User Manual

Table Of Contents
After you’ve changed a clip’s clip name, that clip appears in the following places using the clip
name instead of the original file name:
The Media Pool’s Thumbnail view
The name bar of each clip in the Timeline
The Source Viewer title bar
The Clip Name field of the Clip Attributes dialog’s Name panel
Switching Between File Names and Clip Names
Since different tasks require different information, you have the ability to switch between using
clip file names and clip names. For example, finishing editors will probably have more reason to
refer to the file name of each clip, making it easier to troubleshoot problems with reconforming
and relinking. Creative editors, on the other hand, will want to use easier-to-read clip names to
make it easier to find what they need.
To switch between file names and clip names:
Choose View > Show File Names to toggle between both naming conventions.
Using Metadata to Define Clip Names
If you’re an enthusiastic user of clip metadata (and you should be), you can use “metadata
variables” that you can add into a field that let you reference other metadata for that clip. For
example, you could add the combination of variables and text seen in the following screenshot
to define a clip name automatically. Variables, once they’ve been entered, are represented as
graphical tags shown with a background, while regular text characters that you enter appear
before and after these tags.
Variables and text characters entered to create a clip name based on a clip’s metadata
As a result, that clip would display “12_A_3” as its name if scene “12,” shot “A,” and take “3
were its metadata. When you do this, you can freely mix metadata variables with other
characters (the underscore, as in the example above) to help format the metadata to make it
even more readable.
Every single item of metadata that’s available in the Metadata Editor can be used as a variable,
and several other clip and timeline properties such as the version name of a clip’s grade, a clip’s
EDL event number, and that clip’s timeline index number can be also referenced via variables.
Since the use of metadata variables is a great way to automatically generate names for multiple
clips, you may find it more useful to add metadata variable-driven clip names by selecting all of
the clips you want to edit, and opening the Clip Attributes window. By editing the Clip Name
field found in the Name panel, you can add a single clip name to all selected clips at once.
Chapter – 12 Using Clip Metadata 335