P2 Clip Database in FileMaker

H

hatchmo

Active member
The good news.

Several of you have asked me how hard it is to create a database of all your DVX video clips. Well, I’ll try to explain it--and why I haven’t simply posted one (yet).

We have the contents of hundreds of P2 cards on several Terabyte disk drives. The metadata for all of them lives in a single FileMaker database. You can type in any request you want. For example, all the clips

-- between 1-8 seconds long
-- shot by a particular person
-- shot by a particular P2 card

The last line is in case you find a corrupted clip. Which card was responsible? The database can attach the factory serial number of each card to the clip. If a clip is split across two cards, it displays the card that contains the second half of the clip. You don't need NEXTCLIP.txt, because that information is in the metadata of both clips that are split.

You can scrub through each clip right in the database--not in a separate window. In a list of clips, the icon that represents each clip is not simply the first frame in that clip; it is a frame you (or someone on your staff) designated as the representative frame. So there is no need for a separate icon jpg image.

The XML data are imported with the click of a button. You have a hundred different fields of information, such as location--down to the province, city, street where the shot was taken, but also the location of the tripod holes in case you need to recreate the shot.

It does timecode math, and it changes diapers. I wrote it over a weekend because I got tired of waiting for someone to come out with something like it. I’m not a professional programmer. I just play one on TV.

Don’t get me wrong, HD Log is great, but... ( See below).
 
The bad news.

This P2 card database doesn’t do Windows, even though FileMaker is cross-platform. I wrote it on my Mac instead of my PC, because, well it’s just easier.

Second, it relies on an external application to transcode the video. That can be FCP, P2 Log or HD Log. Still, it’s an extra step.

It’s not a polished professional application. It takes the blink of an eye to import a batch of a dozen cards, but it takes a few steps to prepare the default fields just before you do that. And it’s not well inoculated against user error. If a PA clicks “Replace all” by mistake, it dutifully goes ahead and replaces all occurrences of that field.

I can add as many fields as I want--because I know FileMaker. But I can’t expect the user to do that. I’d have to turn it into a professional product, and I don’t have time. I do other things for a living.
Why am bothering to write this, then? Just to let everyone know that it can be done. It’s not that hard, thanks to the miracle of XML. If one of you knows a pro comfortable with FileMaker, QuickTime, and XSLT sheets (oops), tell ‘em it’s pretty easy. She might be able to make a little money, if she’s interested.
 
HD Log

HD Log is a wonderful product. I am a registered, full retail owner of a copy. I still use it. The company has the best tech support of any software product I have ever encountered. Period! They respond to email within minutes, actually answer the phone, and will even compile a patch for you. Amazing!

But HD Log is way, way overpriced in my opinion. And it is klugey in some ways. It won’t let you do many things essential to a full-fledged database. It makes it way too hard to create lo-res clips for data storage. If you move your clips to a new disk drive or folder, you have a nightmare to fix the paths in the database. It can be done, but it is diabolical.

HD Log forces you to do one of 2 things:
(1) Create a separate database file for every clip (!) so you must perform searches across all of them using Multifile Search, or
(2) Pay $7,000 for the Clip Library add-on.

I won’t go into other issues. Suffice it to say it is a slick product, made by smart people, but it falls short of what we need.
 
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Any plans to make this available? I'd love to have something like this.
I have Filemaker 8 but don't have a clue hoe to go about what you've already done so far. :)
 
Thanks for posting all that info Hatchmo, a facility such as this is going to be essential as we all progress with our P2 shooting. On the last shoot we did with 4 cams we are getting around 2000 clips for a commercial half prgram and I've got three of them to output. FCP makes it possible to work with 2000 clips at a time but if all 6000 clips could be searched and logged and managed from a single database I could have saved a heap of time. It would have been possible for me to do a line cut without even looking at a clip!!!! This thread needs to get a heap of attention. I've got some experience with access but nothing in FM so maybe I need to look at a licence...
 
2000 clips for a program and you've got three of them to output? OK, you win! I can't come close to that.
Regarding the FileMaker license: I can create a runtime version that doesn't require the application. That only means it doesn't allow any modification or customization of the database. I'm still doing some testing to make sure it works on any drive with any volume name, and tells you when a volume is missing. I'll let you know this week.
 
I already have Filemaker so I wouldn't need the runtime version.
It would be nice to be able to modify some of the fields to fit the way I work a little better.
 
At the February meeting of the L.A. Final Cut Pro User Group, Ramy Katrib of DigitalFilm Tree gave a presentation on how they use Filemaker. They not only track the all the clips for every project in-house, they use the data fields to track who edited what, when, what edit bay, what drives, etc. They link billing to the Filemaker database and pretty much run the whole facility on it. Unfortunately Remy didn't seem keen on making their system available as a retail product.
 
hatchmo said:
I'll let you know this week.
Click to expand...

I'd be really interested as well! wouldn't be the end of the world if I had to buy a copy of Filemaker.... hell I've been meaning to buy it for like YEARS anyway! :)

Indy.....
 
Looks like a great idea....I'd be interested as well.

When you import. or rather before you import, can you scrub your clips and delete those you don't want and also fill out the search data such as who, where, when, etc...before importing and then import clip by clip?

Also, if many of your clips are of the same subject and you merely want to keep the same search data....is there some sort of "save all" for those search fields so you don't need to do fill in each and every field EACH time....say you have ten shots of a guy flying a kite at the same place---you just want to log it with the same search data?

Great post!
 
Sorry, I had to drop off the radar for months for personal reasons. I am not a programmer, and my entire programming staff consists of one person: me.

I have placed a little video of the current ClipSilo at

http://p2.newmaterial.com/

that shows just a few capabilities.

There are a few people beta testing it in large, real-world projects, which has taught me that it needs more work. For instance, right now, you can mark clips with a click, then export to a text file for dragging into a Final Cut Pro folder. But the professional solution is to export directly into Final Cut. We are pleading with Apple to make Final Cut Pro scriptable, which is Apple's biggest glaring problem, in my opinion. Moreover, FileMaker's XML interface is dreadful. That required me to write a custom XSLT style sheet. And I know nothing about XSLT.
For now, a lot of work remains with the beta. I will let you guys know if we find enough interest to make it worthwhile as a commercial product.

--
Al Hatch
 
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