Separating files shot on one SD Card for two clients?

[Jim Gunn]

I started using a Sony EX-1 recently and I really love the video quality compared to my old Sony FX-1 HDV camera. I am still getting accustomed to the workflow however. I shoot to SDHC cards in a Sony adpater and on one of my first jobs I accidentally recorded videoclips destined for two different clients on the same SD Card. I already copied the files over to my hard drive and they are not on the card anymore. What's the best way to separate the files without messing up the meta-data that relates to them?

For example in the BPAV folder there are CLPR & TAKR folders as well as CueUP & Mediapro files. Then inside the CLPR folder there are say, twenty or so folders named something like XXX0001 through XXX0020, each containing the individual mp4 clips and their support files. If I want to separate the video clips XXX0010 through XXX0015 to send to one client from files XXX0001 through XXX0009 plus XXX0016 through XXX0020 for another client, what's the best way to go about this? Just take some of the sub-folders out of the CLPR folder for the one client and leave them there for the other?

[Dave Sperling]

DO NOT under any circumstances mess around with the files inside the BPAV folders!

You can, however, use XDcamEX Clip Browser to copy selected files to a new location. Clip Browser will create the new BPAV file structure in each new location.

Or if your clients are amenable to MXF files, export all the clips to a new location as MXF files for editing, then transfer these MXF files to separate folders for your two clients.

[Jim Gunn]

Dave, thanks for the info. I downloaded the 2.6 version of the Clip Browser software from the Sony Pro web site and installed it on my Windows Ultimate 64-bit machine. I browsed to the folder on my external hard drive where I stored the BPAV folder that I copied off of the SD card. I want to remove only some of the files out of that folder and leave the rest. I see that I can select and then either cut or copy whichever files I want out of that folder, and probably drag and drop them too.

Assuming I want to move say, ten or so out of the twenty video clips in that original folder and move them to a new folder completely and leave only the reamaining ten video clips in the original folder should I be using cut and paste the ten into a new folder that exists on a higher level completely outside of that BPAV folder? That way one client ends up receiving the new folder with only the ten files I moved I moved (plus support files I hope) and the other client receives only the ten video clips I left in that original folder with their corresponding suppurt files.

If I do this will both folders end up with all the support files in the proper places? In the future of course I will just remember to change cards at the appropriate time.

[Dave Sperling]

Do yourself a favor -- use clip browser to copy the appropriate shots to new, different media for each client, and leave the original media intact. Thus you still have a backup of everything in case something gets messed up. While it is possible to cut/delete clips using clip browser, the chance of messing up (operator error or otherwise) increases greatly. Remember, any data that's not fully backed up is fully at risk!

[Jim Gunn]

Thanks, Dave. That was good advice. I am going to start using the Clip Browser for copying and managing all my XDCam EX video files from now on. I backed up the original folders and files as they were to a backup drive and then copied the clips I wanted to remove to another folder entirely and the BPAV sub-folder with just those clips and their support files was created instantly. And seemingly there are no issues with deleting the original files from where they were originally.