Off and on I’ve tried tackling the metadata approach for a large-documentary project I’m assigned at work, as of today the raw footage consist of 2,864 movie files spread across the last 201 days. All of these files are stored on a network drive via gigabit ethernet. This is a follow up post, mainly for Eric, about the iMovie + server workflow that I’ve been trouble shooting for months now at work. Long story short, iMovie doesn’t like working with alias files after all, so that set up ended up breaking on me fairly quickly once I got into tagging / key-wording media.  But!, on account of the recent updates to FCP X, I started testing out how it handled working with media organized on a server over gigabit. It turns out, if you go into the preferences of FCP X, that you can by default have it import footage without moving the original files or recomposing proxy files, meaning it simply creates aliases for you!, and it doesn’t mind at all if your original files are stored on a server. It can analyze for rolling shutter / face detection / stabilization, also while syncing audio and video files, fixing audio issues, keywording and sorting footage into folders / smart folders, etc! In other words, FCP X solves every single issue I’ve run into over months and months of testing different file organizing and management apps that don’t hold up over a server. Amazing. Not to mention FCP X can do all of these things in the background, whereas other apps, like iMovie, are unusable until after they finish analyzing imported media (which, in this project’s case, can take upwards of 3 days). I do admit, FCP X is a different kind of editing approach than I’m used to, but for any features it lacks in comparison to FCP 7, it has so far made up with ease of media management and background processing. 
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Off and on I’ve tried tackling the metadata approach for a large-documentary project I’m assigned at work, as of today the raw footage consist of 2,864 movie files spread across the last 201 days. All of these files are stored on a network drive via gigabit ethernet.

This is a follow up post, mainly for Eric, about the iMovie + server workflow that I’ve been trouble shooting for months now at work. Long story short, iMovie doesn’t like working with alias files after all, so that set up ended up breaking on me fairly quickly once I got into tagging / key-wording media. 

But!, on account of the recent updates to FCP X, I started testing out how it handled working with media organized on a server over gigabit. It turns out, if you go into the preferences of FCP X, that you can by default have it import footage without moving the original files or recomposing proxy files, meaning it simply creates aliases for you!, and it doesn’t mind at all if your original files are stored on a server. It can analyze for rolling shutter / face detection / stabilization, also while syncing audio and video files, fixing audio issues, keywording and sorting footage into folders / smart folders, etc!

In other words, FCP X solves every single issue I’ve run into over months and months of testing different file organizing and management apps that don’t hold up over a server. Amazing. Not to mention FCP X can do all of these things in the background, whereas other apps, like iMovie, are unusable until after they finish analyzing imported media (which, in this project’s case, can take upwards of 3 days). I do admit, FCP X is a different kind of editing approach than I’m used to, but for any features it lacks in comparison to FCP 7, it has so far made up with ease of media management and background processing. 

Off and on I’ve tried tackling the metadata approach for a large-documentary project I’m assigned at work, as of today the raw footage consist of 2,864 movie files spread across the last 201 days. All of these files are stored on a network drive via gigabit ethernet. My first workflow involved keywords and a smart-folder in Adobe Bridge, which worked well for a while, but I soon began to push the limits of Bridge, resulting in a 50/50 chance the keywords I applied to footage would take or not. So, over time, I spent less and less effort in properly logging metadata to footage, as it was just an incredibly fickle and frustrating thing to do. But, after lots of other experimenting with different apps and syncing approaches, I think I’ve finally got a workflow I’m happy with! It uses a bit of Hazel magic, local aliases of networked files, and iMovie. 1st: I had to create a Hazel rule that would run a match through all subfolders starting at the top-folder of my Final Cut capture-scratch for the documentary. See this photo for an example. 2nd: I made a Hazel rule that found any movie files and to create aliases for each file within my local Home folder: ~/Home/Movies/iMovie Events/… , a few seconds later and Hazel had scanned through all 5.7 TBs of footage and created 2,864 aliases, totaling only 400 Mbs on my local drive!, not bad. 3rd: Open iMovie and let it do its thing. Done. Now, iMovie treats an alias exactly like the original movie file, but!, and this was a great surprise for me, it places the thumbnail folder with the original movies, not with the aliases, helping me keep all my footage on the server where it’s supposed to be! So, when I open iMovie, it takes a moment to check for any new movie files that don’t already have thumbnails generated and makes them, anything that has previously had a thumbnail generated for it is already good to go! I’ll write a follow-up to this post after I have more of a chance to try and break iMovie via tagging 2,000+ files. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it holds up better than Bridge working off of locally stored aliases.
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Off and on I’ve tried tackling the metadata approach for a large-documentary project I’m assigned at work, as of today the raw footage consist of 2,864 movie files spread across the last 201 days. All of these files are stored on a network drive via gigabit ethernet.

