Seeking an EDL scripting app

[tonepad]

This is an esoteric request, but we are in need of a script or app that can be used with a Final Cut Pro EDL. Specifically an Audio Assembly EDL that we've been able to get from FCP. This list it is a hacked Picture Online EDL that only has the Sound Roll number in the comments field and camera roll info from Picture Dailies in the master event field. We need to copy the Sound Roll to the Cam Roll field. Seem simple enough does it not? We can't find anything other than a text editor that can "find and replace", but that still requires 1-2 hours of manual work for a 900 +/- event EDL.

Most of my so-called expert friends can't seem to come up with a solution. Keep in mind a CMX 3600 DL is just a text file so it is not tab delimited, so anyone with Excell skills is stymied. Perhaps someone knows of an app that can convert simple text to something tab delimited so we can use Excell and the like.

Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated. We are trying to get our Sound Online process streamlined, and don't even get me started on the workarounds needed to run Titan

[tonepad]

Opps I hit the enter key.

Thanks,
Wilson Dyer mpse
Sound Supervisor NCIS-LA

[Frank Kruse]

I haven´t used it but this might help:

http://edlmax.com/edlmax24.htm

Maybe it does what you need. The site says:

Editing
Replace Reel Names
Move & Copy Audio Channels
Change Timecode Type
Trim Source
Record Ripple
Edl Title
Delete Events

BUT: PC only but maybe it runs in bootcamp.

Less skilled but free:

http://www.frogsoft.com/edl_toolkit.htm

Also:

Have you tried to use ALE files instead of EDLs. They are tab/comma delimited. maybe that could work as a in-between format to do the hacking and then comvert back to EDL. Not sure if FCP does ALE since they have their own XML format.

This might be usefull:

http://www.spherico.com/filmtools/XML2Text/index.html

or this EDL "plugin" for excel:

http://www.youngmonkey.ca/hands/Soft...ant/index.html

Another EDL plugin for Excel:

http://www.belle-nuit.com/edlwriter/e.html




hope this helps.

frank.

[tonepad]

Thanks Frank,
Although I do have Macs and PC's, EDL max is just too $ considering I just bought Titan for $1800 discounted...yikes! I have tried to get an XML exported from FCP but the young Asst Ed teamisn't too skilled in that area yet, so I get everything including VFX and color timing info spit out for me. Haven't given up hope on that completely since if we can get it into Excel/XML land things can happen. FTR here's what I need to do:

FCP EDL before:

001 NLA110A0 A C 09:44:23:17 09:44:29:20 01:00:02:20 01:00:08:23
* FROM CLIP NAME: 01D-3
* COMMENT: 1007
FINAL CUT PRO REEL: NLA_110_A09 REPLACED BY: NLA110A0

FCP EDL after:

001 1007 A C 09:44:23:17 09:44:29:20 01:00:02:20 01:00:08:23
* FROM CLIP NAME: 01D-3
* COMMENT: 1007
FINAL CUT PRO REEL: NLA_110_A09 REPLACED BY: 1007

Right now I copy the SR number in the comment field (1007) and past it over the cam roll....which is limited to 8 characters. We are having the Digital Dailies house change the naming converntion to make sure the end number shows in the list so this will help "find and replace" work much better since I will now have at least some continuity between cam and sound rolls. Currently the EDl only looks likke A0 A1 B0 B1 which does not show the actual number of cam rolls. What I really need is something dumb enough to just do the copy/paste routine. Could a macro program like quickeys do that? I've never been a fan of key macro proggys but associates of mine who like them don't think they can...how useless :)

A bit OT but has anyone ever had authorization issues with Titan. I can only get their auth system to work with my G5 PPC DP2.7... OSX 10.5/PT8 drive and not the prefered (for Titan limitations) 10.4/PT7.3 drive. They seem to be clueless and/or claim that it's something with my system...which has no issues with any other apps or plugs. I've got an email chain of 50 back and forths with no success other than a tedious workaround of running Flash Conform on 10.5, rebooting to 10.4 to add a work track then back to 10.5 for Fix Sync then back to 10.4 to check it, then back to 10.5 to open in PT8. Hurts just to explain this, though it does work it is extremely time consuming. My most recent proposal is to add another partition on the same 10.5 drive that Titan will auth on, but make the new part 10.4/PT7.3 and clean install only those 2 softs. Not response from SynchroArts on this idea but is there a problem with this idea? I have all the original installers for these.

