Josh this is such a great idea thay you so much. I will intergrate this into my work flow. Thanks Again.

josh,

genius! pasting the timecode next to the note is so helpful. I’d use this all the time. you could even sell this to apple for their next realease.

i’m hooked. keep it up.

jp
www.mojavephonebooth.net

Awesome!!

Great job!

Thanks!

Hi, Josh…

This is a really nice feature. Thank you so much. What a great idea!! It’s going to help.

-S

Hi Josh

Top idea, which I will certainly make use of, and which will save me oodles of hassle in burning and re-burning time coded rushes for clients to scribble over - agree with comments re hot keys, although so far seems to work without too much extraneous mouse-grabbing (enter key stops and starts movie ok and enters time - just an issue in toggling between typing note mode and stop/start movie mode, but hey…..)

Cheers

Chris

Josh:

Absolutely great idea. It’s already got me hooked.

Keep me in the loupe!

Thanks!
kingdex

Josh-
Brilliant. Eliminates the need for window burns. Thanks.
Michael

Great app.
I highly second or third the need for a start/stop keyboard function, , and another key combo for going back to frames noted. Maybe a command-tab or something so that you could jump back and forth to the different frames you have in the list.
This is going to be HUGELY helpful.
Thanks

Matt Murray
Lineside Productions
Wellington, FL
http://www.edgesportfishing.com
Florida Sailfish videos, pictures and more

This makes editing so much easier, jumping back and forth between QT and my notes app was very time consuming and at times confusing. This is a great application.

Excellent work…

NOTES ON NOTES….

I have been thinking about wanting to take a stab at this myself for a long time….using File Maker Pro, as you can import QT’s, .jpg’s and other media formats…

So, good job on doing something about it! The clean no frills tablet-like
feel (ala a WACOM tablet) was not lost on me.

What a great tool to have in the field…to get a jump on things, or make a pesky producer feel useful!

That said:
1, I agree with those who sited the need for a ‘hot button’

2, I also agree with the feature to somehow click to a previous in-point from the notes and it takes you to that shot/scene…I wonder if that would work with creating a link in conjunction with FCP’s Marker feature?

3, I like to make short hand notes about the main movement…”L-R”
(left to right)….”R-L” (right to left), etc…so it would be nice to allow for at least three recurring note cells…that alone would speed things up (for little old me at least) by 25%

4, I am sure you mentioned this, but do you have plans to have Movie Note Taker read SMPTE instead of “counter code”? (or at-least set the counter to it?)…4a, but then again you have the pull down0 for selecting FR’s so this implies some math is going on to read code correct?…or not? I played around with FR selections and Play Back and the associated time code did not change. So, this is either buggy or extraneous?

5, Maybe allow the option to use COLOR as another marker…Use it to define the usual ‘good take’ to ‘PRINT IT take’…or to designate elements for an effects shot, Interior v. Exterior…which brings me back to item#3…by allowing for more recurring cells AND the option to choose or not choose a color to help identify a shot easily allows the user a great work flow set of tools. When I suggest color I am not suggesting ugly blotches of color swathes all over the place….Use a simple color swatch to fit over the space of the code - like a transparency window..just like a highliter! This is a constant, not a variable choice and I would imagine not difficult to program?

Thre’s my 22 cents…

Thanks a bunch!!!!

Josh

i just tried it out and all I can say, “It’s brilliant!”

Thanks for a great contribution

Roy

very cool and handy indeed, thx for this great functional gem!!

Hi Josh

Intuitive, resourceful and brilliant!
You can say this describes you and the APP!

I can see many uses for it and would definitely be a user … it’s a great tool that I imagine will only get better with everyone’s input.

Thank you for your genius!

~ m

Great tool!!! Great Idea. I can’t believe no one has thought of it sooner.

This tool is very usuable as well as useful in it’s current state.

Here are a few features I like to see in the development of future features.

1. screen shot capture bank. I thought it would be great to have a small capture of that particular frame as a quick reference as well adding to emailed notes.

2. frame by frame advance button

3. simple draw mode. this would allow you to draw right on a particular frame that has been noted. sometimes a visual note is just as descriptive as the written one, sometimes even more decriptive.

4. Note markers. it be nice if you could click on a note and have the playhead go right to the frame that been noted.

5. On screen timestamp display.

6.Quicktime note taker file(.qmn) format which could be a xml driven format. Mutiple users users could save there notes and comments, and user name,and time stamp data to distribute amongst a group and be able to track who said what on what date at what time all in one document. Perhaps it could have a sync feature that allows diffrent people to send you their notefile and then QTN could based on GMT time could compile all note references and display the notes in order based on the the users name and time stamp.

7. Keyboard shortcut Keys. the less the use has to touch the mouse the better this app is for fluent realtime note taking.

Thats all I got for now. Great Job! I hope you continue with development. The future of this app looks very promising.

Hats off to you Josh on a Job well done!!

I wish I had this last year when I was helping a Boston film mkaer edit his rough cut! This will allow me to make notes on a rough cut on my laptop while I’m on the road also. bravo! great idea!

This product will save us huge amounts of time. We’re a two person production company and constantly passing footage back and forth with comments. Thanks.

I’d love to see this program work as an offline logging program for Final Cut Pro: simple enough for a non-editor, but able to record all the information needed for professional use.
- FCP quick keys - “I” to mark the IN point, “O” for out point, etc.
- “J, K, L” shuttling keys.
- Export to Tab Delimited format for easy import as a Batch List into FCP - and naming and ordering of columns to match the Batch List format.

I second the suggestions for:
- Read SMPTE
- FCP marker insertion
- Screenshot feature - especially for archival purposes. You could save the text and images for each source tape to know exactly what is in your library.

Regards,

Jacob Hoehne
Chief Creative Officer
issimo Productions, Inc.
www.issimoproductions.com

Left and right cursor arrows already give you single frame advance back and forth, surely?

I’ll test it out in a bit, but this would be a great help, thanks for allowing us to try it out. I have a question: What if you stop at a point and make a note and then decide you want go back say 8 frames earlier, can you scrub the note backwards to that point? or do you delete and go back the few frames?

Thanks,

Allie

Fantastic work. I have given it a bit of a run on both PAL and NTSC, with all sizes of QT and it works really well, I like the fact that if you use the enter key it starts and stops, allows you to type and hit return off it goes again. Some of the suggestions re intergration to FCP etc are good ideas and the screen capture/thumbnail suggestion would be fantastic. Thank you for all the hard work you have put into this programme.

Great Utility, specially for subtitles… WaoW, that helped me a lot with a subtitles project I’m working on right now…Thanks a lot

This is a great tool and I will use it all the time. Is there any limit to the file size? Thanks!!!

Josh,

Great idea.

What I would find helpful is to have a counter showing what the timecode reading at the playhead is, so that the playhead could be repositioned according to the notes. If you need to return to make further notes, it would then be possible to locate the footage at that particular point.

Reuben

Nice app Josh. it would be useful to have a button that could import the text file from a partially completed set of notes, in case all the notes can’t be done at one time. At the present time from a TextEdit file, but the button could save a bit of time.

All the best
Dave

I love the software, it’s so easy to hand off to a client/boss and get the notes i need to edit. i would love to see it grow, perhaps with a thumbnail shot as “guy shaddock” mentioned.
importing saved notes would also be helpful.
FCP markers would be great. I will continue to use this product regardless.. it’s great software. thanks so much!

Just read about this in the LAFCPUG newsletter, so I thought I’d give it a whirl…….very nice app….incredibly handy, much better than opening up Word and typing in TC….thanks all for the work!

Cameron Young

Great tool! Thanks so much! Having converted from other NLE’s that have a timecode window at the click of a button, I hate doing a timecode window in Final Cut Pro. Now, I won’t have to. Thanks.

A very nice program. It has a clean layout and is very straightforward… even my most tech challenged clients will be able to use it.

I have to say that it could use a keyboard command for stopping to take a note (n maybe?) and that the jkl and space bar should work the same way they do in Final Cut Pro (or any other editing app) for easier search within a movie clip.

I love being able to e-mail my notes without saving, copy and paste, or anything else. Fabulous.

KK

Another thing that could be handy, a way of undoing and redoing, because i hate going back to delete the TC that I realized I did not need. it would just be way easier to to hit Command+Z.

Josh, I did try the QT Note taker and I consider it is a very useful tool, I am glad that u can import also DV file, the only sugestion i can make is about the printing option, when I tryied to print my notes i had to open an TXT editor it will be usefult to have the “print” button right in the QT Note Taker main window..

Thanks and congratulations, for sure I will use it…

Thanks Josh, great job!
For the few (?) Europeans who might love to use this app. I just wanted to let you know that on our keyboard we cannot direktly access the backslash key (to start stop the movie) we have to type e.g. alt+shift+7. It would be of great help if you could implement a internationally valid key for that. Is an F key possible? or a combination with command e.g. command shift?

Chris

Great program, and now using it with my HDV footage. No problems, very easy to install and use. thanks

Hi all !

I’ve been playing with QT Movie Note taker past day, and must say i felt it as a relief for one of my most hated thing in the editing work : watching and taking notes.

As many, i had given it up to a paper and pen and the space bar / mouse.

So I itried it and it works nicely.
Thanks and bravo Josh for this very promising app !

But now I ‘d like to go on the critics :
Don’t get me wrong, this is not about offending you, just to help push you to your best !
That said,
One thing bugged me on the first use : i dragged a movie to the window, and…not implemented. Well, that’s minor.

But deeper on the way the app works, i’d like to share a view : this is a kind of software i had been “dreaming” of (true !) and had always conceived it as a software that should make you feel you are completing this takin’notes task “hands off”.
Having to press the mouse to stop the movie is a burden in this aspect.
So is the need to stop the movie to take additionnal notes.

I think there must be a way to make this task keyboard-only.
Define short cuts for play/pause/ffwd and so on for movie control. (er…cmd-_JKL?)
Have “main” and “secondary” timecodes auto-inserts : Main for those when you stop the movie to write down and secondary for those when you just write down impressions without stopping the movie.

Have every keyboard entry logged so you can analyse start/stop of typing to base the secondary timecode inserts on.

Well, that’s how i ‘d see it, but it’s just my 2 cents !-)

Keep up the good works.
David

PS : funny, i was writing this on the “quick answer” field on the forum’s thread which has just been posted by duncan.

then i remembered there was a comments section here, and now discover this is the page for future developpment. Well, as i think this falls in this category, i’m rather posting it here.
Haven’t read all the comments, guess my words will just be an encore of things already said, but…hey, i wanted to share my thoughts !

Josh,

This is SUCH a great idea! It worked perfectly. Good thinking!

Annie

excellent resource for my team and I when we review/assess video segments for multimedia production

wish save button would maintain same document until new video imported.

QT timecode in controller would be really helpful

Bugs out of the way, now for the fun stuff

I must start off by acknowledging this: as a past programmer there is a balance between a simple app that does one thing really well, against feature rich app that becomes complex in its interface and Intuitive use thereof. And we realize these things take time to produce

Josh you have the confectionary recipe spot on with this one, so i really believe that the suggestions you take up from these posts be incorporated in a Registerable version, and the current ( minor niggles fixed ) Freeware version left as is. There are good reasons for having a small charge on this quality of work.

onward:
YES to J-K-L behaviour
—
YES to thumbnails ( in the text area, not under the preview pane),
—
YES to SMPTE visible near the preview pane. Hopefully some way of adding our own HH:MM:SS:FF offset too. and of course YES to clicking the TimeCode text field to re-position the playhead
—
YES to a simple box or circle draw object overlaid on the particular frame stopped at to save describing in the text where-abouts they are referring.
—
Does anyone see the need for Shift-Arrows to advance/reverse in 1 second steps?
—
An independently sizable preview pane ( half-normal-double-max-custom ) would be nice, but not essential
—

Who else wants Movie NoteTaker to prepare a listing using AUTO SCENE-DETECT like iMovie?
think of it, the file is loaded, with the list of clickable Timestamps - if that’s you, just quote “heat ‘n serve”.

—
The text-file saved out restarts in TextEdit OK as it should, but perhaps a mirrored file in a proprietory format that is associative with the movie files viewed, be saved somewhere in the OS Users area?? This way selecting the file calls up the first movie on the list ready to go.
Or make the movie:name in the text listing when a new reel is described active with a link that calls the file up when clicked on. This would save multiple reviewers the time in getting the right clip in the viewer. But then doing it that way doesn’t produce a text-only file if there are embedded objects in it. hmmmm
—
The area under the preview pane is empty. Perhaps a series of nameable event tracks like the progress bar itself under a reveal arrow? The idea is that wherever the progress is stopped for a comment, a polymark ( hollow diamond etc ) shows up at that point, on that track, which is snap-clickable within a small range
This allows a multiple reviewers to know where there are already comments to zero in on, such as matters of audio, lighting, colour correction, etc. etc without having to search where it has been discussed already.

It would also be good to copy or move ( Cmnd or Option Drag ) the markers across tracks to also copy and move the corresponding texts which are collated as together. This way Cosmetics - say - may quickly find and decide a producers comment is better handled by Wardrobe, or that the Electrician and Set/Props can quickly and easily go hammer and tongs over the same comment by the Match-mover in contiguous text paragraphs.

not too shabby eh?

It also allows a single reviewer to group like-for-like when takes or other contexts aren’t shot one after another on the same reel. I also see it as the device to Mark Good or prioritize for Order-of-Merit
—
and finally, I can’t believe that in 2006, Apple still does not provide system level tools for apps tracking use of time spent on various files within projects ( yes i know we go to meetings & refer to other clients work and such outside of the job scope - but hey that’s why we have a computer on our desk to infer whats going on - rather than wasting time with genie shrink/grow , or “moveaside” effects while the Ivy grows over the door! )

Josh if you can manage a simple log file in the OS User support area to help us keep track of our and collaborators chargeable time via keyboard or mouse activity ) , hopefully Cupertino will wake up and come back with common protocols so that these things are reportable back to iCal.

At least DVCreators led the way!

~rob v

Terrific. It blew me away.

We have been searching for a reliable tool to log raw HDV tapes and were excited to find your solution. I think you’ll make a couple $$ when the Notetaker is released in a Pro version.

That being said, we are unable to use Notetaker in it’s current form b/c of it’s inabililty to read source timecode. I tried typing in our code in the MovieTime field however it just reverts back to 0 once the video is played/stopped.

Also, a Notepad with margin settings would be fantastic, too.

We will keep an eye on future updates and hope to be able to use Notetaker soon.

Thank you for your efforts. Notetaker is a great addition to the media world.

R. Maffei
MadDash E-Media

Sorry for the double post.

Is the TC feature available in .5 or is that version forthcoming??

Thx

R. Maffei
MadDash E-Media