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  1. Member freeboot's Avatar
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    so i titled the subject as thus because i think what i'm looking for is probably what others have sought before and not found. (also if i placed this in the wrong section i apologize. i'm new here and this just seemed to me the most logical place for this question)

    so i'm currently working as an intern, and the place i am working at is trying to figure out what file format to use to archive everything as. what we want from the format is...

    a) for it to retain metadata (more specifically chapter markers)

    and

    b) for it to play nice with both Final Cut Pro on the MacPro and Avid Media Composer 3.1.1 on the PC machine

    as of right now i'm looking at .mov or maybe .mp4, but am under the understanding that Avid will have to transcode those formats first before being able to use them. i was hoping against hope there might be something better
    i was trying to search for info on this yesterday and it was giving me a massive headache, so i submit this question to this community and humbly ask for any input you might have on the subject
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  2. Mod Neophyte Super Moderator redwudz's Avatar
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    freeboot, in the future please use a more descriptive subject title in your posts to allow others to search for similar topics. I will change yours this time. From our rules:
    Try to choose a subject that describes your topic.
    Please do not use topic subjects like Help me!!! or Problems.
    Thanks,
    Moderator redwudz

    What OS are you primarily using? If it's Mac, this would likely get more answers in our Mac forum. I can move it if you like.

    And welcome to our forums.
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  3. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Also, are you talking SD or HD source? What format is the source?
    Recommends: Kiva.org - Loans that change lives.
    http://www.kiva.org/about
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  4. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    What is your favorite color?

    What is the air velocity of an unladen african swallow?



    OK, back OnTopic,

    FCP uses QT movies natively, and ONLY QT (all else is imported/exported).
    AVID on the Mac used to use QT natively as well. Not sure now, it's been a number of years, but I wouldn't see a reason why not. AVID on the PC either uses QT, or AVI, or ?MXF?

    The problem isn't going to be the clips themselves. I'm betting that even if AVID on the PC uses AVI, it's got streamlined import or proxy of QT files. Now, AVID's DO use their own codecs, but since these codecs are nearly freely distributable, it would make the most sense to add those codecs to the FCP workstation(s) and then there would be no need for transcoding and any losses that might have been involved.

    The hard part is the Metadata.
    Yes, QT can support such metadata, including chapters. So can AVI (through DivX), so can MXF. The hard part is having the editing app INCORPORATE that metadata WITHIN the clips themselves. This is VERY UNLIKELY.
    I would guess your best shot is a forked approach where you share the clips (as mentioned above), and then do separate exports of chapter marks - to a text file or whatever is available. AVIDs have a "Metadata Manager" that allows for a lot of different kinds of metadata to be associated with a certain clip/sequence, including chapters, HTML links, timecode, closed-captioning, etc. I would also guess that there comes with most AVIDs a utility to convert this to a number of industry standard formats, certainly some of which FCP would be able to make use of (including QT chapter marks & timecode). There are also a few 3rd party utilities (Like "Automatic Duck" which do cost a bit), which can do the same or better. Not being as familiar with all the Ins-and-Outs of FCP, I don't know right offhand what metadata they can or can't import. Should work similarly in the other direction.
    Then it's a matter of linking them back to their "associated" clips/sequences.

    Hope that helps, at least to point you in the right direction,

    Scott
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    The grail analogy really doesn't fit. What you're looking for is the best tool from the toolbox. Unfortunately, there is not much demand for what you want. Chapter points and such are usually allocated during creation of the final playback video format, while FCP and AVID (like other pro editing tools) are designed primarily for editing the raw footage prior to the DVD and/or blu-ray authoring stage. It sounds like you want to take an already finished (edited, encoded, authored, and mastered) source and bring it back into the editing realm. By all means, DVD movie material can be edited using a variety of tools, but within the a & b parameters you listed, it's not likely you'll find a solution.
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  6. Member freeboot's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by redwudz
    freeboot, in the future please use a more descriptive subject title in your posts to allow others to search for similar topics. I will change yours this time. From our rules:
    Try to choose a subject that describes your topic.
    Please do not use topic subjects like Help me!!! or Problems.
    Thanks,
    Moderator redwudz

    What OS are you primarily using? If it's Mac, this would likely get more answers in our Mac forum. I can move it if you like.

