MovieSlate report from a user

[Jim Feeley]

According to the TCB website, the master supports both ad-hoc and infrastructure modes. More info at the website.

[larry long]

I started using this app this year on a recommendation from Whit Norris and I love it! Great app! No more looking for my pen, coffee stains,blowing down the street,lost by PA etc...

[bassmagnetic]

Bought Movieslate and was trying to use it like this....

TC from my Nomad into an iphone then WIFI link between that and an Ipad.....

TC into iphone (or ipad for that matter) works fine, however when the iphone is set to transmit TC over WIFI the timecode freaks out and starts jumping, going backward and forward.... (same thing happens if I try it the otherway around e.g. TC into ipad)

Anyone using this type of setup with it working correctly (an accurately for that matter)?

Was hoping for this to work maybe with the possiblitity of running out of a bag with one of these little usb powered numbers : http://www.tp-link.com/en/products/details/?categoryid=241&model=TL-WR702N

I'm sure the range wouldn't be great but it would be a cheap handy wireless slate on docs

[Hollandaudio]

Just used Movie Slate on my job this past week. I'm working over the shoulde, booming and wiring every once in a while. Dealing with a lot of Special EFX shots and the slates look like alphabet soup. On my pre printed sound reports, the carbons would have been pretty messy BUT with MovieSlate they look neat and perfect. I just type in the slate numbers and two or three camera rolls and viola. . .clean report files. Before the pureblend software, I would do a few takes, mentally remember notes, then run back to my cart, and scribble into my report. NOW, I just use remote audio cable from my BDS to my IPOD Touch, swipe up/down, and occasionally use a snippet. Prior to filming I sent the lab a report in the HTML and PDF (I bought an app to print PDF) and they were fine reading it.

During filming I ran into some confusing things in the settings, I emailed the report to Eric Goodwin at pureblend, and Eric promptly sent me responses well before the film break or wrap. Wonderful support that makes the software worth the price.

[ProSound]

Eric has been great and I love movie slate on my iPad and Ipod touch.

[Ludovic Lasserre]

Are there any UK users of movieslate?

In the UK, we do not use the same slating convention as in the US with Scene/Take number, the scene number being followed by a different letter for each different shot. We use slate/take numbers, the slate being an actual number (no letters) that starts at 1 at the beginning of the shoot and increments with each new shot until the end of photography, independently of the scene number (which gives opportunity for some thrilling final slate guessing sweepstakes, btw, but that's clearly OT).

If anyone uses movieslate in the UK, i'd be curious to know how you go past this limitation.

I guess if all the vertical labels are customisable (can anyone confirm whether this is the case?), you could turn the original 'scene' label into a 'slate' label and the original 'slate' (or 'seg#') label into a 'scene' label. Providing that the auto incrementation wouldn't be messed up, but from what I've read so far this should be possible. The new 'scene' number would never have to be auto-incremented, just entered manually for information purpose, the new 'slate' number would only have to be incremented numerically when you tell it so, and the take number would only be incremented automatically at the end of each take.

The scene/take file naming convention could still be used, except in this case it would be the actual slate & take numbers (but the slate would be in what movieslate originally meant as the 'scene' box).

The other advantage is that in the sound report, you could have the slate column and the take column next to each other, which I'd prefer, since we identify shots by slate & take #.

I've been wanting to go paperless with my sound reports for ages, and it seems like movieslate really is a fantastic tool for this, but I just want to make sure it is viable for mixers in the uk market (I've not bought an ipad yet, as well, which is an even bigger reason to be sure this would work as I'd like it to!).

Thanks chaps!

[rich]

Hi Ludovic

im a UK user of movie slate - just jumped from sound report writer.

it took me a load of monkeying about with the settings to get it to work how i like, but im pretty much there.

if i recall, i swapped the scene and slate fields on the slate and turned off the increment scene option in the slate behaviour settings, as well as increment file name. i also stopped adding SL at the start of the file names as movie slate seemed to forget that when i moved on to the next slate. you can then either swipe the slate number to increase it or press on it to bring up the menu.

there were a few other options i had to tweak to get it to display the sound report correctly too. but i t can work very well for UK style slating.

