Captions, Logging, and Bridge

I have discovered a plugin script for Bridge that successfully adds keywords automatically, but unfortunately it is extremely slow, which greatly limits its usability, so I have still been doing most manually. I have also been writing more captions and continuing to log footage. We had one show that opened with a piece of narration repeated in different languages, which was interesting to work with. The solution I decided on was to simply caption the dialogue as [repeated in (language)].

More Logging

We've been making a lot of progress on logging. All of the drives we started with have been finished and we're getting pretty far through the other ones. There has been a lot of old P2 footage that had to be transcoded into ProRes, so that has taken some time, but we usually run the encoding overnight or when people aren't working so it doesn't take away much time.

Adobe Bridge

This past week I have been working on copying keywords from the Excel logging files into Adobe Bridge. Bridge is a very useful program, but it has its limitations and suffers from very poor performance, especially when working with large video files. It often has bugs that necessitate restarts before certain files can be processed, and the interface for adding keywords is slow and inefficient. I have been investigating using automated scripts to apply keywords based on a CSV file, but most of the solutions that exist are for older versions of Bridge or have performance issues of their own. For now, manual entry seems to still be the best solution, as slow as it is.

Logging and Captioning

My past few days at Discovering Alabama have been spent logging more footage and captioning a few shows old shows that are going to be re-aired. The captioning process is an interesting challenge. It can be difficult to fit all of the text into short periods of time when speakers are talking quickly, and some episodes have music or background sounds that have to be captioned along with the speakers. Multiple speakers off-camera are also an issue because of the need to identify who is speaking, especially when an off-camera narrator is speaking over footage of other people who are talking.

Drive Troubleshooting

This week I worked on solving some issues with the Drobo storage system that I work from. Mac OS was reporting that the device had several hundred GB of space available, but the Drobo software claimed only a few MB. After some research and investigation, I discovered that OS X only reports the total storage space of the device and does not account for the method in which the Drobo software stripes data across disks to provide redundancy. Therefore OS X was showing as free space what the Drobo was using for backup. The issue was resolved by transferring unneeded files to other external drives to free up space on the Drobo.

Discovering Alabama Post Production

For my internship I work with the University of Alabama Center for Instructional Technology on post production for the television series Discovering Alabama. My primary responsibility is logging footage from the show's archives so that the editors can quickly and easily find material needed for new shows. This involves transferring files between multiple external hard drives and Drobo storage appliances, transcoding files, writing footage logs, and keywording clips in Adobe Bridge. In addition to logging and file management, I also write closed captions for earlier completed episodes that are returning to air. When necessary, I perform troubleshooting and maintenance on computers and drives to resolve problems and performance issues.