Final Cut Pro xml into Filemaker Pro-Help.

[tangierc]

Apple's Final Cut Pro is able to save its data as an xml document. Filemaker Pro can import xml, but I have yet to be successful.

Any suggestions and/or people who have tried this successfully?

Tangier

[Fenton]

I may have done this, here on the forums. I don't believe the original poster ever identified the xml as from Final Cut Pro. Perhaps not. If not, could you post an example FCP xml output file?

http://www.fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/169520/post/174610/hl/Apple+xml+Fenton/#174610

[tangierc]

Here is the file (from Final Cut Pro and then one I saved as a text file). It seems that I need an xslt tow make Filemaker understand the Final Cut Pro xml file. I know nothing about xslt.

sample.txt

16_kitchen.xml.txt

[Fenton]

I'm afraid you're going to have to learn some xslt. This is not a small xml you've got here. It is not terribly complex however, just kind of long, and a little confusing as to what exactly the relational levels are (which would correspond with the tables in FileMaker), and what would be the relational keys within them.

XML is capable of conveying related information, just like a relational database, but in a flat text file. That's quite an accomplishment. But it isn't always easy to figure just what the "entities" are. Because sometimes what looks like a "level" is just a convenient way to separate different "groups" of elements (fields, from our FileMaker point of view). Such groups, though they could mean another level, are not. In XML it's easy to group fields, by placing them within an organizing element; which has no real data of its own (or perhaps some in an attribute(s).

My rule of thumb was: if there's more than 1 child, it's a new level. This is ambiguous however, deciding the (FileMaker) structure by looking at the data. Looking at the data is not so easy either. I'm using an xml editor, which can show the levels. But even then it would be tedious to look through every single level; and is this data the most complex you're going to have? I'm just saying I was forced to go by what I saw.

For starters, you've got a "project", with a "name". Then you've got "children", which have multiple "clip"s. Your file only has 1 "children"; don't know why. So I'm using "clip" as the 1st level, FileMaker table.

"clip" has various data, then it has "media" (no data in its element), video (ditto), then "track". It only has 1 track. But is this always true, or not. Don't know. So this 2nd level, this "media/video/track", is a new FileMaker table. Within "track" there's a "clipitem". There's only one of these per track, as far as I can see. So I'm calling it the same level as "track". This is possibly wrong.

Within this m/v/track/clipitem there's 1 file. Always? Don't know. Maybe a 3rd level, a new FileMaker table.* It has also multiple "link" elements. That would certainly be a 3rd level, a new FileMaker table.

There's another child within media, at the same level as "video", which is "audio". "audio" also has "track"; but it has 2 tracks. So this would be also a 2nd level; but a new FileMaker table, because it has many different fields from "video."

There are a few more levels below this. But that's as far as I went. Each FileMaker table requires a separate xsl file for importing. They are somewhat similar.

Final_Cut_files.zip