CineDev releases Altera for clip-based metadata management at BSC Expo 2022

CineDev announced their first release of Altera, a clip-based metadata management application for camera footage used by media professionals on-set and in post-production.

Created with data wranglers and digital imaging technicians (DIT) in mind, Altera helps to streamline the editing or creation of metadata archive files such as ALE and EDL with powerful tools to accelerate the process and minimise costly mistakes. 

As production times reduce and the demand for media content increases, on-set production teams are increasingly looking at ways to streamline processes for quicker turnaround times. Editing metadata on-set and in film labs typically involve a manual process of editing spreadsheets that can lead to human errors that trickle throughout the production pipeline. Altera has been production tested over the past year during its beta phase on major productions such as Wrath of Man, House of Gucci, Cyrano, Morbius, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Batgirl and The Marvels. 

“We rely on Altera daily for every production,” said Gastone Ferrante, Digital Workflow Supervisor on Cyrano (2021). “Our data managers have replaced a clunky workflow that involved three different tools to edit CSVs, ALEs and CDLs and greatly simplified the process with Altera. Working with Altera has saved us time and given us peace of mind by eradicating user errors for a truly trouble-free experience; we couldn’t have done it without Altera.” 

“Altera streamlines our ALE workflow,” said Tristan Hey, Dailies Technical Manager at Picture Shop. “A challenging project required a roundtripped workflow between two seemingly incompatible software applications. We were able to use Altera to manipulate the metadata within the ALE to seamlessly interchange between the two applications.” 

“Our close collaboration with the industry during the development of Altera has helped us solve the metadata challenges production teams face when working on-set,” said Andrea Michelon, Co-founder at CineDev. “The release of Altera gives data managers and DITs the ability to dramatically reduce the time it takes to accurately edit clip-based metadata. The ease and flexibility of Altera’s licensing makes working with metadata on-set more efficient and accessible to all.” 

Streamlined clip-based metadata management for on-set production Features available in Altera include: 

• Import/Export: Import metadata from a wide variety of formats to transform and adapt the metadata for any need. Merge and export to multiple different formats in one go. 

• Smart Bins: Filter and group metadata attributes dynamically based on user-defined rules and keywords with Altera’s powerful smart bins. Work with an up-to-date list of clips that match the specified metadata attributes. 
• Database: Import reference lookups to take advantage of powerful built-in tools in Altera such as Check and Compare. Supports a variety of file formats from a simple CSV to more elaborate formats such as MHL, CCC, or AMF. Filter and clean up file data to optimise databases for efficiency. 
• Check and Compare: Verify data against any imported metadata or database with Check and Compare tools. Easily pinpoint mismatches in data to fix anomalies. 
• Merge and Append: Merge data from columns within multiple files or combine multiple files together with confidence. Altera uses smart checks to avoid possible conflicts when merging data. 
• Reports: Create and export reports in PDF or HTML formats. Easily customise layouts to suit your production needs.