[MovieSlate]

Are there any UK users of movieslate?

Yes, our friends at Timecode Systems in the UK (makers of Timecode Buddy) tell us that MovieSlate is widely used there.

In the UK, we do not use the same slating convention as in the US with Scene/Take number, the scene number being followed by a different letter for each different shot. We use slate/take numbers, the slate being an actual number (no letters) that starts at 1 at the beginning of the shoot and increments with each new shot until the end of photography, independently of the scene number (which gives opportunity for some thrilling final slate guessing sweepstakes, btw, but that's clearly OT).

Understood. You can easily configure MovieSlate to work in the UK style.

First, go to MovieSlate’s Settings > Slate Behavior > Clapper Behavior > When Shots End - and checkmark the "Increment Slate Number" and "Increment Take Number".

Next, go to MovieSlate’s Settings > Field Input Styles > Slate - and set the SLATE to "Keypad (123)" and TAKE to "Keypad (123)".

I guess if all the vertical labels are customisable (can anyone confirm whether this is the case?)

Yes, the labels are indeed customizable. From the Sound Dept or MovieSlate screens, you can just tap on any label and change its text. Or you can manage all your labels from MovieSlate’s Settings > Data Labels screen.

you could turn the original 'scene' label into a 'slate' label and the original 'slate' (or 'seg#') label into a 'scene' label.

Indeed.

Providing that the auto incrementation wouldn't be messed up

You can set all the auto-incrementing fields from MovieSlate’s Settings > Slate Behavior > Clapper Behavior > When Shots End. As Rich pointed out, you can also increment many numeric fields by swiping your finger up/down on the field. And of course you can always just tap the field and enter a new value.

The other advantage is that in the sound report, you could have the slate column and the take column next to each other, which I'd prefer, since we identify shots by slate & take #.

[Ludovic Lasserre]

Hi chaps

So I've finally bought movieslate today and experimenting around with it. Trying to make it work with UK style slating, as discussed above. So far all seems to work as I want it to except for a few minor details which I'm gradually getting sorted.

One glitch that seems to remain is this:

I've chosen the scene/take method for file naming on my main recorder (only 1 recorder, btw). I've actually renamed the 'scene' box to 'slate', as discussed above, but this shouldn't have an impact on the problem.

When I roll (or log a shot without rolling TC in data-only mode) on take 01 of any given slate and then cut, the take# part of the file name increments directly to T03. Then on subsequent takes, it only increments by 1, as it should. but whatever I do, movieslate does not seem to want a file to be called xxxT02. It should be noted that the take number in the actual take box does increment normally, therefore from take 2 onwards the 'take number' box and the 'take number' part of the file name remain 1 appart.

It should also be noted that if I manually tell the app to call the next take xxxT02, it will do it but then jump directly to xxxT04 for the next one!

I just don't get it...

At the end of the day it's a bit problematic as the file names on the sound report end up being wrong except for the first take of every slate. I guess worst case scenario I could always stop logging file names anyways, and therefore not have these on the sound report. If the file names are the slate/take number it's pretty self-explanatory anyways, really. But I'd quite like to sort this out if poss.

Other thing: is it possible to email (or save) the sound reports directly as pdf files, without going through the html hassle? Sure, I can go through the whole print preview business in order to save it as a pdf, but it appears to be incredibly slow in Safari (no idea why it does that) or incomplete in Chrome. Would be a hell of a lot easier to just be able to email a pdf straight from the app!

Finally: is it compatible with iPad Mini? I guess it is, as with all iOS operated devices, but just checking before I actually buy one! (so far only using on iPhone 5)

Thanks!

[Ludovic Lasserre]

I've just discovered that if I uncheck the 'leading zeroes' option in the filename box, this problem disappears. So half sorted.

However as the real file names do have those zeroes in, I'd like the file names in movieslate to do as well if possible, if not it sort of defeats the purpose of having a file name info on the sound report.

