"Auto Edit" in edius

[EDVS2016]

Hi Gurus,

Is there a feature for example if an external party provide an IN/OUT TC editing points in a document and we can load this data into edius and it will perform an "auto edit"? If yes, how does this goes about? Hopefully i'm phasing this correctly.

Cheers.

[BernH]

No auto edit function, but it is possible to import a marker list and you can use the markers as edit points. If you have Macro Generator Pro as it is called prior to V3 (Magic Automa V3+) you could even have a macro that could auto cut at the markers but you would still probably want to manually remove segments to ensure the correct ones are removed. This process would only work if you have everything on one timeline and you are removing the unwanted parts.

Assembly from the bins is not something that is as easily done automatically unless the other person can generate an xml, aaf, or edl of an edit for you. This of course may not be easily achieved by someone not used to working in this fashion, as it would require some kind of NLE software that can generate these files. If this can be done the xml/aaf/edl will essentially be an edited timeline, and you would just need to re-link the clips to the original media, but for this to work, the other party would need some kind of low quality editorial or proxy file that ideally has the same name as the original in order to make the re-linking easy. This essentially is how extended workflows in film and video post production work.

[BernH]

You already have it yourself and don't know it.

Export a marker list from Edius as a csv. This can be edited in excel. The csv tracks the marker point and the duration of the marker which essentially is the out point, but I would suggest the other person just drop regular markers without a duration at the in and out to avoid duration calculation problems. They can leave a comment at the in point so you can know that this is the part to keep and the next marker with no comment is the out of that part.

There is a little 3 step process you need to do before it can be imported back into Edius because excel incorrectly marks text fields and edius uses a non standard csv layout, but the fixing process takes about 10 seconds. Essentially though, Edius expects to see text fields qualified by enclosing them with double quotation marks ( " ), but excel does not do this. Edius also does not want to see fields in the header information of the file but excel puts them in, so we have to qualify the text fields in excel with the double quotes, which excel for some reason then want to put 3 sets of double quotes on the fields. We then save and open the csv in notepad and do a find and replace to turn the tripple pair of double quotes excel inserted back into a single pair and then another find and replace to remove four commas that excel inserted into the header. I am attaching a zip file containing several screenshots and a couple of csv files that illustrate the process to clean the csv for import back into edius. This is a zip file because you can't directly load csv files to the forum

So to recap.
1 export csv marker list from edius
2 edit in excel
3 qualify text fields (these are the ones with the anchor status, timecodes and comments) by doing a custom format on those fields as \"@\"
4 save csv
5 open csv in notepad
6 Edit>Replace find """ replace with "
7 Edit>Replace find ,,,, replace with nothing
8 save csv
9 import the csv into the edius marker list (if markers already exist in the list, you will probably want to delete them first)

[BernH]

wondering what does the ANCHOR column do, is it necessary to be there?

The anchor column is the status of the marker on the timeline. Anchored markers will not ripple delete on the timeline, while non-anchored markers will. The column has to be in the CSV when you go to import it because it is a data field edius expects to see. It does not have to be in the working copy your client uses, as you can just copy and paste his/her timecodes into the CSV, making sure to add any extra marker numbers, anchor statuses, etc.