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Filed under: Editing •Post Production •

VideoToolshed releases FcpReconnect to aid in media management

We all know Final Cut Pro’s media management capabilities aren’t its strongest feature. The guys over at VideoToolshed have released a utility that tries to make up for some of those shortcomings. Plus, if you’ve never browsed through the products they offer then take a few minutes to do so as you might find one that meets a specific need you might have.

VideoToolshed is a small post-production house in the Netherlands that has quite an impressive collection of little applications and utilities, available for both Mac and PC, that address a lot of small but often quite pressing needs in the post-production world. Their website is rather sparse, their English sometimes fragmented and their software isn’t particularly pretty but from just looking at the volume of products they have produced over the years and how they have addressed specific needs you can tell someone has put some thought into these products. I often wish that I knew how to write Mac applications (I once tried to learn and it didn’t go very well) so I could do something similar to what Bouke and his team does (that’s assuming he has a team!): They see a need they have in their post-production workflow and then write an app to address it. The most reason one to catch the eye is FcpReconnect.

FcpReconnect is designed to help with the reconnecting and relinking of media in Final Cut Pro. The web page for FcpReconnect lists 3 ways to use the app: -have FcpReconnect consolidate the online files with correct names; -have FcpReconnect rename the original files; -have FcpReconnect modify a XML for you. There’s a tutorial video that walks you through some of the functions of FcpReconnect as well. It seems that this tool could be most useful in an offline to online environment where you were offlining with lower resolution media. If if can help avoid the reconnection dance in any way then it would be worth the price, currently around $65.

And speaking of the reconnection dance, I asked the software’s creator if this application could help with that dance, that I see as FCP’s achilles heel. The answer is not in its current form but the developer is looking into adding this functionality. My fingers are crossed.

We also talked about another cool tool called QtTools. This utility will batch alter QuickTime files and do things like change reel information, display settings and quality settings as well as add timecode and reel information from an Avid ALE. This last bit of functionality is very intriguing and when you watch the video you’ll see it move media from an Avid edit into Final Cut Pro with matching reel names and timecode as part of the process. This is not an uncommon question. I have often been asked: how do you move media already captured in Avid to FCP for an edit? Outside of Automatic Duck the answer is usually don’t - recapture or reingest in FCP. From what you see in the video it looks like this might be an alternative, especially for a simple edit.

One thing I asked is if QtTools had the ability to batch extract unused audio channels from QuickTime files. Say you accidentally digitize from an HD source with too many audio channels selected in the FCP capture tool (you often only have stereo audio on channels 1 & 2) and you don’t want to have to constantly unpatch audio 3-8 in the FCP timeline or have all of the audio tabs pop-up in the Viewer, could it delete those empty and silent audio channels? The answer was no but something the developer is looking into. If anyone knows of such a utility please post in the comments below. You can do this in QuickTime player but it’s not efficient when you have to do it one clip at a time.

Other tools of interest from VideoToolshed:

EDL Tool: makes timecode offsets to a source or trims edits. I’ve used its Mirror functionality to “clean up” an EDL for color grading sessions.

Avid Locator to DVD chapter converter: The description says it all: “If you want to have Chapter points in your DVD streams, it’s a tedious job setting them manually in DVD SP. It is way more easy to set markers in Avid while you’re working. This application converts an Avid Marker list to a DVD SP importable chapter list.” It’s not cheap but (around $150) but could save you a lot of time and as we all know, time is money.

VideoMacro: a utility that runs user-definable macros designed for non-linear editors.

FCP auxTC reader: An application that performs a variety of functions with Final Cut Pro and QuickTime clips pertaining to auxiliary timecode and/or audio timecode.

Digital Clapper Board: With all of the iPhone slate applications out there this one takes the concept a step futher.

There’s a whole lot more applications from VideoToolshed in addition to the ones listed above. My guess is they will keep making new ones as the need arises.

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Just so you know, there’s a much cheaper (i.e. free) way to convert Avid locators to DVD chapter markers:

http://tr.im/oBnm

Posted by Chris Hocking  on  08/17  at  04:36 PM

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Chris,
The free demo from the Locater app. does quite a large number of locaters, should be good for 99% of the productions.

But even better, i’m going to make it free soon…

Scott,
Thanks for the nice roundup.
The ‘delete tracks’in the QT tools app is done, but not (yet) online.
It needs a new name too, as there already is an application named QT_Tools, and that will lead to confusion! So i’m open to suggestions.

One important thing you have missed and may want to give a look.
Subbits (the subtitle prep tool) also does CC.
And the latest version of FCP can output CC !

This is a MAJOR improvement for you in the US!

Back to writing code now..
Feature requests are always welcome though, same as ideas for new tools.

Bouke
VideoToolShed.com
smart tools for video Pro’s

Posted by bouke  on  08/18  at  04:28 AM

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Hi Scott,

I had written a free program and posted it on my website that would batch remove the audio tracks. However, somewhere around FCP 6.0.3 or so, a bug came up in Final Cut that basically ruined your project and forced you to reconnect media one file at a time if you stripped out tracks. I took it down because I didn’t want to get blamed for destroying people’s projects. Apple acknowledged the bug, but I know it was still a problem in 6.0.5. I have yet to test whether or not it was fixed for 6.0.6 or 7. I’d honestly sort of forgotten about it, so I’ll check in the next few days and If it has been fixed, I will definitely re-post.

- David

Posted by David Heidelberger  on  08/18  at  11:18 AM

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David, do you mean it did this if you were to remove the audio AFTER you imported the files into FCP? It should work fine if you were to identify this problem before you began an edit ... in that before you made a single cut you could remove the clips from FCP, delete the silent audio and reimport. They should be fine with that process right?

Bouke ... a new name hmmm ....

Posted by Scott Simmons  on  08/18  at  07:18 PM

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That’s right. But as soon as you altered media that Final Cut needed, it was a world of hurt. You could use the workflow you suggested, but some metadata (Log Notes, for example) is not embedded into the Quicktime movies, so if you have any of that, it’s all lost at that point, not to mention your bins.

I checked this afternoon with some sample media. The problem is fixed for FCP 7, apparently not for FCP 6.0.6 (I discovered the bug in 6.0.5, not sure when Apple broke this). As we speak, I’m adding a bunch of warning messages to the program and will re-post it on my site tomorrow or Thursday.

Posted by David Heidelberger  on  08/18  at  08:23 PM

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Guys,
Not to be in a pissing contest with David, but i’ve added the remove tracks.
I’ve also added speed changes.
(Mostly for myself, i have to do Pal to 23.976 for DVD

Still thinking about the reconnecting shebang.
(It is possible already, but i want to come up with a killer idea instead of a half decent solution.)

Stay tuned…

Bouke

Posted by bouke  on  08/19  at  10:27 AM

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