Index LTFS tapes and export reports

After a job completes, the Project Browser is updated with information about the files that have been copied and verified.
However you can also index LTFS tapes and add them to the database without copying them.
Once indexed you can export a report using the Project Browser.

Index whole tape

Put the tape into the drive, or into an empty slot in a tape library.
Click the + button, select the tape and click Add Selected.

Selectively index tape

If you don't want to index the entire tape, then open the LTFS panel and mount the tape. Then click the + button and click Choose Other... and select the folder inside the tape.


Open Source Browser

Click the folder button above the Job table to open the Source Browser.


Indexing

The tape will be automatically loaded, mounted and indexed. The current Collection and Project are show in the top left, click here to open the Collection + Project panel.


Embedded Metadata

YoYotta embeds source clip metadata like codec and timecode when archiving to tape. To read this from the tape during indexing turn on Extract Metadata in Preferences. Then check in the Source Browser to see the clip metadata.

After turning this on refresh the job to re-index and read the tape metadata.

Before writing a tape you can check in the Source Browser to see that the source material has metadata. YoYotta will then embed this metadata onto the tape.


Extracting new Metadata

Here the tape was created without embedded metadata. Maybe a third party LTFS app wrote the tape. When indexing YoYotta will not extract new clip metadata from tapes like this as this would be a very slow process.
Note that metadata isn't needed for restoring either manually or using the Conform option.

It is possible to do this by selecting some folders and clicking the Extract metadata button. It is the same with Thumbnails, when indexing these will not be created for tape sources. If required select a folder and click Extract Metadata and Create Thumbnails. Note that extracting metadata and creating thumbnails will take a very long time for the whole tape so best to target specific folders.


Open an existing project

Indexes are stored inside Projects. Projects are grouped together in Collections. Select a Collection, then select and open an existing project.


Add a new project

Projects are grouped inside Collections.
Select an existing Collection or create a new Collection by clicking + below the Collection table and entering a Collection name.

Collections names could be clients, years, type of work or you can just have one collection for all projects.

Select a Collection and then click + below the Project table to create a new Project.
Enter the new project name. If working with camera footage select the usual frame rate and click OK. YoYotta uses the frame rate to flag off speed shots, but it's not critical to set this.


Store Index


Click the Store Index button to store an index or snapshot of files.
A browsable index of all the files on tape will be stored in the Project Browser.

Normally a complete index is required, however if there are files and folders that are not required in the index they can be selected in the Browser. Then click the - button. Then click the Store Index button.


Export reports

Click the book icon at the bottom of the main panel to open the Project Browser. Select one or more tape snapshots in the Browser and then export an ALE, CSV, MD5, MHL or PDF report for all assets.


Create top level MD5 report

Load a tape into a tape drive or library and add it as a job. Open the Source Browser. This will automatically mount and index the tape.
Select the tape in the Browser, open Folder Actions and click Create MD5.
YoYotta will create an MD5 report inside the selected folder, in this example the top level of the tape.
When complete click the refresh button above the job table and YoYotta will re-index the tape and the Browser will show the MD5 file. Here the tape is ID2015 so the checksum file is called ID2015.md5.

If some files do not have MD5 checksums (maybe the tape was created without using YoYotta) then a warning message will be shown and the report will not be generated.
To generate the missing checksums select MD5 + xxHash : Quick Verify and click Verify Job. YoYotta will create any missing checksums, when complete click Create MD5 again.

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