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 their own templates for such lists. However, the columns are almost always the same. There are also many different names for this type of list: Stock Footage List, Stop Lists, Stock Tracker, Archive Shots Tracker, Foreign Material Lists, Clearance Tracker, Collection of Material, and many more. Here are some presets and examples you can use:

2. Prepare the editorial timeline

The best way to create this list is to export the film as Final Cut 7 XML or EDL. Duplicate the sequence and remove all unnecessary tracks. The EDL does not need any audio clips, and with a well-organized timeline, the archive and stock footage should already be separated from the rest of the edit, making it easier to export an EDL.

What file formats can I upload?

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

3. Upload the sequence file

Automatic file type detection

Shots will be categorized in video and image. It will also tag files that contain the words "screencapture," "screenrecording," and "capture" in the filename.

Automatic stock footage detection

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

Sum duration of identical clips

When this option is enabled, clips that have been cut several times during 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 thumbnails

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 ways to do this:

• Extract images from a video using our image extraction tool.
• Use our Marker Converter to generate a script (with ffmpeg) you can run locally. To do this: Open the Marker Converter and select "Convert clips from EDL to markers (.edl)" and select "ffmpeg Shell Script: Markers to Stills (.sh)". Then download and run the script.