Using a hand-off in your editor
A hand-off writes sidecars into a folder you choose, and your photographs are somewhere else. An editor pairs a sidecar with a photograph by its name and its place, so the sidecars have to end up beside the photographs they describe. This page is that last step, which Vixlo leaves to you.
How a sidecar finds its photograph
Each sidecar is named after its photograph as it was on the card, with the extension replaced: DSCF1234.xmp for DSCF1234.RAF, the way Lightroom expects a sidecar beside a RAW file to be named. The sidecar has to sit in the same folder as the photograph.
The kind of file matters. The naming suits a RAW file. Whether an editor reads a sidecar beside a JPEG or a TIFF, and what its import screen shows, are the editor's own business, and this guide does not cover them. If your takes are JPEGs or TIFFs, hand off a few first and see what arrives.
Putting the sidecars beside the photographs
Your photographs are in the library's Originals folder (What a library is on disk), and a hand-off never opens them. To bring photographs and sidecars together, do it in a folder of your own:
- In the Finder, make a new folder for the shoot, on this Mac's own disk. A hand-off cannot write to a card or an external drive, so start here and copy the folder on afterwards.
- Copy the photographs for your takes into it. Copy them; never move them out of
Originals. If choosing the takes out is not worth the trouble, copy the whole shoot: only takes get a sidecar. On a RAW+JPEG shootOriginalsholds two files for each take under one name, the RAW and the camera's JPEG beside it (What an import copies). The take still gets a single sidecar, named after the RAW; whether the JPEG goes along with it is up to you and your editor. - Choose File ▸ Hand off takes…, press Write to folder…, choose the new folder and press Write Here. Each sidecar lands beside the copy of its photograph, unless Vixlo renamed the photograph on import; see below.
- Import that folder in your editor.
If you have already handed off into a folder of its own, copy its .xmp files into the folder with the photographs instead. The sidecars are named for the takes, so that folder is also your list of them.
Do not choose the Originals folder to avoid the copying. A hand-off written there replaces the .xmp Vixlo keeps beside each photograph, with its decision and develop settings. See Hand off takes to another editor.
Photographs renamed on import
When Originals already holds a different photograph under a file's name, the import copies the newcomer as DSCF0100-2.RAF, with its JPEG as DSCF0100-2.JPG (Two files with one name). The extension does not matter: a JPEG-only camera's DSCF0100.JPG is copied as DSCF0100-2.JPG when another photograph's DSCF0100.RAF is already there, so that two photographs never share a name. A name that a frame you deleted or binned held counts as taken too: only that same photograph is copied back under it.
A hand-off still names a sidecar after the card's file name. The take whose photograph is DSCF0100-2.RAF therefore gets DSCF0100.xmp, which does not pair with it and which, beside the other DSCF0100.RAF, hands this take's rating and label to the wrong frame.
Before you import in your editor, look in Originals for names ending in a dash and a number. For each such photograph that is one of your takes, rename the hand-off's sidecar for it in the Finder to match: DSCF0100.xmp becomes DSCF0100-2.xmp. If both frames are takes and the cards gave them the same file name, such as two DSCF0100.RAF, the hand-off refuses them as two takes with one name (Refusals). If their names differ only after the dot, such as DSCF0100.RAF and DSCF0100.JPG, it does not: both want DSCF0100.xmp, and the caution under Refusals says what to do.
What comes across
In the standard fields every XMP reader shows, a sidecar carries the star rating if you gave one, the colour label (Green on a take you never labelled), and the keywords Vixlo and the take's group name, also as a hierarchy. Fields of Vixlo's own record the decision, the take's place in the hand-off and its group, its stack if it is in one, and the favourite on a take you marked.
A hand-off carries your decisions and marks, not your edits. The develop settings you made on the edit page are not in these files, and neither are the keywords and caption you typed on a frame. To deliver the developed pictures, use Export. Holds, rejects and undecided frames get no sidecar at all. decisions.json is Vixlo's own record of the run, and the editor reads the sidecars, not that.
Handing off again
Once an editor has started work on the photographs, do not hand off into that folder a second time. An .xmp of the same name already there is replaced, whoever wrote it, and an editor may keep its own work in a sidecar of exactly that name beside a RAW file. For a second round, hand off into a new folder and copy across only the .xmp files you want.