Anyone working with digital intermediates will undoubtedly have experienced this situation.

You start off with a frame sequence, let’s say 090000.dpx through 180000.dpx. However, there are gaps in the sequence (maybe because these frames were captured using an EDL, or maybe they’ve been selectively exported from a more complete timeline). You process them in some processing application, but now you have something more like 0000.dpx through 7864.dpx.

Often it doesn’t matter how the modified files are named, such as if you are going to edit them into a timeline by eye, but sometimes you just really need the names to match and so you have to waste lots of time massaging all the filenames until they are just right.

I found myself in just that situation recently. We’d exported a bunch of frames from a timeline that needed some last-minute dust-busting. The quickest, most available option was to run through them all in After Effects. Great but then the problem was getting them back in. I imported the renders as a single, new reel, and then proceeded to cut and splice them back into the timeline shot by shot. That took around 2 hours. But we had time.

The next time we were in the same situation, I decided I would make like easy for myself. I essentially had a list of filenames I needed to use (from the original exported folder), so surely there had to be an easy way to automate renaming them. Well there wasn’t, so I made one.

One of the things that I’ve come to love about working with OS X is AppleScript. The process of writing some AppleScript, testing and running it can be done (in this case) much more quickly than just doing everything manually. Granted, there’s a learning curve, but the other good thing is that even if you can’t program AppleScript yourself, you can benefit from someone else’s.

With that in mind, I’ve released the AppleScript I made on Google Code. If you find it useful, let me know.

Download

YouTube is an awful website. It’s low-rez, the compression is horrendous, and the interface is badly designed. However, it’s popularity is undeniable.

Website Vimeo… seems to offer all the features of YouTube but with improved resolution and picture quality, ideal for anyone with HD footage to show off.

There are a couple of catches: “HD” is limited to 720p (1280×720 pixels) and you can only upload 500MB of video per week.

Gone in a Flash – HD from Chris Crutchfield on Vimeo.

Build 5 is now available (the Windows version is still unchanged).

Noteworthy changes are the separation of metadata and user colour settings, and the addition of multiple batch-processing templates.

Changes:

1. Import update method now matches by Reel, Camera, Clip, Start TOD Timecode and Date rather than filename.
2. There are two sets of colour parameters, one for the clip’s metadata and another, user-defined one. Importing CSV files will only write to the metadata parameters.
3. Added button to paste colour parameters from metadata.
4. Added button to reset colour parameters to defaults.
5. Added an ID field to clips table for indexing purposes.
6. Added infrastructure for multiple project tracking (note multiple projects are not implemented yet…)
7. Added template tags for metadata values. For example {ISO Meta} will be replaced with the value stored in the ISO metadata field. {ISO} will be replaced by the custom ISO value.
8. Added ability to copy and paste values via a “colour clipboard”.
9. Redline-specific options have been placed into their own tab under the revamped “Batch script generation” area.
10. You can now create and work with multiple templates.
11. Added some text to the UI to make the purpose of different sections a little clearer.
12. Added {RedDate} template tag, which uses the older (6-digit) method of calculating the numeric date value. New templates now use this method for the output path by default.
13. Added a button to generate some example templates.

Download and more information…

Pomfort is offering two free Spotlight plugins for indexing DPX/Cineon and R3D files (Mac OS X only).

Get them here…

We’ve been using a bespoke Filemaker Pro database to handle all the Red Camera data that we have to deal with. It’s been really useful in getting data out of the RedCode (R3D) files and into a system we can analyse it properly. We’ve also used it in conjunction with Red’s “redline” command-line processor in order to prep both the offline and online phases of post-production.

Today I’m pleased to announce that we’re releasing the software and the Filemaker Pro source files for free, under a GNU GPL license.

You can find out more about it at http://redemption.surrealroad.com