This IS the Avid L2: Re: [Avid-L2] Shot List from Media Composer?

Monday, September 1, 2014

Re: [Avid-L2] Shot List from Media Composer?

An AAF contains the necessary information for a shot list. There is simply no convenient output form. I've bitched about this to Avid for well over a decade. For years my path was EDL, then multiple search and replace to convert to tab delimited file and import to spread sheet. It's still a perfectly path, but it's stupid that I would have t do this when Avid could soooo easily write a tab delimited output for EDL manager.

Then I switched to FCP for which there is this nice little app called Sequence Clip Reporter from Intelligent Assistance.

As it stands now, here are your options in Avid:

1) You can export an AAF, import this into FCP, output an XML and then use Sequence Clip Reporter to create spreadsheet shot list. It's a bit wonky, but it works. Just did it.

Advantage: it works for multiple video tracks.

Disadvantage: Does not work for AMA linked media. You must transcode your sequence first. You don't get an error, but the linked media does not come through.

2) FilmScribe does have a tab-delimited output path, but it is so completely oriented to film conforming that it's a very difficult to use for this purposes.

Also does not work with AMA linked media!

3) EDL manager. It gets the information out in text format that can be manipulated into a delimited file with some effort.

Advantage: It appears to work with AMA linked media

Disadvantages: It takes a lot of manual effort, and you have to do one video track at a time

In other words, the easiest most reliable path is still EDL Manager with manual reformatting.

Oh, and if you use Pan and Zoom a lot, as I do, I highly recommend slugging every still image with itself so your EDL actually shows the filename and not just some generic slug name.

Cheers,

tod

Tod Hopkins

Hillmann & Carr Inc.

2233 Wisconsin Ave., NW

Washington, DC 20007

202-342-0001

I am not familiar with the software package mentioned earlier in the thread for FCP. Does it somehow do all of that? (Give Timeline timecodes and number of times footage is used?) Would an AAF with no media serve instead?

Otherwise I see taking the Decompose one step further, turn on dupe detection before deleting the sequence, and matching back to clips used multiple times, adding a column in the bin for that. Or just create sub clips for each piece of footage used multiple times, so you can get the total duration of what was used.

If sequence of when used in timeline is crucial, another "by hand" step would involve adding a column for that, and matching back to each clip and adding an incremental number for it. When done, sort by that column, and you have a shot list in order of usage in the sequence. You could alternately add an aux TC track (in a project with film activated) and just match the in for each clip and create a start timecode matching the sequence timecode, then sort by that TC before printing or exporting.Terribly manual process which might be OK for my kind of work (Promo, Mostly) but impossible for long form.

I assume shot logs are for knowing what footage was used, for licensing or archiving or online. Zero frame decomposition would do that, and include any footage imported or AMA linked, if so desired.

As someone else mentioned, the sequence report may also be a good source of this information as well.

Not sure what the other stuff would be needed for.

Dave Hogan

On Sunday, August 31, 2014 6:38 PM, "Steve Hullfish steve4lists@veralith.com [Avid-L2]" <Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

That might work for the original poster, but I can't think of any way to have the list be in the order of the sequence. It would be probably very difficult for Avid to have a bin column that included the sequence time that the clip was used because the clip be used in multiple sequences or even multiple times in the same sequence. Also there would be the question of multiple tracks. AND multiple parts of the same shot being used at different points in the sequence. This could give you duration information which is a critical part of the shot list for things like rights management for stock footage.

Steve

On Aug 31, 2014, at 7:41 PM, Dave Hogan mactvman@yahoo.com [Avid-L2] <Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Not sure what you need in your shot list, but I have a few ideas that might help...

1) Copy sequence to new bin.
2) Decompose it with 0 frame handles, be sure to include/exclude imported or tape based media based upon what you need or want. This will allow you to include AMA linked media as well. (be sure to turn off "Offline Media Only").
3) Delete the sequence.
4) This bin represents your shot list from the sequence...