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Export shots

Every marked shot becomes its own clip in one action, so marking a whole film never waits on rendering any of it. When you finish you have a folder of clips and a metadata/ folder beside them.

Before you start

  • A shot list with at least one shot. Shots with a missing source cannot export; relink them first.
  • ffmpeg, which Shotwork offers to fetch the first time you export.

Steps

  1. Choose File › Export… (Ctrl+E).
  2. Under Export, pick the scope: All shots, Selected shots, or Filtered / visible shots when a filter is active.
  3. Pick a Preset: H.264 (review/upload), ProRes 422 HQ (editorial), or DNxHR HQ (editorial). A preset marked (encoder not found) is one your ffmpeg build cannot make.
  4. Set Handles (frames) to add frames before each in point and after each out point. Handles stop at the source's own first and last frame.
  5. Edit the Filename template if the default does not suit. Right-click the field and open Insert Key for the list of keys.
  6. Set the Output folder, or Browse… to one.
  7. Click Export.

If any output file already exists, Shotwork lists the first ten and asks before overwriting; a re-export with the same settings replaces the same files rather than piling up copies.

What happens

Each shot renders on its own, and the list under the progress bar fills in as they finish: a check for each clip written, a cross with the reason for one that failed. Cancel stops after the clip in progress.

A clip that is already exactly the preset's codec and container, and spans its whole source file, is copied instead of re-encoded and labeled (copied, already in this format). Tick Always re-encode to encode those too, for a uniform bitrate across the set.

Beside the clips, a metadata/ folder holds one JSON sidecar per clip: the shot's name, tags, rating, project, client, interest points and the source it came from. File › Import Clips… reads these back, so a clip folder round-trips into a shot list with nothing lost. See Import clips.

Filename template keys
Key Value
{project} The shot's own Project field, else the shot list's file name
{shot_name} The shot's name
{index} Position in this export, from 1
{index:03d} The same, zero-padded (001, 002, …)
{tags} Tags joined with underscores
{assets} Assets joined with underscores
{client} The Client / Studio field
{year} The Year field
{role} The Role field
{rating} Stars as a number, 0 to 5

The default is {project}_{shot_name}_{index:03d}. An unknown key is refused before the batch starts, never partway through.