Table of Contents


22. NeoFinder and Videos

22.1 Movie Contact Sheet
22.2 Movie Metadata
22.3 NeoFinder and RED video files
22.4 Video playback in NeoFinder
22.5 NeoFinder and BlackMagic BRAW video files
22.6 Final Cut Pro X Projects and NeoFinder
22.7 Use ffmpeg for more video file support in NeoFinder
22.8 Video Converter
22.9 Rotate Videos
22.10 KYNO Metadata


NeoFinder supports a vast range of video files, and creates thumbnails of the movie files for you! It will also get the height and width of the video, as well as the duration and codec, if possible. For many file formats (mostly .mov, .m4v, and .mp4), as well as the EyeTV format, NeoFinder will even grab textual annotations, if the file contains them!

To get all this, make sure that the
Videos preference for the Cataloging options is activated before you catalog your data:

NeoFinder can catalog video thumbnails for you!



A large number of formats are supported, currently including the file name suffixes: .mov, .mp4, .avi, .divx, .m4v, .qt, .flv, .mpg, .mkv, .dv, .wmv, .3gp, .webm, and .EyeTV (the popular EyeTV recordings).

Also, the RAW Canon .CRM format is supported starting with NeoFinder 8.3.


neofinder-videos



And MPEG? And VOB? And MKV?

To support multiple additional video formats, please use the free
ffmpeg tool along with NeoFinder: Use ffmpeg for more video file support in NeoFinder



What frame does NeoFinder grab for you?

NeoFinder doesn't simply grab the first frame of a movie, because that one is usually either black or otherwise boring, and NeoFinder doesn't do boring. Instead runs into about 20% of the complete duration of a movie, and grabs a frame from there. That gives you much better thumbnails!

Of course, there is a hidden setting to control that value, if you need a different frame.

To change the hidden preferences value, open up Terminal.app and type in:

defaults write de.wfs-apps.neofinder MovieStillFrame [val]

Replace [val] with an integer value of 0 to 100, indicating the percentage into the duration of the movie. The default value is 20.



Audio Information for video files

NeoFinder gathers information about the audio tracks contained in a video file, including helpful data like the audio codec name, the number of channels, the sample rate, and language.

Additionally, NeoFinder catalogs the existence of subtitles in the video file, and what languages these represent.

video metadata


Additionally, the Video section of the Find Editor has the proper new search parameters for these new data fields.

video find options





And DPX?


The Digital Picture Exchange (DPX) video still files are supported by NeoFinder as well. Please check the “Photos” section in the Preferences, as these are actually separate photo files for each frame. NeoFinder will generate a thumbnail for you, as well as reading the SMTPE timecode, if one is embedded in the DPX file.



Find all HD movies?


The Find Editor allows you to set up all kinds of queries, and you can use the Photo dimension parameters for videos as well. In fact, the “HD Movies” Smart Folder by default uses exactly that to find you all movies whose height is larger than 719 pixel, hence an HD movie. Of course, NeoFinder must have read the video metadata of your files during cataloging to be able to run such a Find.

HD Movie Smart Folder




Find all video codecs?

Now that Apple has announced to finally eradicate QuickTime and all its extensions from macOS, and removing support for a lot of older video codecs, you probably need to quickly search your projects for such files, and convert them while you still can.

For this reason, NeoFinder now offers a search for Codecs as well:

find video codecs with NeoFinder


You can either type the four character code for that codec, or simply copy the string that NeoFinder displays for the codec in the Inspector. Or use the new Label Menu in the Inspector directly:






What about Apple Final Cut Pro FCPX projects?


Apples video editing software stores its project data in “bundles” or “packages,” which look like real files, but are actually folders.
By default, NeoFinder ignores the content of such packages, so if you wish to catalog the content of your Final Cut Pro X projects, you need to turn OFF that option in the cataloging preferences before you catalog such a disk or folder:





Image sequences?


If you use separate image files for each frame of your project during post-production, you will have folders with thousands of similar files, named with a common name and a file number sequence.

Cataloging these sequences can take very long, as generating thumbnails of formats like DPX is very slow, and creating these for other image formats is still expensive in regards of processing time.

In most cases, you don't really want a thumbnail for every single frame, so NeoFinder now has the ability to discover such sequences, and "fold" them together. If that happens, NeoFinder will only generate a thumbnail for a single frame, and not for thousands. This will be massively faster!

You activate this option in the Cataloging Preferences
.

image sequences prefs

If this option is active, instead of this:




NeoFinder will much faster catalog this for you:



For volumes with multiple large post processing projects and thousands of such files, this will save a lot of time.

NeoFinder by default will detect image sequences for the formats: TIF, TIFF, PNG, EXR, PSD, PSB, JPG, JPEG, VDB, DPX, DNG.

If you need a different set of formats for these, you can override these settings in the
DatabaseSettings.xml

NeoFinder will create a thumbnail for one frame in about 33% of the sequence, so you don't get a boring black starter frame for the thumbnail.

The meta ".sequence" file has the size of all "folded" files combined, so you still know the proper size of all data.

NeoFinder will fold all detected sequences of 5 or more files with the exact same base name, file name suffix, and with a consecutive number. So if there are numbers missing in the sequences, NeoFinder will generate multiple sequence items for you.


Add GPS GeoTags to videos

NeoFinder can add GPS GeoTags to .MOV files. Just use the regular Map mechanism for that.

To add GPS GeoTags to MP4 files, you need to enable the cataloging of internal XMP data in MP4 files. By default, that is turned off, as it makes cataloging certain MP4 files really slow. But as the GPS GeoTag data is actually only stored in an internal MP4-XMP record, NeoFinder must able be able to catalog that internal XMP data.

Use this in Apples Terminal.app:

defaults write de.wfs-apps.neofinder catalogInternalMovieXMP 1

The default is 0


ARRI metadata in MXF files


Starting with NeoFinder 8.4, embedded XML data written by several ARRI camera types and software versions will be cataloged.

These can contain helpful textual stuff, like the scene, take, reel name, or the name of the cinematographer. NeoFinder will show an overview of that data in the Comment EXIF field for you, and of course search this as well.

ARRI Metadata in MXF



Capture FPS in MXF files

Starting with NeoFinder 8.4, two capture frame rates (fps) are being cataloged. The regular playback fps, and also a second "Capture FPS", if that actually differs from the regular fps. That can happen for
time lapse or slow motion recordings.
Currently, NeoFinder reads that value from MXF files created by multiple Sony cameras, but we are looking into adding this to other video file formats as well. If you use that, please contact us, so we can get sample files.

This value is displayed in the Inspector, along with the other video metadata.

Inspector Capture FPS


The Find Editor has a new search option to allow you to find such files quickly.

Find Editor find Capture FPS




There is a lot more!


NeoFinder also offers a unique
Movie Contact Sheet!
And NeoFinder also reads a lot of cool metadata for you:
22.2 Movie Metadata
NeoFinder can even catalog RED videos for you:
22.3 NeoFinder and RED video files
22.7 Use ffmpeg for more video file support in NeoFinder