next clip)

you could automate this easily in QuicKeys.
de-bugging would take a while, but then it'd run very quickly.

obviously you'd want to archive a copy of the project before you do this so as to have a record of the clip's original TC


a third way would be to use XML, but i don't know of any app that will do this yet.
Andreas Keil from Spherico FilmTools would be able to create one, i'll bet
and who knows, he might be interested, as this would mimic a much loved avid feature, and may sell...
his site:
[www.spherico.com]


cheers,
nick

Thanks, Nick! That's very helpful and I really appreciate your time in passing this on. Yes, it's annoying that it isn't more straightforward, but at least knowing it can be done helps. I will still discourage the idea of using tape as a significant archive for this, but this at least shows it's possible.

Perhaps with P2 and other tapeless media coming in faster there will be more pressure for an easy solution within FCP.

Thanks again,

- Steve

i'm sure there used to be an applescript or some such that used to handle this, but damned if i can remeber the name ... i'm guessing you've already wasted a couple of hours googling for a soultion?

spherico's xml2text info notes:
"Another usage is the creation of a merged batch list from a merged tape of selects or used clips. Traditionally that would have lost original Timecode but XML2Text converts the clip data so that they do match the sequence timecode data and creates a batch list which can be used later to batch the complete tape or just some single clips from the merged tape. Even with a crash record to tape it will work, if you set the sequence TC start value to the value of the recording's start of the tape before exporting to XML."

that might be worth a look

Andy Mees Wrote:

> spherico's xml2text info notes:

Yow! Thanks, Andy, and of course, thanks again, Andreas, for anticipating my needs probably years in advance. I'll be wonking on xml2text again.

perfect!
thanks andy (and andreas)


nick