[MovieSlate]

When I roll (or log a shot without rolling TC in data-only mode) on take 01 of any given slate and then cut, the take# part of the file name increments directly to T03. Then on subsequent takes, it only increments by 1, as it should. but whatever I do, movieslate does not seem to want a file to be called xxxT02. It should be noted that the take number in the actual take box does increment normally, therefore from take 2 onwards the 'take number' box and the 'take number' part of the file name remain 1 appart.

Thanks for reporting this! Indeed you have discovered a bug; which we will fix in the next update.

is it possible to email (or save) the sound reports directly as pdf files, without going through the html hassle? Would be a hell of a lot easier to just be able to email a pdf straight from the app!

Not at this time (for technical reasons). However, we’re working a cloud service that will create the PDFs.

I can go through the whole print preview business in order to save it as a pdf, but it appears to be incredibly slow in Safari (no idea why it does that) or incomplete in Chromeincomplete in Chrome.

Not sure why you’re experiencing slowness in Safari (it is very fast for us; on a Mac). MovieSlate’s Sound Reports were written for Safari and Firefox. My recollection is that Chrome and Internet Explorer do not have support for some of the "standard" HTML/CSS features we’re using to create the fill down graphics.

is it compatible with iPad Mini?

Yes, MovieSlate works just fine on the iPad mini.

I've just discovered that if I uncheck the 'leading zeroes' option in the filename box, this problem disappears. So half sorted.

Thanks for the additional info-- your clue helped me quickly find and fix the issue. The fix will be in the next update. Meanwhile, sorry for the hassle.

[Marc Wielage]

Another vote for direct creation of PDFs. Emailing them would be even better.

[MovieSlate]

Another vote for direct creation of PDFs. Emailing them would be even better.

Thanks for the vote, Marc. We've had many requests for this feature, and would like to provide it. However, it simply isn't possible from the app at this point. So we're developing a cloud service to process the HTML reports into PDFs.

[geordi]

Cliff, I'm voting for PDF creation too - but here is an idea for you that might be possible -IF- there is a technical way to make this work in that 'walled garden' approach Apple has.

Some apps (like Dropbox) are capable of passing a file or data to another app on the same device without use of any data service or cloud. I'm referring to the 'open in' dialog. I have on my ipad, several PDF-handling apps, such as "PDF Expert" and the "Adobe Reader" app. I also have a "print to PDF" app, although I have yet to get that one to work properly. The theory on that one is that it can somehow remain resident and trap a print request from Safari, so that it appears as an available printer, capturing the data being passed and generates the PDF.

I guess my thought is that since I already CAN pass documents (albeit ones that are already created) from apps like Mail and Dropbox into PDF Expert... Maybe there is a way to do the same from Movieslate and just have PDF Expert as the receptacle?

I'm not a programmer, so I don't really have a clue what I'm talking about... So I'll shut up now.

[MovieSlate]

I'm voting for PDF creation too - but here is an idea for you that might be possible

Geordi's workaround should work well. In fact, it seems similar to a solution we've described in an FAQ on our website: http://www.movie-slate.com/FAQs/10380

[Richard Lightstone, CAS]

In over two years of using MoveSlate and sending HTML reports to post - no one has ever complained and or even demanded PDF versions.

[rich]

Hi Ludovic. i got the track naming to follow the scene and take info by going to the settings, then slate behaviour, then clapper behaviour and unchecking increment slate number, which is on by default.

ive been using movie slate the last few weeks on my first feature, and its been working really well - now i have my head around it.

[Hollandaudio]

In over two years of using MoveSlate and sending HTML reports to post - no one has ever complained and or even demanded PDF versions.

I hear whathca saying Richard. I feel I want to avoid the possibility of someone in the post work flow chain going 'I can't read this.' I just did the pdf creation thing as well after I wrapped a few hours ago. I think part of it is: when I get correspondence from most production companies, it's usually in the form of PDF or Excel. But obviously this can all be tested before the beginning of a job. Just a matter of emailing a trial movie slate report in HTML and seeing if it can be read.

Still loving movie slate. The script sup on my current job complimented me as well. I like it just because: it keeps me organized, gives me the ability to fix/add notes later in the history option, and can preview the whole report for mistakes before emailing or printing. Just thinking of all the times I tired to erase or cross out something on carbon reports lol.

Jonathan P