« Lockit Buddy enables SMPTE LTC on DSLRs
A user’s first thoughts on the Panasonic AF100 »

Words of Warning about Canon’s FCP Log & Transfer Plugin

4 Comments Published by Matthew Jeppsen February 1st, 2011 in Formats, News, NLE, Plugins, Post-Production, Troubleshooting

Over at Creative Cow there is a warning blog post about using Canon’s EOS Log & Transfer plugin in cases where the project will be moved between machines…apparently this can result in a major relinking issue. You should probably read this.

“Basically, the log and transfer plug in will not restore a project if the file path has changed from the point of the original log and transfer.”

“No amount of adding the volumes, searching for media or anything will allow the L&T plug in to recognize the media if it has moved. Only the original file path will allow to restore a connection to the original Canon media. For those of you who work on one hard drive and one computer all the time, then you have nothing to fear, carry on. But for those us who work on multiple machines/hard drives, multiple locations and generally move things around, please read forward…”

An unrelated issue that I have personally run into recently, and know at least 2 others who have also experienced this, is when the EOS Log & Transfer plugin fails to transcode entire clips. A 2:00 clip for instance might only transcode 1:57. If I catch the issue and re-log the clip, maybe it will transcode all of the clip, or maybe it won’t. There’s a randomness to the issue that I haven’t been able to put my finger on, and after being screwed by this a couple times, I’ve decided it’s not worth trusting the EOS L&T plugin for now. My current workflow is to use MPEG Streamclip for most transcode tasks, and occasionally 5DtoRGB or Compressor.

4 Responses to “Words of Warning about Canon’s FCP Log & Transfer Plugin”  

Feed for this Entry
  1. 1 Rebelphoton Feb 1st, 2011 at 10:04 am

    My workflow with most cameras involves checksumming and then creating an image(.dmg o .iso for crossplatform compatibility) of the original cards before ingesting into my NLE.
    This is particularly solves this and many other media management problems because mounting the image places the footage on the generic path /Volumes/Name_of_Card/ regardless of where I move the image file.

    Of course this has pros and cons also, making it harder to delete unnecesary footage (not a great deal for most projects, where you want to backup everything) and maybe not suited to projects where speed is a priority (where it’s usually more practical to use premiere anyway).

  2. 2 Trim Forward Feb 1st, 2011 at 2:00 pm

    Regarding the plug-in not transcoding the entire clips: I’ve had this same experience with the RED log and transfer plugin for FCP. It’s not random though… if you leave the computer alone, it will do everything properly. If you start messing around, especially in FCP (ie. organizing into bins) while it’s working, it will give you these partial transcodes, without telling you.

    One of the most harmful bugs ever in FCP in my opinion, as there is no indication that it’s happening until your client asks you where the rest of the interview is.

    I still use the RED log and transfer but run it overnight and don’t touch anything on the computer. I use MPEG streamclip for 5D/7D/t2i footage, which runs nicely in the background and is pretty bombproof.

  3. 3 RobShaver Feb 1st, 2011 at 3:17 pm

    This workflow, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHKTl7U-SBo&feature=BF&list=ULfzUvGMEqVMk&index=5

    creates a mountable image for each media cartage (CF or SD)so I think it may solve this issue, at least for OS-X. The “drive” name would be the same and the path within it would be identical.

    I think this is the same workflow Rebelphoton is talking about.

  4. 4 Benjamin Rowland Feb 2nd, 2011 at 9:06 am

    I used Compressor on a MASSIVE multi-camera shoot (all the cameras were Canon DSLRs). I converted everything to ProRes. It was edited on multiple systems, drives, physical locations, two different FCP versions, etc. – no problems with this workflow at all.