All The Cool Kids Are Doing It
If ever there were an argument for creative individuals to learn how to program this is it. I've made this argument in numerous arenas before. At many points in working in creative endeavours I've found a need for a tool that either doesn't exist or is going to cost me money. They're not always essentials but anything that saves me time and gets me working on the task at hand is beneficial.
I've written lightly complex programs when the need existed. Typically, the programs that save me are the tiny scripts that turn repetitive tasks in non-issues. Recently I've been going through and logging some footage. I generally shoot all my own material so I have a pretty good idea of what I'm looking at before editing. I also don't go this long without putting some eyes on what I've got. I really needed something to help me logging all this footage for later organization as I start cutting everything together.
I looked through a couple of applications that I use regularly but nothing was jumping out at me. All I needed for the task was to be able to have a simple text file with the following: the name of the video file, the scene, shot, and take number, and performance, focus, technical, and general notes. That's it. Use some tabbing to get a little bit of form to it so it's easy on the eyes. Cake.
I needed 160 of these in a text file. I could just do it once and then do the copy paste cycle. Seven cycles of highlight, copy, deselect highlight, paste and I'd have 128. Next step is either 256 if I keep the pattern going or 192 if I just hit that paste key combo after the last copy. That's not too much work to get there but it still has faults.
It doesn't account for the number in each video file incrementing; video_file_001.m2t, video_file_002.m2t, etc. I have to fix that manually after the fact. I don't have the proper amount of any entries through any quick combination of copy / paste either. It's also just repetitive and boring work. There's no reason to do this when a simple script can do it quickly and better.
Here's the Ruby script I used.
text = <<EOF
scene:
shot:
take:
performance:
focus:
technical:
notes:
EOF
output_file = File.open('shot_log.txt', 'w')
1.upto(160) { |y|
output_file.puts "video_catpure_%03d.m2t" % y
output_file.puts text
}
output_file.close
It's simple, elegant, and took slightly more time than it would have taken just to write out my first block that I would have been copy pasting. It addresses the auto increment of the video file names while creating a file for me to work from. The monotonous work is out of the way. I can use this skeleton document to start taking notes while I sift through my footage.
Another benefit, one not always immediately obvious, is reusability. This script, as is, isn't very configurable but it's simple and can be updated in the future if I find this method of shot logging to be useful. I don't need to write a whole new text block and copy / paste out a new document. Instead, I change a few pieces of information and run the script again. I now have a new and fully customized document to work from for the next project.