Step by step

This tool will help you generate a stock & archive clip document with the necessary details out of the editing timeline. It is necessary for film productions and platforms to track and license video clips. In the following 5 steps, we will try to generate this kind of document.

1. Presets & Examples

This list can take many different forms. Video-on-demand services and tv stations often have individual templates for such lists. However, the columns are almost always the same. There are also many different names for these kind of lists: Stock Footage List, Stop Lists, Stock Tracker, Archive Shots Tracker, Foreign Material Lists, Clearance Tracker, Collection of Material, an many more. We provide you some presets and examples here, which you can use:

2. Prepare the editorial timeline

To be able to create this list as best as possible, we recommend exporting the film as Final Cut 7 XML or as EDL. In the NLE, the editing software you use, it is best to duplicate the sequence and remove all unnecessary tracks. The EDL does not need any audio clips and with a well sorted timeline the archives and stock clips should already be separated from the rest of the cut and thus simplify the export.

Here are some example files:

• EDL with Stock Videos

What file formats can I upload?

• EDL - Edit Decision List (.edl)
• XML - Extensible Markup Language (.xml)
• FCPXML - Final Cut Pro XML (.fcpxml) [Experimental]

3. Upload the sequence file

Automatic file type detection

Shots will be categorized in filetype for videos and images. It will also tagg files with the containing words "screencapture", "screenrecording" and "capture".

Automatic stock clip detection

The tool will automaticly detect and sort shots from the some stock libraries. The following platforms will be detected using their naming convention: dissolve, getty, gettyimages, istock, pond5, shutterstock, stock, videoblocks, videohive, vimeo, youtube

Sum Durations of identical clips

If this option is activated, clips that have been cut several times in the course of the movie are combined and displayed as one entry.

What file formats can I convert to?

• CSV - Comma-separated values (.csv)
• PDF - Portable Document Format (.pdf)
• XLSX - Excel Spreadsheet XML (.xlsx)
• XLS - Excel Spreadsheet (.xls)
• ODS - OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods)

4. Add more data and preview images

For a better overview the tracker document should be provided with thumbnails or preview screenshots. This step can be partially automated and it is not necessary to capture each frame manually. There are several options for this:

With our Marker Converter you can convert the EDL into a script for ffmpeg and create all needed stills.
1. Open the Marker Converter and choose "Convert clips from EDL into markers (.edl)" and choose "ffmpeh Shell Script: Marker to stills (.sh)".
2. Download the script and run it.