EDL capture: short tape names
by Barry Goch (Gochya)
on
Apr 15, 2008 at 6:03:20 pm
I'm a bit new to smoke and edl's but I'm managing. One of the my problems is that Smoke shortens the names of the tapes I'm capturing from the edl in the capture display. I therefore cannot see the entire name of a tape and don't know for sure which one to load when tapes have similar names.
Re: EDL capture: short tape names by moody glasgow on Apr 16, 2008 at 4:37:45 pm
You didnt mention what type of EDL you are using, but I'll assume you are using a CMX3600 format. Tape names are only allowed to be 8 characters long, and there are certain characters that are forbidden. So, it is best to use some sort of standard naming convention though out your whole post house. Back in my offline days, we would use something like R001, where R stands for dailies reel, and the 001 tells us that it is the first one. It is also very helpful if all the assistant who loads the footage in, labels the tape with the same reel assignment.
Sadly, I've found that with the rise in popularity of FCP, I get fewer and fewer EDL that have proper and consistent, reel assignments.
*** Actually come to think of it, the Smoke will also truncate reel assignments that are over 8 characters. If the Smoke is doing the truncation of the name, you will see it in the EDL module.
Re: EDL capture: short tape names by Angus Mackay on Apr 21, 2008 at 10:36:13 am
Hi
In addition to Moody's wise words I'll add that, (if your EDLs are coming from Avid) there's a function in Avids EDL tool to convert tape names to EDL appropriate numbers. Just make a note of the source table and print it out and you should be good.
Moody is right though, disipline in off-line is not what it used to be, On-line is picking up the tab :-#
Sorry guys i`m a bit late in the topic but i found this thread by searching something in Google.
First, lets say that Smoke doesn`t truncate the reel names, the EDL format does: if you open the .EDL file with a text editor, its already 8 characters ;)
When you export the EDL, from, as an example, Avid EDL Manager, there is an option which let you select multiple useful actions (i dont remember where it is): by default its: "Remove the end" thats why you get no numbers on reel names like : "MY PROJECT - CASSETTE 001" => "MY_PROJE"
You can change this option to "Remove Beginning" so you`ll have "ETTE_001" which looks more like a tape name.
There also Remove Middle and few others.
I'm pretty sure you have those functions in FCP too.