My first workflow involved keywords and a smart-folder in Adobe Bridge, which worked well for a while, but I soon began to push the limits of Bridge, resulting in a 50/50 chance the keywords I applied to footage would take or not. So, over time, I spent less and less effort in properly logging metadata to footage, as it was just an incredibly fickle and frustrating thing to do.

But, after lots of other experimenting with different apps and syncing approaches, I think I’ve finally got a workflow I’m happy with! It uses a bit of Hazel magic, local aliases of networked files, and iMovie.

1st: I had to create a Hazel rule that would run a match through all subfolders starting at the top-folder of my Final Cut capture-scratch for the documentary. See this photo for an example.

2nd: I made a Hazel rule that found any movie files and to create aliases for each file within my local Home folder: ~/Home/Movies/iMovie Events/… , a few seconds later and Hazel had scanned through all 5.7 TBs of footage and created 2,864 aliases, totaling only 400 Mbs on my local drive!, not bad.

3rd: Open iMovie and let it do its thing. Done. Now, iMovie treats an alias exactly like the original movie file, but!, and this was a great surprise for me, it places the thumbnail folder with the original movies, not with the aliases, helping me keep all my footage on the server where it’s supposed to be! So, when I open iMovie, it takes a moment to check for any new movie files that don’t already have thumbnails generated and makes them, anything that has previously had a thumbnail generated for it is already good to go!

I’ll write a follow-up to this post after I have more of a chance to try and break iMovie via tagging 2,000+ files. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it holds up better than Bridge working off of locally stored aliases.

Question: Does anyone know of an iPhone app that supports - at least over wifi - full HD uploads to either an FTP or Blip?

I have tried Pixelpipe, but it looks like their 200 Mb limit is now closer to 100 Mbs, and it doesn’t take long to hit 100 Mbs when recording in HD. I need the files to go to Blip, or at least FTP, because Blip.tv is connected to my Vimeo, YouTube, etc.

One work around I’ve thought of is to use a dedicated folder in Dropbox for video uploads - Dropbox does compress the video when adding files from the iPhone app, but it leaves it at 720p and from what I’ve seen, the compression isn’t awful - from there I’d have to use Hazel to send newly uploaded files to an FTP droplet for Blip; it would be a lot of steps, but the process could be automated if I set it up just right. 

But, of course, what would be best is if I could do everything directly from my iPhone without my computer needing to be open and running at home - any ideas?

the best way to sync music to your iPhone

via caseypugh:

If you’re like me, then you have a lot more music than your iPhone can actually store on its hard drive. Always choosing what music to put on my iPhone is tedious so I came up with a simple solution…

I like seeing how other people manage their iTunes playlist - I suppose I’m a dork like that - after reading Casey’s post on the three smart playlist he uses to keep his iPhone full of new / awesome music, I wanted to share my own setup.

  • 350 most played : this is the music base on my iPhone. Instead of manually maintaing a playlist of music that I probably always want to have with me, I use play-count to guess and keep things current. 
  • Top Rated : Straight forward - anything with a rating of 4 stars and up.
  • Fresh Fish : Some months I pull in quite a bit of new music - and I have a smart playlist of anything added within the last 3 months, but I don’t add that smart playlist to my iPhone, instead I add my Fresh Fish playlist, which only adds music recently added to iTunes that hasn’t been played in the last week. Helps me work through all my new music. 
  • Recently Played : If it’s been played in the last month - it goes on my iPhone. 
  • Song I ♥ - but not too much : this playlist is a bit more complicated, click on the link to see a screengrab of how I filter music out here, this playlist is designed to keep me from neglecting my older music - not to mention help me find unwanted songs (excessively skipped). This playlist is what my iTunes DJ is working off of 90% of the time. 
  • Jon → Mp3 ← Mike : this isn’t a smart playlist, but it is a playlist that is auto-updated by way of Dropbox and Hazel - anytime that my friend Jon adds a few songs in our Mp3 Dropbox folder, Hazel sees it and adds those Mp3 files to this playlist in iTunes. New music from Jon is always exciting and I make sure to have any suggested tracks on my iPhone at all times. 

