I’ve posted a couple of samples of GUI dev work on GitHub Pages

If you want to see my early forays into front-end and GUI programming you can see demo movies of my production code from MastersFX on GitHub Pages. Nothing fancy - just had to create something quick and easy for the artists.

dMFX Submitter

A PyQt/python GUI script to allow easier shot/element/asset submission to the Shotgun production database (includes drag and drop support). This provided a much simpler interface (than the default Shotgun UI) for Artists to submit shots for daily review - it included some back-end automations to put files into the expected folders so that review sessions were easier for I/O to manage.

Clone Folders

A simple python based Mac gui for automatically generating project folder structure based on a user-specified template. This one was done without PyQt and instead used a simple script based UI (Platypus?)

GRINDER - the After Effects Render Productivity Booser

While working on Falling Skies for MastersFX I needed to find an inexpensive way to increase our After Effects render efficiency without access to a render farm. Based on some existing plugins that fed the render queue to “aerender”. For our workflow we needed a way to do collaborative rendering on frame-based projects and the existing plug-ins just didn’t cut it.

The Philosophy

The “grinder” script was written in Python as a front end to aerender which provided interactivity with the After Effects Watch Folder capabilities. In essence, grinder looks for projects that are in a designated watched folder and renders frames as needed by feeding the projects to aerender. By using multiprocessor libraries from Python and eliminating the overhead of running the AE GUI artists were able to maintain full productivity while simultaneously running up to 8 instances of aerender in the background of their Mac Pro workstations.

The Results

Render times were cut by a factor of 4 and a small team was able to produce outstanding visual effects without the expense of a dedicated render farm.

I’ve put the source code on GitHub but haven’t really had time to do anything with it as I was sucked into my next project at BiteSize TV. There is a GUI front-end, written in PyQt that I sent out to a few testers but the command line version just turned out to be much easier to use.

Tags: After Effect, Python

Project Manager of Epitaph Data Migration Project - 2011/2012

Late 2011 I was approached by Brett Gurewitz Epitaph Records to Project Manage a move of all their product metadata (and music files too) over to FUGA. FUGA is primarily a system that music labels use to manage their music catalogs and deliver to the people who sell digital downloads (DSP’s). Epitaph is already using ADA/Warner to do this and was actually motivated by a desire to have better access to their metadata. Brett wanted all the old data into FUGA so that, in the future he would have a complete set in one location. Read More...

Tags: Project Management

I’m very happy to have completed a software research project for Second Son Consulting.

Rob Calvert, the lead consultant and owner of Second Son

is one of the consultants that I hired during my time as I.T. Manager for The Icon. Based on our work together Rob has asked me to help him with several projects - most recently, a software research project. Read More...

Tags: Software Research, Second Son, Consulting

I recently added scripts to my Shotgun Collection on Github:

• A couple of test scripts to help get the cgi environment working for Action Menu Scripts
• 2 Fully fleshed out action menu scripts to list a version as “current” and to add shots to a playlist
• A script to add Skype buttons to the user table - allowing people to make a call directly from Shotgun

I hope someone finds this stuff useful - it sure would have save me several hours of research!

Tags: Python, Programming, Shotgun

Python Programming Certificate Series

I have mixed feelings about the classes from OST. On the one hand I had been hoping for more depth and a greater challenge but on the other hand I am really impressed by the breadth of the material that they covered.

The instructor, Kirby Urner, was definitely NOT phoning it in either - I engaged him in several great discussions. I’ve already put some ideas to use in my Shotgun scripts...

Tags: Python, Programming, School, Education

Today I started a collection of Shotgun API code snippets on GitHub

- not much going on there yet but I’m going to be posting the solutions that I have found to Shotgun problems there and hope to build on it as a collection of more developed examples of Shotgun customization.

If you have something to add, please drop me a line!

Tags: Shotgun, Python, Programming

I’ve recently been asked to work with Epitaph Records as the Project Manager for their metadata migration project.

They are moving all of their music assets and all the associated meta-data to a single cloud-based database system. This should be a great project with lots of spin-offs down the line. I’ll tell you more about who the players are and how the project shakes out when official announcements come out at the end of the gig!

I’ve got my hands full coordinating the efforts of development team to work out a data transfer procedure in two directions and then get it all integrated into a self-updating web-site for Epitaph. Very exciting.

Tags: Consulting, Database, Metadata, Project Management

I’m going to be the host (MC) of the PhotoCine Expo on September 25th and 26th, 2010. Last year I produced and MC’d at the Collision Conference. This year I’m partnered with a new company to put on this event and am really excited by the line-up of great speakers we’ve got.

UPDATE - video and more on the projects page!

Tags: Expo, Conference, Producer, Project Management