XDCAM EX, Metadata and Vegas

farss wrote on 8/23/2008, 12:45 AM
Mentioned this in passing but it was buried in another thread. On a current job this has become a real issue for me.
Shot around 200 clips of a musical performance. Most of the clips were to use as cutaways of the actual perfromance. I shot the cutaways during rehearsals. Now comes the problem, where do they belong? The performance is 30 minutes long in 3 movements and like many such things it builds on variations on a theme. not all the musicians were at each rehearsal and as I was shooting in a cathedral with massive reverb time matching waveforms is useless as is trying to pick the part of the work by ear. Even when I can how do I log them?

Now Sony gave us a new clip browser, it's free. It can log clips with all manner of text metadata. I can give the clips on a HDD to the client / composer. He can install V2 of the clip browser and do the leg work for me, he knows his work. Just knowing which bar number each clip starts from would greatly simplify the task at hand. I can read music well enough to add markers for each bar in the project.

Question is, how do I continue this workflow into Vegas?

While I'm at it, this XDCAM stuff rocks. Sure the EX1 is a killer camera but that's a small part of a bigger picture, this is what will kill tape stone dead. File metadata has more uses than I can imagine, logging GPS data into the clips would be a boon to wildlife shooters, even Take/No Take can save hours and dollars.

Now that I've explored what's in that metadata I'm really impressed with what Sony have done, lens data, camera make, model and serial number, anything that they thought might be remotely usable is saved along with the video.

Bob.

Comments

DJPadre wrote on 8/23/2008, 3:56 AM
im thnking timecode lock..
as an example, youd start with a base time (lets say actual performance)
flag that start point... and as it plays back, the timecode continues.. for EACH camera or each sequence (take)

Them during the actual performance, flag the next element.
Import into vegas and a marker pops up at teh master anchor.

Now each clip looks at the time differential, irrespective of start/stop..

Much like free run timecode baseline, but what your doing is setting an actual anchor point for the intiial flag...

so, then you have your master file (lets say full performance), and your slave files..
Now much like midi.. youd then allocate a channel/track for each of your slaves/cameras.
The main track/file would be the master sequence which al timbased elements are locked to.

Vegas would then run a scan on the time based on the master file. One would need to be a continuous clip for this to work.. or maybe a string...

Then Vegas can rebuild each slave track under it, based on the time differential... so your slave track (your rehearsal track as an example) would be sequenced AUTOMATICALLY based on the time anchor of the master file..
So your slave will in fact have gaps inbetween each clip where recording DIDNT happen...

Now THAT would be VERY handy... but you'd need to set a flag.. be it manual or timecode based

Does that maks sense?

This wouldnt be hard to set up in firmware regardless..
farss wrote on 8/23/2008, 5:36 AM
I might have cracked it for this job and this client. He has VMS, another sale I made for SCS. I can render out DV proxies that he can dump into VMS and he goes into Project Media. There's a user editable Comments field that he can put the bar number into.
I load his VMS project back into V8, edit as DV and the switch the proxies to the original mxf files, job done.

Compared to using the clip browser and metadata it's a lot of work and a bit of a kludge.

Bob.
ushere wrote on 8/23/2008, 5:55 AM
am i being dense, or old fashioned or simply confused - ages ago we used to set our sp rigs for free run for concerrts and we'd end up with sync takes, even with breaks?

personally i always used tc with clapperboard and roll all the time.....

leslie
farss wrote on 8/23/2008, 6:35 AM
One concert with X cameras, never had a problem.

Two concerts with x cameras still no real problem, they still play the same frigging thing in the same order.

One concert, two rehearsals. What use is TC and a clapper, what do you sync to when you don't know what they're playing and it's not the same at each rehearsal and the concert? Even worse:

"OK, lets take it from bar 34"

Play a few bars...tap, tap, tap.

"Can we do it a bit faster"

Play a few bars. tap, tap, tap.

Thats great, lets try the second movement...


Try to line up your wild shots from that with the actual concert. Oh and there's almost no vocals.

Bob.
apit34356 wrote on 8/23/2008, 11:32 AM
Bob, nice work flow! I like the ideal of letting the newbie client use VMS for selecting EX clips. A simple and economical solution for a new client who wants some control!