In total I tend to only carry around 5 GBs of music on my iPhone - I keep a lot of space free for video / photos, since the main thing I use my iPhone for is a video camera. If I put on music these days, 75% of the time it’s Pandora radio. 

In any given day I record between 2 to sometimes 40 individual HD video clips with my iPhone 4 - managing all these individual clips, keeping the videos separate from the photos, and importing them into iMovie would get overwhelming after a few weeks. It’s a lot of media to move around and when I decided to commit to 52 weeks worth of 7x7s, I wanted to be sure it didn’t become a side-project that distracted me from my main-project, FToM. Here’s a few things I use to keep everything as automated as possible:  Using Auto Importer to auto-import your camera roll → If you aren’t already using Auto Importer for your iPhone then you’ll need to open up Image Capture, which comes preinstalled on every Mac, and while your iPhone is plugged in, choose under the “connecting this iPhone opens” device setting the Auto Importer option, then check “delete after import” so you don’t end up with a ton of duplicate files.  After this, you can close Image Capture, disconnect and reconnect your iPhone, you’ll see Auto Importer open up, it’s going to be a small transfer window, with a smiliar style you see when you drag a file from one folder to another. You’ll see this small window pop-up anytime you connect your iPhone if it has a photo or video in it’s camera roll - but otherwise, you can just worry about plugging your iPhone in for syncing or charging, everything else is going to run in the background with no effort on your part.  Using Hazel to separate videos and photos → At this point, Auto Importer has taken everything on your camera roll, and moved into one place, most likely your Photos folder, but you can choose any folder you prefer to have your media import into. For example, I have mine auto-import into my Photos folder under Dropbox - this way my media is backed up to the cloud within minutes of it being pulled off my iPhone. Now, if you want your iPhone movies to just automatically be in iMovie when you open the app to edit, then your video files being under Photos doesn’t do you a lot of good. This is where Hazel becomes very, very helpful.  You can see in the image above that creating a Hazel rule is as simple as creating a smart playlist in iTunes. I keep all of my iPhone movies in an iMovie Event called Randomness - so to have Hazel keep all of my iPhone movies in the right place, I just dragged my Dropbox/Photos folder into Hazel and told it if kind is movie, then to move file to the folder iMovie Events/Randomness. Next time I open iMovie, it notices new movie files in it’s Events folder and generates thumbnails for them.  And that’s it. After setting up Auto Importer and Hazel, I never need to do anything manual with my iPhone movies - I plug in my iPhone at night to charge and while I’m falling asleep, everything is being moved around my computer where it needs to be for when I’m ready to edit a 7x7 each week.  Now, I even have a Hazel rule to watch for movies under Randomness that are older than 2 weeks and move those files to an external Rugged drive to keep my computer from filling up. But, perhaps that’s another post for another time.  This is the second how-to post I’ve written for my 7x7 workflow, I hope at least one friend out there on the internets finds this helpful. If you have any questions, be sure to ask them here. 
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In any given day I record between 2 to sometimes 40 individual HD video clips with my iPhone 4 - managing all these individual clips, keeping the videos separate from the photos, and importing them into iMovie would get overwhelming after a few weeks. It’s a lot of media to move around and when I decided to commit to 52 weeks worth of 7x7s, I wanted to be sure it didn’t become a side-project that distracted me from my main-project, FToM. Here’s a few things I use to keep everything as automated as possible: 

  • Using Auto Importer to auto-import your camera roll →

If you aren’t already using Auto Importer for your iPhone then you’ll need to open up Image Capture, which comes preinstalled on every Mac, and while your iPhone is plugged in, choose under the “connecting this iPhone opens” device setting the Auto Importer option, then check “delete after import” so you don’t end up with a ton of duplicate files. 

After this, you can close Image Capture, disconnect and reconnect your iPhone, you’ll see Auto Importer open up, it’s going to be a small transfer window, with a smiliar style you see when you drag a file from one folder to another. You’ll see this small window pop-up anytime you connect your iPhone if it has a photo or video in it’s camera roll - but otherwise, you can just worry about plugging your iPhone in for syncing or charging, everything else is going to run in the background with no effort on your part. 

