Download pdf - SET ARRI Alexa - Pomfort · overview of your production's source clips. Silverstack SET lets you transfer all relevant information such as camera metadata, comments, captions, cue

Getting Started with

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Silverstack SET ARRI Alexa

Get to know Silverstack SET Edition and learn how to backup, organize and playback movie clips and prepare movie data for post-production steps.

Document Version 6

What you needOur software Silverstack SET requires a Mac OS X 10.6 or higher operating system. Since we are using the latest of Mac OS X technologies, we are not planning to support earlier versions of Mac OS X, neither will we port Silverstack to another operating systems in the near future.So to run Silverstack you need an Intel Mac with Mac OS X 10.6 or higher (such as any current Mac available in the MacStore).If your MacBook Pro is equipped with an ExpressCard/34-, CompactFlash- or SD card-slot, you can directly offload clips from any SxS, CompactFlash or SD card as they are used by following cameras: ARRI Alexa (SxS), RED and AJA Ki Pro (CompactFlash), Canon EOS C300, Canon EOS DSLRs , Nikon DSLRs and GoPro (SD Card). Otherwise you need a suitable card reader.

Supported formats by Silverstack SET:

ProRes Quicktime files from the ARRI Alexa, AJA Ki Pro and Atomos Ninja & SamuraiRED R3DH.264 MOVCanon C300 MXFMPEG-4 AVC/ AVC-IntraTM Note:For a realtime playback of your offloaded video files the usage of a fast hard drive as a SSD card is recommended.

If you have further question about supported hardware please let us know. If you would like to know more about data performance. You might be interested in this article for improving your performance.

http://kb.pomfort.com/?p=1596




Create secure backups, organize and play back your movie clips

The Silverstack SET clip management and backup process

Silverstack SET offers secure and reliable data backup of movie files directly on the film set. The source media coming from the camera is your most valuable asset in the movie production process, so it is crucial to have a managed and secure backup and perform quality check and movie data preparation for post-production as soon as possible after shooting.

Silverstack SET is your digital library. It allows you to organize, search and filter your media, clips and metadata. Silverstack extracts and stores all metadata embedded in clips such as timecodes, color information, etc. and makes them available for offline use.

Silverstack SET allows you to perform multiple, verified copies at once. It remembers all copy and backup activities, so that you have a complete overview of your production's source clips.

Silverstack SET lets you transfer all relevant information such as camera metadata, comments, captions, cue points and markers and scene/shot and take names to Final Cut Pro and REDCINE-X. Thus all your annotations and quality check information find their way into your existing post-production workflow.

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The Silverstack SET interfaceUser Interface Overview

1 Video Preview

2 Library Panel

3 Info Display: it provides the most important information of the selected clip and cannot be edited.

4 Switch between Library panel, Information panel and Alexa Looks. The Alexa Looks tab is only available if you have purchased the respective Add On.

5 Switch view modes: summary view, table view, collection view, playback view

Pomfort Silverstack SET Edition – Getting Started, v6

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Table view (figure 2 #1): useful for sorting and grouping clips by certain criteria. It is also a great way to get an overview of the various metadata of a set of clips. Some of the fields are editable and you can jump from field to field by pressing the TAB key.

Collection view (figure 2 #2): it gives you a visual overview over the clips in your library.

6 Action wizards: Offload, Transfer, Export, Copy, Add

7 Switch between Browsing and Grading view.

Browse: an ordinary browsing viewGrade: the view for grading your clips. It provides you a coloring panel at the bottom of the Silverstack SET window.These options are only available with the Alexa Looks-Add On.

8 Visual Control Functionalities

figure 3: visual controls in Silverstack SET

With the functionalities provided within the “Visual Controls” panel(figure 3) you can check the colors and quality of your video clip:

Channels: By selecting one of the three RGB-channels (figure 3 #1) Silverstack SET shows the distribution of this color in the image of the video clip.

Focus Assist: The focus assist helps you to detect if your image is in focus by detecting the edges of the image. You can set the sensitivity.Clipping: With the clipping functionality (figure 3 #3) you can check which areas of your image clip either in the whites or blacks.Exposure Range: This option (figure 3#4) allows you to detect different ranged areas of luminance in your image.False Color: You can use this option (figure 3 #5) and active false colorNote: You can change the unit for clipping and range in the application preferences.

9 Silverstack SET’s search field

10 Video Preview playback controls


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The Silverstack SET playback controls allow you to control the video preview with standard video controls (figure 4 #1) and the possibility to set IN- and OUT-points (#2) as well as to loop the video and zoom into it (#3).

figure 4: playback controls for any ALEXA and most of other video files.

figure 5: playback controls for any Red video file

For video files in the Red format you have additional functionality to change the playback resolution (figure 5 #1): You can select various resolutions, choosing between full, 1/2, 1/4 and 1/8.

