Andreas Kiel of Spherico Film Tools and Björn Adamski of MXF4mac have been cooking up a totally awesome P2 metadata editor called P2 Flow that will now send all kinds of useful information to FCP. I have been fortunate enough to see a sneak peek of it in action and I got permission to show you all as well. I hope you are as excited about it as I am. Some caveats, this is a work in progress, some features you see may or may not make it in to the final version, this is meant as a proof of concept. This will work with the MXF Import component, or can be used independently with the 'offline' feature to which you would then use the log and transfer option, WITH ALL METADATA! That means you can now send an XML or project along with the wrapped Quicktime media to any system on or off your network and have the metadata follow the clips, and you won't need a QT Import component on all of your machines as the media will be QT movies. This also opens up a lot of possibility for us AVC-Intra users as our metadata can now be usable, transferred and updated to FCP. We can use the Log and Transfer function to transcode the AVC-I to ProRes or HQ. This is a big step forward with AVC-I and metadata in FCP. I have been constantly impressed with the work these are guys are doing to unleash the power of a truly tapeless workflow from within FCP.
If you have any questions or comments, or perhaps you have some ideas about development, you can contact Andreas (http://www.spherico.com/filmtools/), Björn (http://mxf4mac.com/) or myself (www.YouKnowWhereToFindMe.AtLeastYouShould). Unfortunately, I don't know price, release date, or any of that pertinent info, I was just so excited about the looks of this that I had to pass it on. What I do know is Andreas and Björn are working very hard on this.
...and it pains me to say it. But it is the truth and I have to call it like I see it.
The past three days I have been trying to restore an old project. It's a decently complex project with green screen, tons of cuts, P2 footage and tape footage. I have not been able to get FCP to reconnect to anything properly wihtout going through file by file. This process should have taken a day at most with the recaptures and p2 reimport, instead I am on day 3.
I usually have excellent luck with Media Manager and XMLs, but this project is truly testing my patience. Also, i am totally bummed out by it all.
All the plugins are old and I have new versions of the fxplugs now which don't translate, the P2 media is giving me fits (it comes in fine, but won't reconnect to the timeline) and the things that do relink are relinking to wrong items sometimes-but-not-all-of-the-time. ALso, there were some rendered materials that I have as self contained movies, and they are playing back improperly in FCP now. It's just a low down dirty mess.
In all fairness, this project was started two OSs ago, FCP Gods only know how many verisons of QUicktime ago, and several iterations of FCP ago. Still, i have to believe that if FCP had a better database tracking system, all I would have to do is update some plugins which I would expect and wouldn't be all that bad.
For now I suffer.
Sorry for the downer, but I had to put this down in a place where someone might relate.
It seems when a hot topic has come up on a certain popular forum in Creative Cow, I have noticed that people are becoming more and more hostile towards each other. Perhaps it's because of the recent US presidential debates that have been lighting up the air waves as all it takes is a jab at someone's personality and the whole thread gets lost in a he said she said, or more likely a he said he said, or maybe even a she said she said. It usually starts as a healthy discussion of workflow, then it becomes a battle of intellect and then it turns personal. I have been a part of a couple of recent threads that have been removed due to overtly personal attacks that aren't really right for a public forum, which is a shame as any helpful information is now deleted forever from the cyber ethos. 2000 years from now when someone finds the Creative Cow server hard drives in a pile of dust, those deleted threads that contained color commentary and video history will not be there for historians to try and glean any information from these lives and times. Bummer.
In an effort to preserve the history and helpful information that we all contribute to every day let's try and keep the discussions healthy and light, shall we? It's okay to disagree, it's okay to hash things out, but please try not to make it personal if you disagree with what someone has said. Remember, if we weren't hiding behind our keyboards and we were all sitting in the same room, the discussions would be more polite. Keep that in mind when participating in this virtual world. Cheers.
In this day and age many pundits criticize the public for not sacrificing certain aspects of their lives for the preservation of life as we understand it. Pundits also criticize the government for not asking people to help constrict the world's voracious appetite for all things that keep us comfy and cozy. Oil, water, food, medicine, natural resources, energy and all of the natural driving forces of these times for some of which we have a finite supply. Since I am now joining the "punditry" by writing here and pretending I know something about something, I'd like to shout out my concerns and criticisms and ask for sacrifice.
We need to do an insert edit over the word Blog. This aggression will not stand, and we need to come together to bring proper nomenclature to the Blog. Let's hear it writers!
Ever since this word became a part of my vocabulary, I have hated the sound of it. It's gross, short-sighted, guttural, limiting, and just plain boring. There has to be another word or phrase that will encompass the idea of the "op-ed column version 2.0" without sounding like a bodily function or a bad case of the blues. It is quite possibly the worst amalgamation of English phonetic segments that has ever been created for something that truly represents the voice of the people, that is all the voices of all individual people and the comments that follow. Blogs are this century's version of the Roman forum, the place to be heard, ridiculed, discussed upon and justified. if you think about it, it's pretty damn cool. The problem is, I can't think of a word that sums up that idea. I have not been involved in the "blogosphere" (another terrible word) long enough to know what this word should be. So I guess I will have to do more research in my campaign to erase Blog from Webster's dictionary. In doing so, I ask you to what title should we officially change it to? Or perhaps you like the word Blahhg, why? What are you favorite blahhgs? My favorite of the moment is FSJ. Too hilarious. What other blogs do you read?
I hope you find my cause just and worthy. I won't call you during the dinner hour, I won't even ask you for money, but if you believe please respond and comment.
Stay strong.
Jeremy
PS: This guy is all about the Replace the BlogWord movement:
