Cross platform TVP files

[brianottosen]

Hi all

We have 1200 TVP files for our feature film production. They are created on a Windows computer and stored in identical file structures in 3 studios like this.

B:\film\q036\c024\tvpaint\q036c024.tvpp

All the files have been automatically created and links to 3 audio files from editing:

B:\film\q036\c024\audio\q036c024_dialog.wav
B:\film\q036\c024\audio\q036c024_fx.wav
B:\film\q036\c024\audio\q036c024_music.wav

Now we are about to automatically deliver to the fourth studio where they run TV Paint on Mac. I foresee that the audio links will be broken.

Any ideas?

The audio links are plain text in the setups and as such could be automatically changed quite easily - but to what?

UNC path will not work since it begins with //servername/sharename where //servername is different in each studio. The same portion is substituted in the Windows environments by mounting the share as drive B: in all studios.

Would it work if they were relative paths instead? The audio files are always to be found in the neighboring /audio folder.

What are your thoughts?

All the best
Brian Turner Ottosen, HoBSoft

[Elodie]

I foresee that the audio links will be broken.

You don't need to foresee this, the TVPaint already fixed this

Cartoon Saloon asked us, several months, ago a solution to link the sound to projects. This option was added in November and I gave them the updated version when I came at their studio.

Thibaut and The song of the Sea's staff got all the necessary information about how to link the sound to the project, so normally, they shouldn't have any problem.

[brianottosen]

I heard something about a new version of TV Paint where audio files can be embedded instead of referenced. Is that what you have in mind?

[Elodie]

Yes, this version is available in Cartoon Saloon and other studios for 3 months, at least.

[idragosani]

I just want to say it's kickass that Cartoon Saloon is using TVPaint, they are my favorite animation studio!

[brianottosen]

As we talked about, during our meeting in Cartoon Saloon, it is very nice that TV Paint now provide the possibility to embed audio files within the TV Paint setups.

However - we need to continue to reference the audio files to allow editing to publish new audio without changing the TV Paint setups.

I guess this can only work with relative paths. Is that possible in any way?

Brian.