    And welcome to our forums.
    many apologizes. I will be more conscious of this in the future. There are two editing stations, A Final Cut station (mac of course. 10.4 I think) and the Avid station (pc, not sure what version of windows but im pretty sure it is pre xp) so there really is no primary machine, which is part of the issue. And thank you
    Originally Posted by edDV
    Also, are you talking SD or HD source? What format is the source?
    SD. they use DVCPro tapes for backup but are usually pulling the footage from an external hard drive which is set to record in MXF I believe
    Originally Posted by Cornucopia
    What is your favorite color?

    What is the air velocity of an unladen african swallow?



    OK, back OnTopic,

    FCP uses QT movies natively, and ONLY QT (all else is imported/exported).
    AVID on the Mac used to use QT natively as well. Not sure now, it's been a number of years, but I wouldn't see a reason why not. AVID on the PC either uses QT, or AVI, or ?MXF?

    The problem isn't going to be the clips themselves. I'm betting that even if AVID on the PC uses AVI, it's got streamlined import or proxy of QT files. Now, AVID's DO use their own codecs, but since these codecs are nearly freely distributable, it would make the most sense to add those codecs to the FCP workstation(s) and then there would be no need for transcoding and any losses that might have been involved.

    The hard part is the Metadata.
    Yes, QT can support such metadata, including chapters. So can AVI (through DivX), so can MXF. The hard part is having the editing app INCORPORATE that metadata WITHIN the clips themselves. This is VERY UNLIKELY.
    I would guess your best shot is a forked approach where you share the clips (as mentioned above), and then do separate exports of chapter marks - to a text file or whatever is available. AVIDs have a "Metadata Manager" that allows for a lot of different kinds of metadata to be associated with a certain clip/sequence, including chapters, HTML links, timecode, closed-captioning, etc. I would also guess that there comes with most AVIDs a utility to convert this to a number of industry standard formats, certainly some of which FCP would be able to make use of (including QT chapter marks & timecode). There are also a few 3rd party utilities (Like "Automatic Duck" which do cost a bit), which can do the same or better. Not being as familiar with all the Ins-and-Outs of FCP, I don't know right offhand what metadata they can or can't import. Should work similarly in the other direction.
    Then it's a matter of linking them back to their "associated" clips/sequences.

    Hope that helps, at least to point you in the right direction,

    Scott
    blue

    which kind? there are 47 varieties of African swallows. But an unladen European Swallow is roughly 11 meters per second, or 24 miles an hour. (http://www.style.org/unladenswallow/)

    Yeah I did not have any luck when trying to get chapter markers to show up after exporting then reimporting to FCP. But they do show up when the file is opened in quicktime. So as of right now i've proposed to my bosses that we save in a .mov or .mp4 as and use quicktime to copy/paste the part out we need should an archived piece of footage need to be revisited. Then import just what we need. I was just hoping for a better way
    Originally Posted by filmboss80
    The grail analogy really doesn't fit. What you're looking for is the best tool from the toolbox. Unfortunately, there is not much demand for what you want. Chapter points and such are usually allocated during creation of the final playback video format, while FCP and AVID (like other pro editing tools) are designed primarily for editing the raw footage prior to the DVD and/or blu-ray authoring stage. It sounds like you want to take an already finished (edited, encoded, authored, and mastered) source and bring it back into the editing realm. By all means, DVD movie material can be edited using a variety of tools, but within the a & b parameters you listed, it's not likely you'll find a solution.
    We are keeping everything as files. Only time we make dvds is when we get a request for something. My internship is at the Massachusetts state house in the House broadcast services department, so what we are recording are sessions and hearings which can last anywhere from an hour to eight hours. But a lot of time we have state reps or others request just parts of hearings (which is where the chapter markers come in, just to try and make our lives a little easier). So the footage is always kinda in a raw stage, its just a matter of how we can store it to make things most efficient, when we need to access it down the road.

    Thank you all very much for your input =)
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  7. aBigMeanie aedipuss's Avatar
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    save them as dvds in file format if you have the hard drive space. if you aren't going to burn to disc as a whole it can be any size. name the folder containing the video_ts and audio_ts with date/time/location. author with chapters where you want them. it's easy enough to use dvdshrink to extract just the chapters you want later to put onto dvd-r.
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