Collection View – Icon explanationsfigure 6: Videoclip icon

1 Indicates the number of connected storage devices concerning this clip’s storage locations.

2 The number of this clip’s file storage locations.

3 The number of duplicates of this clip in the respective bin/ camera roll.

4 Indicates that this clip is marked with a flag and can be searched and filtered for this criterion.

5 This icon tells you that this is the source version of the clip.If there is a little color circle in the place of the yellow cube it indicates that this version has been color graded.

6 The color shows the chosen label if there is a label set.


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Import and backup media with SilverstackBacking up movie data from one or several camera or field recorder devices requires the following steps:

1. Open Silverstack SET.

2. Attach the camera storage cards or drives to your computer.

3. Click on the “Offload” button in the activity bar at the bottom left of the Silverstack SET window and choose the attached camera device.

4. Select the files you want to copy / backup.Choose the destination folders where the multiple copies should be transferred to.

5. To start the copy, click on the “Backup clips” button. In case you want to register your clips in the Silverstack SET library without copying them onto any device, simply mark the “Skip” button in the lower left corner of the offloading wizard.Now the copy process should start and can be reviewed in the “Jobs” panel. Colored badges (figure 1 #1) indicate the progress of the copies.

figure 1: “Jobs” panel and information about copying progress

Don’t quit the application during the copy process, as this will execute and kill the copy task.In addition to importing clips from camera devices, you also can import clips from internal or external hard drives and other storage media as well as attached network drives. Make sure that these files were created with one of the supported cameras or field records. Other files – even if they exhibit the correct file format – may not be recognized!


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Transfering Metadata to Final Cut Pro XFor the transfer of metadata via Final Cut Pro XML files (.fcpxml) the clip metadata is mapped accordingly and depending on the user-defined options as you can see in figure 1.

figure 1: “Transfer”-wizard for Final Cut Pro X

Content (figure 1 #1)

• Scene, shot and take name can be added to the name of the clip in Final Cut Pro X

• Various color information can also be transmitted. Properties as camera index, whitepoint, colorspace, lookname, ASA and label from Silverstack SET are mapped to keywords in Final Cut Pro X

• Single-frame cue points from Silverstack SET are mapped to markers in Final Cut Pro X

• Multi-frame cue points from Silverstack SET are mapped to a clip range marked with a keyword in Final Cut Pro X

• Clips marked as flagged in Silverstack SET are marked entirely as favorite in Final Cut Pro X.

• Clips with rating “★” (one star) in Silverstack SET are marked as rejected in Final Cut Pro X.


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Color Processing (figure 1 #2-4)By transferring your clips to Final Cut Pro X you can apply different color plugins in this step:

• for Cinestyle clips: DSLR Log2Video Plugin (#2)• for SLog clips: SLog2Video Plugin (#3)• for clips in LogC: apply Alexa log or looks (#4)

Import options (figure 1 #5)You can either immediately open the selected clips in Final Cut Pro X or save them first as Final Cut Pro XML files.

figure 2: From Silverstack SET transferred video clip in Final Cut Pro X


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Manage your project

After you have successfully offloaded and registered your clip files in the Silverstack SET library you can begin to edit, manage and organize your video material. Let’s start with some core managing tasks:

1. Select a project, folder or bin in the “Library” panel located at the left side of the Silverstack SET window. The small number behind the elements in the project tree indicates how many clips are contained within them.

2. Choose between four different view modes. You find them at the upper row of the Silverstack SET window. For the best overview choose either the table or collection view.

3. Sorting clips:

• Sort the clips you currently see by different variables as shooting date, rating, duration, clip name and more. You can find this function beneath the view modes when you have selected the collection view.

• In the table view you can sort clips according to any of their attributes. Therefore just click in the top of the column with the relevant criteria. By right-clicking into the upmost row you can select which attributes you want to see in the table view.

4. By double-clicking on a clip the view changes to the player mode and you can preview the selected clip.

Tip: To filter clips for certain clip metadata, use Silverstack SET’s smart folders which you find in the library tree beneath the camera rolls. Add smart folders yourself by right-clicking into the library panel and selecting “New Smart Folder..”.

5. There you can set the attributes for which this smart folder shall search the library.


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Versions, Clips and File Resources

Silverstack SET is aimed to treat your videoclips with high caution, which means it ensures that no original data will be subject to any changes. Therefore it has its own workflow of handling once offloaded videoclips.

