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Editorial File Format Notes

Joshua Minor edited this page Sep 2, 2022 · 2 revisions

This page gathers notes about how various file formats may be used outside of their documented specifications to represent various types of data. The sections are divided by data type.

Image Sequences

AAF

In Resolve, AAF image sequences use a NetworkLocator where the frame number in the URL is represented using a format string like: f"[{first_frame:05d}-{last_frame:05d}]"

An example of such a URL would be: file:///C:/show_storage/seq/seq010/seq010_v000_01_[00000-000048].exr

Note that the actual zero padding used in the file names doesn't matter, Resolve always seems to want the 5-digit version.

In Premiere, the URL to the first frame in the image sequence is used.

More context can be found in this slack thread

See also:Working with OpenTimelineIO and AAF

Marker Color

CMX EDL

Marker colors are simply string values stored in the event text.

FCP 7 XML

Final Cut Pro 7 stored 0-255 RGBA values in an XML structure like:

<color>
    <alpha>0</alpha>
    <red>255</red>
    <green>127</green>
    <blue>0</blue>
</color>

When viewed in the interface, marker colors could not be arbitrarily chosen - there was limited set of named colors to select from. These map out to:

Name RGB Value (Alpha is always stored 0)
Red (255, 0, 0)
Orange (255, 127, 0)
Yellow (255, 255, 0)
Green (48, 191, 72)
Turquoise (48, 191, 191)
Blue (0, 128, 255)
Purple (127, 0, 255)
Pink (255, 0, 127)

Premiere Pro

PremierePro stores color in it's own integer value:

<pproColor>4281740498</pproColor>

This is the integer value of the ABGR hex values concatenated. The Hex version of the above example is 0xFF2C36D2, which is the first color in the chart below.

The Premiere Pro interface doesn't name the colors, it just provides color swatches with hex values for the following:

Alpha Blue Green Red
FF 2C 36 D2
FF 86 37 71
FF 8B B1 AF
FF 24 6F E9
FF 2B A1 D0
FF FF FF FF
FF FC 8D 42
FF B1 8B AF
FF D6 F4 19