Wilson Dyer mpse
Sound Supervisor NCIS-LA

[C]

I'm working on building an application to do these sorts of things. long slow process though. It's been a while since I programmed anything and never done it on OS X.

Will let you know when I have something to test if you are interested?

As for Titan authorisation. Yes I've had problems in the past but John's always been able to sort them out very quickly. Very strange that it's still not fixed for you. Out of interest why do you need to boot into 10.4/7.3? I have it fully operational on 10.5/7.4.2 maybe that would work for you too? It would be easier to clone your PT 8 partition and install 7.4 IMHO.

Ceri

[tonepad]

Yes keep me up to date on your endeavor. It's much appreciated when someone takes on a niche problem.

I have to boot Titan to the 10.4 drive because that's where I have a legacy install of PT 7.3.1 which allows me to open and add the Work Track and then save in the Titan 5.1 requirement.

Titan will not function with a Work Track created in PT8...one gets an "...end of stream..." nag screen which I believe is a legacy bug from those bad old PT5 days.

This workaround was devised for me by John so since it does work I dutifully jump thru the hoops. Apparantly there is something on the 10.4 drive that will not play auth Titan, though the demo ran fine. It is a legacy drive from the previous owner/user of the G5, though I have changed admin/privileges to myself. However I'm assuming that there something deep in that drive which cannot be purged hence my proposal to do a fresh install of OS 10.4 and PT 7.3.1 on a new and different drive...they are so dirt cheap these days. I always like to have a known earlier config of PT around for these just in case moments, but in this case I may have to do a clean recreation of the past. I've proposed this to John but haven't heard back on his impression. I will probably just try it out to prove it right or wrong.

Thanks for your input

Wilson Dyer mpse
Sound Supervisor NCIS-LA

[jeremiahmoore]

re: CMX-text to delimited-fields:

Excel has a feature called "Text to Columns" which allows you to break text into columns by number of characters or by any delimiter. It's a wizard-like function in that you're guided through a set of pages to

In excel, open or paste your CMX EDL. On my version (I'm on 2008/mac) it's under Data/Text To Columns.

Study your EDL: you might be able to use space-delimited. If so, choose delimited, next page choose "Space", next page you can probably ignore, click finish.

If not, Choose Fixed Width, click Next, then click the character ruler above the displayed columns to set break points. Next page you can probably ignore, click finish.

A cuisinart of data -- Way faster than any cut/paste routine.

-jeremiah

[nucelar]

Hi,
I'm sorry I can't answer to your specific question, but I can tell you I have had great success using Filemaker for these kind of things. It has lots of functions for parsing text and importing/exporting data.
Good luck!

[mfranken]

Originally Posted by tonepad

Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated. We are trying to get our Sound Online process streamlined, and don't even get me started on the workarounds needed to run Titan

We've been reworking our EDL based applications so that we can build them for OSX Universal Binary and Windows. As we already have the code to load text based EDLs I've created an application that will:

- Load an EDL and up to five comment lines per event
- Load Video and Audio 1-4 track assignments
- Display the events in a Excel style grid
- Copy a selected comment line to the Roll Name field
- Search for a string in any of the comments lines and copy that to the Roll Name field
- Find and Replace a given string in the text that is being copied to the Roll Name field
- Save the Data as a CMX3600 formatted EDL
- App is available for OSX and Windows

The app will run in demo mode until as serial number is purchased. In Demo mode 3/4 of saved events are blank, but you can still load EDLs and see how it all works. We're looking to sell this initial app for US$40 per license. And yes, it's another "EDI" app called EdiLoad.

If anyone wants a pre-release version email me off-list. http://www.soundsinsync.com

Regards,

Mark

[tonepad]

Originally Posted by nucelar

Hi,
I'm sorry I can't answer to your specific question, but I can tell you I have had great success using Filemaker for these kind of things. It has lots of functions for parsing text and importing/exporting data.
Good luck!

Indeed my FX editor has some FMP skills, but he's forgotten me However, I will again bring this to his attention and hope he can finally try to make it do this.

I appreciate everyone's feedback...and here I thought it was a niche problem.

Wilson Dyer mpse
Sound Supervisor NCIS-LA