David Esp Video Technical Blog

XDCAM-EX Metadata in Adobe (Premiere etc.): it works a bit but in my experience I can’t say it’s easy all the way, and it seems that, in the past (2009-2011) at least, others were also finding  issues.  For example it doesn’t (as far as I can tell) display the camera settings data such as exposure.

What’s the matter with metadata?  Avid seem to have made a better go at joining it up, and I wonder if this has any connection with their policy of leaving it to the camera manufacturers to produce corresponding media-reading (“AMA”) plugins.

Web-search:

• Google:[xdcam-ex metadata adobe premiere]
  • http://forums.adobe.com/message/2104989
    •  Premiere Pro CS5, CS5.5, & CS6
    • XDCAM EX metadata?
    • Colin Brougham (2009-02-03)
      • I’ve got a shoot’s worth of XDCAM EX clips that I logged in the Sony Clip Browser software. I used the “Title 1” field in Clip Browser to give the clip a name, and then used the “Description” field to, well, add a description or log note. When I bring the clips into PPro, the “Title 1” field is interpreted correctly as the clip name, but the “Description” field doesn’t show up anywhere in the columnar metadata display. However, if I right-click a clip and select “Properties”, both the “Title 1” and “Description” field show up there. Great, but that’s not very convenient.
      • I’ve tried turning on all the possible “Description” options in the metadata display, as well as anything else that seems related–no dice. I can’t get that field to show up in the columnar display. I seem to remember having access to more fields when shooting with P2. Anyone have any ideas if it’s even possible to have the XDCAM metadata show up?
    • Stan Jones (2009-02-04)
      • I do not know about EX issues specifically. I know that in the recent discussions of PPro column headings and adobe metadata, that a column/metadata field of the same names did not mean that they were the same information. The metadata system may even be tracking the name of various fields for different programs. My point being that your approach (short of finding someone who knows!) is the right one: turn on all the columns in PPro, and finding that your EX description is not there, conclude that the EX description is not available to PPro.
    • ovrexposed (2009-02-13)
      • This is very disapointing. I logged about 100 clips with names and descriptions in clip browser. Those names will not show up in the media browser but do show up in the preview. That’s too late in the process. Adobe, the info is there, please show it in the media browser. Should be an easy patch.  Please?
  • http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/3/910235
    • Eric Barker (2011-03-15)
      • I have a news department that is shooting hours of footage a week in XDCAM EX format, and editing in Adobe Premiere CS5. I need to organize a central “news file” database for them to edit and search metadata of all their footage. But I’m running into some problems.
        – Adobe Bridge can search metadata, but cannot parse XDCAM BPAV structures
        – Premiere Media Browser can parse BPAV structures, but can’t search metadata
        – Premiere Metadata window can search metadata, but only of files loaded into Premiere
      • I just need to create a system to be able to search and edit metadata of numerous BPAV substructures and import footage into Premiere. Seems like a pretty basic request for anyone creating a footage database. Currently, I’m having to re-wrap everything to MXF first because there’s no way for me to appropriately archive XDCAM substructures.
      • …ANY information on setting up this kind of database would be highly appreciated. We’re moving gigs of footage a week, stuff that needs to be accessed easily in the future, and it’s turning to chaos.
    • Keith Moreau (2011-03-16)
      • Look into the Calibrated Software plugins for XDCAM, they read the metadata and insert relevant stuff into quicktime files. Then you can use sometime like CATDV that understands Quicktime to catalog the footage.
      • Premiere / Adobe handles XDCAM strangely, I’ve had to work around a lot of stuff to get it to work well, for example it concatenates spanned XDCAM EX files together, making it difficult to know what you’re editiing if you need to import or export it out of Premiere Pro.
      • Not sure if this is helpful but the Calibrated software for XDCAM is really excellent and the support is great.
    • Eric Barker (2011-03-17)
      •  Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that Premiere is playing nice with the MOV format that MP4-EX (with CatDV) converts to. It would play fine in QuickTime, but PPro wouldn’t recognize any of the audio tracks. I was so hoping this solution would work out. Back to the drawing board.
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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 28th, 2013 at 17:53 and is filed under Adobe, After Effects, metadata, Prelude, Premiere, XDCAM EX. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.