Figure 1: Silverstack’s system of working with clips and versions and file resources

Version

The main element of the Silverstack SET library is the videoclip version. A version is linked to a clip and might add information to it without affecting the original clip though. For example a clip might have several versions that have different grades.

Silverstack SET creates two versions for all the clips you have offloaded from your camera. An “original” version that is stored in the camera roll and another in a newly created bin (or the bin that has been selected for offload).

Clip

Everything that seems to be a clip in Silverstack SET is in fact a version referencing the given clip and therefore just a virtual object. With that implementation Silverstack allows you to work in a non-destructive workflow so you can create and organize several graded versions of one clip, without altering its original version.

File Resource

File resources are representations of a clip on disk. For every destination of each clip a file resource is created that stores the location path. This enables Silverstack SET to show the current usage of disks for a given clip.

For getting a better insight in Silverstack SET’s library structure, proceed to the online article Library Structure.


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http://kb.pomfort.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/LibStructure_transparent.png

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Keyboard Overview

In the following section you find a glossary including all shortcuts provided by Silverstack SET. Please be aware that not all of these shortcuts are available in each of the different functional areas within Silverstack SET. So it may happen that a shortcut won’t work in a certain situation. For example if you don't have a clip selection then you cannot use the Rate selection keyboard short cut.

If you want to customize certain shortcuts for your individual usage, go to the following online article for instructions.

For the usage of those shortcuts you have to press the keys for this shortcut altogether at one time!

General

⌘, Preferences...⌃⇧⌘C Convert Text from Simplified to Traditional Chinese⌃⌘ C Convert Text from Traditional to Simplified Chinese⇧⌘ Y Make New Sticky Note⇧⌘ L Search With Google⌘ H Hide Silverstack SET⌥⌘ H Hide Others⌘ Q Quit Silverstack SET⌥⌘ Q Quit and Keep Windows

View

⌘ 1 Library⌘ 2 Clip Info⌘ 3 User Info⌘ 4 File Info⌘ 5 Header Info⌘ 6 Alexa Looks⌃⌘ 1 Summary⌃⌘ 2 Table⌃⌘ 3 Collection⌃⌘ 4 Playback⇧⌘ V Global Volumes⇧⌘ F Full Screen⌘ 0 100%⌥⌘ F Fit To Screen


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Window

⌘ W Close⌥⌘ W Close All⌘ M Minimize⌥⌘ M Minimize All

Library

⌘ N New Bin...⇧⌘ N New Folder...⌥⌘ N New Project...⌘ O Add Clips...⌥⌘ I MovieSlate (XML)...⌘ B Copy To Disk...⌘ P Print Report...⌘ Delete Unregister...

Edit

⌘ Z Undo⇧⌘ Z Redo⌘ C Copy⌘ V Paste⌘ A Select All⌥⌘ T Special Characters...⌃ F Unflag⇧⌘ A Rating⇧⌘ S Comment⇧⌘ D Label⇧⌘ T Scene/Take/Shot⇧⌘ = Increase rating⌘ - Decrease rating⌃ 0 Clear⌃ 1 1⌃ 2 2⌃ 3 3⌃ 4 4⌃ 5 5⌥⌘ + Increase label⌥⌘ - Decrease label⌥⌘ 0 No Label⌥⌘ 1 Best Take⌥⌘ 2 Average Take


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⌥⌘ 3 Moderate Take⌥⌘ 4 B Roll⌥⌘ 5 Alternate Shots⌥⌘ 6 Interviews⌥⌘ 7 Pomfortionös⇧⌘ C Add cue pointC Add cue point and continue⌥ C Close cue pointI Set in pointO Set out point⇧⌘ U Mark as Unread⌥F1 Copy to Look Slot 1⌥F2 Copy to Look Slot 2⌥F3 Copy to Look Slot 3⌥F4 Copy to Look Slot 4⌘ G Apply Look to Current Version⌥⌘ G Apply Look to Selected Version⇧⌘ G Apply Look to All Versions in Bin⌘ F1 Paste from Look Slot 1⌘ F2 Paste from Look Slot 2⌘ F3 Paste from Look Slot 3⌘ F4 Paste from Look Slot 4

Playback

⌥⌘P Open in Quicktime PlayerSpace Toggle Playback→ Step Forward← Step Backward⌘ → Jump To Next Clip⌘ ↑ Jump To Clip Middle⌘ ← Jump To Previous Clip⌥⌘ C Next cue point⇧⌘ J Jump to Timecode...


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For more please check out our knowledge base.

Resources[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SxS

CopyrightsPomfort GmbH © 2013


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POMFORT fnpomfort.com/silverstack© 2013 Pomfort GmbH

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SxS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SxS