+33 4 7642 9550
www.aaton.com
Cantar-X User Manual v2.26 (r13) 2009 April 27
p.47
p.47
The 'User's TapeRef' solution
The trick invented by the video people to hide this failure
is to differentiate identical TC(h)' by manually entering the
camera's 'VideoTapeID' into the editing databases... and
they now try to impose this old fashioned 'cassette minded'
system to the audio file sorting too! (note1). To avoid this
misfortune, Cantar reintroduces the TC 'date' that CMX's
EDLs killed, by replacing the arbitrary 'VideoTapeID' entries
with the automatically generated MMDD 'User's TapeRef';
no longer bothering the sound recordist with video cassette
or P2 IDs, this eliminates fat-finger errors, and furthermore
takes care of multi-camera shooting.
User's TapeRef, Cantar side
Using the workday which gives a name to the Cantar fold-
ers, the MMDD (month/day) is automatically stored in the
'User's TapeRef' metadata field of each audio file. As an
alternative to the absolute date, some productions do prefer
to enter manually incremented shooting days, this is not a
good idea! see note2.
User's TapeRef, Camera side
The camera operator writes the six character 'VideoTapeID'
on the video cassette, compact-flash or disk, like in the
good old times, but instead of an arbitrary name he writes:
MMDD/CamID/Cassette# :
Date:
April 18
, Camera:
A
, Cassette:
9
–>
0418A9
Date:
April 18
, Camera:
B
, Cassette:
1
–>
0418B1
.
The 1 to 9 then A to Z last character can identify 35 cas-
settes per day per camera... long working hours!
User's TapeRef,
NLE side
The assistant-editor keys-in the six characters of the standard
'VideoTapeID' when preping the digitization of the cassette,
they will appear in the 'TapeID' (or SoundRoll) column of the
bin. Please note that if the 'VideoTapeID' sticker is lost or not
exixting, it is easy for the assistant to replace it by writing
the MMDD of the shooting day followed with an import
arbitrary incrementing #.
User's TapeRef, final
mix side
• To perform the auto-conforming of the Cantar iso files to
the edited mixdown,
Titan-3
(p.56) first sorts them by com-
paring the leading MMDD four characters (0418) of the
EDL's 'TapeID' (or SoundRoll) column with the 'User's TapeRef'
found in the audio files metadata, then uses the timecode
in- and out-points to finish the job (with
Pyramix
you don't
even need to use Titan).
D- Autosync
• editing with the Cantar iso tracks
Correlated to the Video-TC of the images, the Audio-TC is
used to 'autosync' the imported Cantar iso tracks and the
video pictures. Both TC(h) and TC(d) must match.
• editing with the camera mixdown
Autosync is not applicable since the mixdown has already
been linked to the images during their import.
E- EDL generation
• editing with the Cantar iso tracks
Once editing is done, before triggering the Audio-EDL
generation, the editor selects
Filetags
(file-names) as the file
sorting mode.
• editing with the camera mixdown
Once editing is done, before triggering the Audio-EDL gen-
eration, the editor selects the classic 'TapeID' (or SoundRoll)
as the file sorting mode.
note1:
A demand to be resisted,
some producers ask sound
recordists to enter the camera/cassette IDs in the 'User's
TapeRef' field, this is no good:
1-
quite often the sound
recordist is warned too late of the camera cassette change-
over.
2-
with video cassettes being replaced by cards, it
becomes almost impossible to keep track of them.
3-
on
a multi-camera shoot, there is no provision to enter double
or triple camera cassette IDs into the metadata.
4-
like any
manual operation done in a hurry on location, this is error
prone and induces confusion and delays in Post.
note2:
The 'Shooting Day Rank' manual entry increases the
risk of human error, i
f you nevertheless use it instead of the
absolute date, go to the Tape-Ref field following Comments
in PPR 'edit'. First thing in the morning, right after accepting
a 'new day', go there and overwrite the MMDD month/
day with the 'day rank', e.g. day twenty-five = D025. On
the camera side, the assistant writes D025(B1) instead of
0418(B1) on the video cassette.
note3:
With Majax, you can batch modify the 'User's
TapeRef' field by highlighting all the concerned files and
entering the new value in the bottom-right field. It is record-
ed in the iXML metadata and insures that whatever happens
to your files, e.g. mono to poly, mixdown, gathering in a
different folder, copy to DVD..., they will keep their 'User's
TapeRef'.
TUTORIAL 4
CAMERA SYNC [2]
