Smart Media Bins

EDL  |  Baselight link

A smart media bin is one where the contents are automatically managed by either an EDL or a Baselight project. When selecting a smart media bin a split view shows the standard media bin view on the left and at tabbed widget containing the EDL and Baselight controls on the right.

EDL

An EDL can be dragged into the right hand section from the File Browser. The contents of the EDL are shown along with controls to define the frame rate of the EDL (if it cant be inferred from the contents EDL itself); a list of directories to search for locating the clips refereneced in the EDL; and a button to import the EDL.

As the EDL is imported, PFClean will need to locate the clips it references, which will involves replacing the named clip with the full details of where the corresponding image sequence is located on disk. The "Rules" list defines a set of directories that are searched to locate footage that is referenced in the edit. These directories are project specific and are in addition to the one defined in the "Import Edit" section of the Preferences which act on all projects.

EDLs specify clip in and out points as a timecode. To correctly interpret these the frame rate control must match that of the application from which the EDL was exported. CMX 3600 EDL is not a very well adhered to standard. Its interpretation varies greatly between applications and, furthermore, applications extend the standard in their own unique ways. The result of this is that an EDL exported from one application can look quite different to one exported another application. PFClean has been tested on EDLs generated by a range of applications but this is no guarantee that it will successfully parse an EDL generated by an untested application.

Baselight link

The PFClean/Baselight integration workflow allows footage to be graded in Baselight 4.4m1 while simultaneously being restored in PFClean. This is achieved by PFClean directly accessing a Baselight job in order for PFClean to be automatically populated with the clips contained within that job. These clips can then be cleaned up and restored in PFClean while they are simultaneously graded in Baselight. Upon completion of cleanup, PFClean updates the Baselight job to pick up the restored footage - a process which is achieved without any loss of grading data.

Setup

In order for PFClean to work with Baselight, PFClean uses the following Baselight version 4.4m1 or higher utility programs:

    bl-shots, bl-lsjobs, bl-lsscenes

One option is to have these Baselight utility programs installed and licensed on the machine running PFClean. If these are installed in their default location then no further configuration should be necessary. However, if this is not the case and PFClean cannot find these utility programs then their location can be specified by setting the following environment variables:

    BL_SHOTS_BIN, BL_LSJOBS_BIN, BL_LSSCENES_BIN

However, it is not always possible or desirable to have these Baselight utility programs installed and licensed on the machine running PFClean. A workaround for this is to create "dummy" versions of them on the machine running PFClean which remotely access a suitable machine running Baselight and execute the utility there. For example, say PFClean is running on a Linux machine and Baselight is available on a MacBook Pro. On the Linux machine create a "bl-shots" BASH script which does:

    #!/bin/bash
    ssh USER@MACHINE /Applications/Baselight/Current/Utilities/Tools/basename $0 "$@"

where USER is a username on the MacBook Pro and MACHINE is its address. Ensure that the BASH script has execute permission and is in your PATH, i.e. simply typing bl-shots in a terminal will find and execute the script (alternatively set the environment variables above to specify its location). Soft-link bl-lsjobs and bl-lsscenes to the bl-shots you created since the one script can act for all three.

Note that because of the remote execution, any references to localhost when browsing for Baselight jobs on the Linux machine will actually be referring to the MacBook Pro. As such, we suggest always using the full name of the machine you wish to browse for Baselight jobs on to avoid this ambiguity.

The tricky part of the above setup is that bl-shots must complete without prompting for a password (or any other form of input). This may or may not already be in the case depending on how the 2 machines are configured. If executing bl-shots in a terminal prompts for a password then you will need to set up SSH public and private RSA keys to allow for password-less access. In short, to achieve this you need to type on the Linux machine:

   ssh-keygen -t rsa

pressing return at each prompt to generate a pair of RSA keys. Then type on the Linux machine:

   ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub USER@MACHINE

to copy the public key onto the MacBook Pro machine. You may be prompted to confirm the copy if the identity of the remote machine cannot be established; type yes; and you will also be prompted for USER's password. After this confirm that bl-shots executes without prompting for a password.

Workflow

The PFClean/Baselight integration workflow is as follows:

1. Create a Baselight scene containing the clips you wish to work on.
2. Create a Smart bin which is linked to this Baselight scene. To achieve this:

   1. Make sure the Baselight scene is not open in Baselight.
   2. Create a PFClean project, Smart bin, and switch to the Baselight controls of the Smart bin.
   3. Specify the Baselight scene in the Scene section of the above control shown above using the Baselight syntax of "machine:job:scene". Alternatively you can use the ... button to bring up a browser for navigating to a particular Baselight scene (the default machine used in this browser can be set with the BL_BROWSER_HOST environment variable).
   4. Specify in the Container section of the above control where the Baselight container for the scene is mounted on the machine running PFClean. Alternatively you can use ... button to bring up a browser for navigating to this. This value will be used to replace the "%C" that occur in the Baselight scene.
   5. Specify in the Resolution section of the above control the resolution of the footage to use. This value will be used to replace the "%R" that occur in the Baselight scene. This value is only used as a guide - the footage whose resolution is closest to the value specified is used, or, is no value is specified, the footage with the highest resolution.
   6. Click "Create".

   If the Smart bin is successfully linked to the Baselight scene then it will be populated with the Baselight clips; this bin connected to a Workbench ready for the cleanup work to be applied; this connected to a Remaster node that mirror that seen in Baselight's timeline; and the export will be configured to write out the cleaned up versions of those clips.

   Once the linkage has been created using the steps above, the scene can be opened once more in Baselight and the clips graded.

3. Work on the clips in PFClean while simultaneously grading them in Baselight. Note that you should only grade clips in Baselight if the scene is linked to PFClean. If you make other changes to the scene in Baselight, such as timeline modifications or adding new clips, then the scene will become out of sync with the PFClean and PFClean will not be able to update the Baselight scene.
4. Once you are happy with the clips in PFClean, the Baselight scene needs updating to use these new versions. To do this:

   1. Use the PFClean "Baselight export" node in the Workflow Manager to write out new versions of the clips you have worked on. This export node is pre-configured to write out the new clips to the same directory as the originals but prefixes "pfcleanedN" to their filenames (where N is a unique integer). Note that this export location is fixed and cannot be changed.
   2. Make sure the Baselight scene is not open in Baselight.
   3. Press the "Update scene" button in the Smart bin controls to update the Baselight scene.

   If this is successful then a popup dialog stating "Replaced N clip" will appear. The scene can now be opened in Baselight and new versions of the clips should be present.

   Note that when the Baselight scene is updated, this operation appears as "PFClean update" in the Baselight history and you can undo/redo the action just like any other operation.

5. Steps 3 and 4 may be repeated as many time as necessary So, for example, you could cleanup all of the clips in PFClean and then update the Baselight scene; or alternatively you could cleanup a single clip in PFClean and update the Baselight scene and repeat this process for each clip; or yet again you could do a quick cleanup of all the clips in PFClean, update the Baselight scene, and then do a more precise cleanup in PFClean and update the Baselight scene for a second time.

   Note that depending on your workflow you may end up with multiple versions of a clip exported. These are kept since they are needed in case the update of the Baselight scene is undone. It is the users responsibility to remove unwanted versions of the exported clip as they see fit.

A PFClean project can only be linked to one Baselight scene.