Apple Final Cut Pro 7 - Manual (Page 1633)

Overview of the Final Cut Pro XML Interchange Format
The Final Cut Pro XML Interchange Format was designed to describe every element in a
Final Cut Pro project in a human-readable, XML-based format. Final Cut Pro can import
and export this format, opening a world of possibilities limited only by your ability to
generate and process XML documents.
Because Final Cut Pro supports XML, you are no longer limited to creating clips, bins, and
sequences within Final Cut Pro. You can create your own Final Cut Pro projects outside
of Final Cut Pro, using any software or platform you want, as long as you generate a valid
Final Cut Pro XML file. Even if you don’t want to create Final Cut Pro XML from scratch,
you can practice working with Final Cut Pro XML by exporting a clip or sequence to an
XML file, opening it in a text editing application, making minor modifications, and then
importing the modified XML file back into Final Cut Pro.
For example, if you have 100 clips that all have “Koffee House” in the name, and you want
to change the names to “Coffee House,” you can export the clips to Final Cut Pro XML,
open the XML file in a text editing application, find “Koffee” and replace with “Coffee,”
and then import the resulting XML file back into Final Cut Pro.
You may also want to use XML when working with text generators or superimposed
graphics. For example: You have a sequence with hundreds of subtitle text generators,
and you want to subtly change the color or position of each subtitle. Manually moving
each subtitle in Final Cut Pro would be extremely time-consuming. Instead, you can export
the sequence as XML and then find and replace all of the positional parameters or color
settings at once.
These examples are only the beginning. You can also change clip In and Out points,
change the order of clips in sequences, or modify effect parameters. The more you
experiment, the more potential you will discover for modifying Final Cut Pro elements
using XML.
Main Final Cut Pro XML Elements
This section describes some of the main elements of the Final Cut Pro XML Interchange
Format. Here is an example of a simple Final Cut Pro XML file. The code below represents
a Browser clip whose media file is offline.
<?xml version=”1.0” encoding=”UTF-8”?>
<!DOCTYPE xmeml>
<xmeml version=”4”>
<clip>
<name>Coffee house wide shot</name>
<duration>362</duration>
1633 Chapter 97 Using Final Cut Pro XML and QuickTime Metadata