Screwed up my BPAV folders on a HUGE project -- now what?
 

To cut a long story short, we went and shot 500 gigs worth of stuff on the EX1, and screwed up the BPAV folders during transfer.

When we copied the video files to the hard drive, we used only the OS, and not any kind of clip transfer program.

I looked into the cards and saw the "BPAV" folders and, within them, the CLPR and TAKR folders. I copied the CLPR and TAKR folders, leaving the empty BPAV "shells" behind.

Whoops! I had no idea this was going to cause trouble. When I watch the video files in VLC Media Player, they play fine, except that they give an error message at the beginning: "VLC can't recognize the input's format." Despite this error message the video plays and sounds perfectly fine.

Final Cut will not accept these files whatsoever, not even after I've installed the XDCAM Transfer plugin. I downloaded the XDCam Brower program for OSX and this program can't "see" the mp4 files on the hard drive at all!

So how can I get these video files into usable shape for Final Cut?

To make this even more frustrating, I tried loading these BPAV-less mp4 files into iMovie and they worked fine after an in-program conversion! iMovie will accept them, but Final Cut and XDCam Browser won't!

I would appreciate any and all help.

R Gould

Do you have access to an old BPAV folder? Maybe you can rebuild the file structure. Put the folders back in the BPAV folder. Only try on copies of copies of course.

I do not have access to any old BPAV folders. What I copied out of them was everything _within_ the BPAV folders, simply leaving the folders named "BPAV" behind.

Can I simply create a new folder called "BPAV" and dump the stuff inside?

Yes Robert, if you copied everything inside the BPAV folder. Just making a new BPAV folder and putting that inside another folder named anything you like. One for each old BPAV folder.

You should be able to point XDcam transfer at the outer folder and rewrap all the files into .movs that FCP can work with.

I hope this works for you.

Yes, if the enclosing folder is named BPAV inside another folder of your other name FCP and other stuff that needs to see the BPAV folder will work.

/whatever name you want/BPAV/CLPR/ etc

let us know if this works for you.

Somebody provided me a BPAV of a remote shoot, and to cut a long story short, the structure didn't make the translation, and trying to download individual elements was becoming a nightmare.

What fixed it was this: Calibrated{Q} MXF Import for OSX

Which I've kept installed ever since (which has been very useful), and recommended to colleagues (who also found all sorts of benefits from it).

I worked out that the time taken to patiently download all the bits, reconstruct the folder structure, and fiddle about - it all worked out much more expensive than just buying this software. And since then it has not only saved bacon, it has also enabled really fast turnarounds on certain types of edit - for example, shoot EX1 direct to hard disk, edit from hard disk onto work drive. No log & transfer, no XDCAM Clip Browser.

HTH.

I use the Mac OS to copy the BPAV folder into individual folders structured to suit the project: Project name, date, card sequence, etc.

It's always worked, and I have terabytes of material accumulated.

The OS error checks during the duplication process. It has to. If not, you'd find all sorts of problems with your computer. From scrambled photos and text files to programs that won't run.

And the ultimate moral of the story: Always test your workflow before committing it to any job.

If you use clip browser to manage your files then this sort of mess should not occur as clip browser will always ensure the file structure is correct.