  • Using Hazel to separate videos and photos →

At this point, Auto Importer has taken everything on your camera roll, and moved into one place, most likely your Photos folder, but you can choose any folder you prefer to have your media import into. For example, I have mine auto-import into my Photos folder under Dropbox - this way my media is backed up to the cloud within minutes of it being pulled off my iPhone. Now, if you want your iPhone movies to just automatically be in iMovie when you open the app to edit, then your video files being under Photos doesn’t do you a lot of good. This is where Hazel becomes very, very helpful. 

You can see in the image above that creating a Hazel rule is as simple as creating a smart playlist in iTunes. I keep all of my iPhone movies in an iMovie Event called Randomness - so to have Hazel keep all of my iPhone movies in the right place, I just dragged my Dropbox/Photos folder into Hazel and told it if kind is movie, then to move file to the folder iMovie Events/Randomness. Next time I open iMovie, it notices new movie files in it’s Events folder and generates thumbnails for them. 

And that’s it. After setting up Auto Importer and Hazel, I never need to do anything manual with my iPhone movies - I plug in my iPhone at night to charge and while I’m falling asleep, everything is being moved around my computer where it needs to be for when I’m ready to edit a 7x7 each week. 

Now, I even have a Hazel rule to watch for movies under Randomness that are older than 2 weeks and move those files to an external Rugged drive to keep my computer from filling up. But, perhaps that’s another post for another time. 

This is the second how-to post I’ve written for my 7x7 workflow, I hope at least one friend out there on the internets finds this helpful. If you have any questions, be sure to ask them here. 

Q:Hello Mike. I enjoy your 7x7's very much but I would like to request that you maybe include more horses in your videos. Also, what do you do with all of the clips you use to make your 7x7?

*

ericahampton

Oh, hello Erica. I also enjoy your 7x7s, as for the more horses request, is this your way of telling me it’s time we go back for another horse ride behind Griffith Park? * 

In the last four months that I’ve been recording 7x7s, I have recorded 6.2 hours of footage! This is only counting my iPhone, not my other cameras - this breaks down to: 85 minutes in August, 89 minutes in September, 131 minutes in October, and 69 minutes in November. 

This footage does add up quickly - I use a number of Hazel rules to move older footage off my computer onto external drives, but that’s another post for another time.

Generally, at the end of each month, I go into iMovie, create a blank project, and drag all the clips from the month of, as an example, November, into the timeline. Then I scan through quickly and make sure any clips that are on their side are rotated, and use the Share option to export a full-resolution, 1280x720p, movie. 

Quick Tip : I almost always run this export overnight while I am sleeping - even if this means I set up all the month’s clips in-order on a Wed, and don’t actually get around to hitting Share until Sat’ at 11pm, iMovie has the bad habit of slowing my machine down way too much to deal with a day-time export. 

If you’re recording upwards of 80 minutes of iPhone HD footage each month, then you are going to end up with a rather large exported movie; I use my Vimeo Plus account to privately host my raw iPhone footage exports. 

Unfortunately, this isn’t as easy as just hitting Share and then sending that file off to Vimeo - even with iMovie’s new built-in support for Vimeo. Often the file is far too large for Vimeo’s 2 GBs per file limit, and yes, you could adjust your quality settings in iMovie before hitting export, but again, iMovie can really run my machine into the ground on long exports, so I prefere to use MPEG Streamclip.

This means exporting twice, but, on the plus side, you only have to do it once a month, and using MPEG Streamclip allows you adjust the quality with much, much more control. Meaning, I can make sure the version I’m uploading to Vimeo is 1.98 GBs - loosing as little image and audio quality as possible. Once I have my monthly footage archive, I open up Vimeo Uploader, change my settings to private, and hit upload. 

My 1st day of trying out We Have Standards. Also, I think it’s worth pointing out how much of a dork I am: I created a Hazel rule that keeps an eye for PDFs downloaded to my desktop that contain text for Standards. When it spots one, it immediately adds the date to the filename, prints to file off, and moves the file to my Dropbox documents for archive. I feel like I should be more embarrassed having said that out-loud. 
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My 1st day of trying out We Have Standards.

Also, I think it’s worth pointing out how much of a dork I am: I created a Hazel rule that keeps an eye for PDFs downloaded to my desktop that contain text for Standards. When it spots one, it immediately adds the date to the filename, prints to file off, and moves the file to my Dropbox documents for archive. I feel like I should be more embarrassed having said that out-loud. 

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