It’s time to take apart some Final Cut Pro xml and add some newly received VFX clips to the VFX database. One of these days, I’ll explain all of these steps and how they might be useful in other workflows. For now, enjoy a look at a relaxing vacation from graphical user interfaces and mouse-clicks; A trip to the Terminal. If you have any Unix or XML knowledge, there might be something of interest in here.

Assistant-2:20100125 CAB$ xmlstarlet sel -t -m "//children/clip"\
-v "name" -o "," \
-v "out - in" -o "," -v "in" -o "," -v "out" -o ","\
-v "media/video/track/clipitem/start" -o "," \
-v "media/video/track/clipitem/end" -o ","\
-v "media/video/track/clipitem/file/timecode/frame" -o ","\
-v "media/video/track/clipitem/file/name" -o ","\
-v "media/video/track/clipitem/file/timecode/string" -o ","\
-v "media/video/track/clipitem/file/timecode/reel/name"\
-n 20100123_vfx_received.xml | tee 20100123_vfx_received.csv


52A-2_01_VFX_v1,178,0,178,0,178,,52A-2_01_VFX_v1.mov,,
52A-2_02_VFX_v1,141,0,141,0,141,,52A-2_02_VFX_v1.mov,,
52B-2_01_VFX_v1,152,0,152,0,152,,52B-2_01_VFX_v1.mov,,
53-3A_01_VFX_v4,307,0,307,0,307,,53-3A_01_VFX_v4.mov,,
54-3A_01_VFX_v1,188,0,188,0,188,,54-3A_01_VFX_v1.mov,,
C100_C016_0920LS_03_VFX_v1,102,0,102,0,102,,C100_C016_0920LS_03_VFX_v1.mov,,
C102_C011_0903RU_03_VFX_v1,79,0,79,0,79,,C102_C011_0903RU_03_VFX_v1.mov,,
C102_C011_0903RU_04_VFX_v4,256,0,256,0,256,,C102_C011_0903RU_04_VFX_v4.mov,,
C102_C011_0903RU_05_VFX_v2,200,0,200,0,200,,C102_C011_0903RU_05_VFX_v2.mov,,
C102_C011_0903RU_06_VFX_v2,147,0,147,0,147,,C102_C011_0903RU_06_VFX_v2.mov,,


Assistant-2:20100125 CAB$ cd thumbs/
Assistant-2:thumbs CAB$ tcsh
[Assistant-2:additions/20100125/thumbs] CAB% foreach foo (*.png)
foreach? convert -geometry 330x800 "$foo" "$foo:r.jpg"
foreach? rm "$foo"
foreach? end
[Assistant-2:additions/20100125/thumbs] CAB%

The starting point is a bin of clips in an FCP project. I’ve exported that bin as FCP XML, and have also batch exported the clips inside it as stills (to PNG, the default). The commands above are the meat of the process. Then the comma-separated-value list of clips I generate with the xmlstarlet command gets imported into an openoffice (or Excel) spreadsheet (a step I’ve ommitted here), and is massaged into a csv format for import into a Filemaker Pro database of VFX clips. Finally I import the thumbnails for each clip into the database. Fun stuff, pretty much.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 4:11 pm and is filed under Apple, Filmmaking, Geeky. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.