Clip file names....again.

[Larry Chapman]

I'm bringing this topic into a new thread, because it's a workflow issue for me and I haven't seen any solutions yet.

As I shoot I take notes on each clip (good, bad, maybe, part 1, 1st half usable, etc.). When I go to ingest I need to map the actual clip file names to my notes. If you initialize the SD card right before the shoot, and don't change the recording format during the shoot then all is good - the clips are numbered consecutively starting at "1" and the overlaid numbers from the camera's Thumbnail view match the file names. However, if you shoot to the same card over multiple days, or change the recording format (maybe shoot some in 1080, and some in UHD) the camera creates a new directory where the file names start back at "1". Now when I go to ingest it's difficult to map my notes to the file names.

Am I missing something? Camera setting to address this? Another workflow I can try?

Thanks.

 

[Barry_Green]

I don't have my camera here to test, but I don't think it shows the filename as part of the clip properties...

There are usually two workflows used to deal with this: slating and timecode. With timecode, you note the date and camera's timecode on your paper at the start of the take; that will be a unique identifier regardless of what the format or filename is.

With slating, you generally put a slate in front of the camera that identifies the scene # and take # and date and other pertinent information, which info is also referenced by your notes, which lets you marry them up in post. A less-intrusive way would be audio slating, where you state which take/scene/clip number it is before the action begins, which may be simple enough to do; as you make your notes on clip 10 (for example), as soon as the camera starts rolling you say "Clip 10" and then use that to marry the clip to the notes in post.

 

[Larry Chapman]

I don't have my camera here to test, but I don't think it shows the filename as part of the clip properties...

There are usually two workflows used to deal with this: slating and timecode. With timecode, you note the date and camera's timecode on your paper at the start of the take; that will be a unique identifier regardless of what the format or filename is.

With slating, you generally put a slate in front of the camera that identifies the scene # and take # and date and other pertinent information, which info is also referenced by your notes, which lets you marry them up in post. A less-intrusive way would be audio slating, where you state which take/scene/clip number it is before the action begins, which may be simple enough to do; as you make your notes on clip 10 (for example), as soon as the camera starts rolling you say "Clip 10" and then use that to marry the clip to the notes in post.

Neither of these processes allow me to quickly/simply map clips to files by just looking at the file name, I'm forced to look or listen to the start of the clip. When I get back to the studio I like to only ingest clips that I will, or might, use. Now that process is tedious because the numbers in my notes may, or may not, match the file names on the SD card. Even if I ingest all the clips, because of this issue, it is still tedious to determine which clips match my notes.

IMO:

1) There should be an option to *not* reset the file name sequence numbers when day/format changes.

2) The Thumbnail view numeric overlay should reflect the true sequence number in the file name.