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Benefits Of Events instead of Folders
Can somebody pinpoint the benefits of creating events for organising his clips? For example if there are days of shooting we can have 3 different events. But we can also have three different folders.
One benefit I guess is that we can have keywords with the same name eg audio (for day one with 3 clips) and audio (for day two with 2 clips different than day one). If these keywords were in the same event they would have the same clips, in other words in the same event two keywords with the same name are the same keyword.
Another benefit is that you can have smart collections for each event and Library smart collections that apply to all events.Are there any other benefits and in which cases you prefer events instead of folders and folders instead of keywords?
Fix it in Pre.
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2 Replies
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[Thanos Papadopoulos] “Can somebody pinpoint the benefits of creating events for organising his clips?…cases you prefer events instead of folders and folders instead of keywords?”
Events are somewhat like a folder, in fact they are currently implemented physically as a folder inside the library package. However you need not use events at all beyond the single required event. I’ve previously had over 8,000 clips (181 hr of 1080p and 4K material), comprising 4.75 TB total size — in a single event. The organization was strictly based on keywords and ratings, and it worked fine.
It’s tempting to say events are required to organize content in a given shooting job, but that can also be done by keywording those clips with the event name. It can even be done automatically provided the clips are in a named Finder folder and you import with the option to keyword them based on the disk folder name. Whether you click on a keyword collection to reveal those clips or open a folder to reveal them (as in other editors) the result is similar.
However a clip can only be in one folder (or event) unless it’s duplicated, and you can’t put part of a clip in a folder or event. By contrast keywords and ratings are range-based and they can overlap, so are much more flexible.
Despite this there can be advantages to using events, such as partitioning metadata work among multiple assistant editors. E.g, consider an overall “project” which contains material shot at different times and locations, each in its own event. Multiple assistants having a copy of this media could each be busy rating & keywording their assigned event, then email that work via a event XML back to the home office. This parallelizes one of the most time-consuming aspects of a large project which is the media tagging and organization phase.
In FCPX there is no choice between events and folders as folders are not for media — only for keyword collections. The main purpose of folders is to de-clutter a large list of keyword collections by grouping similar ones together. E.g, say you have many keyword collections of different employee interviews by their name, and more keyword collections of their managers, and more keyword collections based on department. Instead of having all those in a huge scrolling list, it’s neater to have folders for “employees”, “managers”, and “departments”.
That could all be keyworded and you could query it without folders using the method shown in this video “One Smart Collection To Rule Them All”. However there’s a balance between a purely query-oriented approach and a navigational approach to data, so FCPX provides a few things like folders to help:
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I am ok with they way events, keywords and rankings work in FCPX right now. What I would love to see is for me to use folders to organize projects and events. For example, I have been working on a doc this past summer and will be into the spring. The producer likes a new, dated cut for him after each edit session. Lots of projects. We have almost 20 interviews so far that I make a time-code burn for each. Lots of projects. I would love to be able to make a folder called “Old Cuts” and a sub-folder called “TC Burns” and move cuts to appropriate folders.
Same with events. With another client from FL, we did a series of spots which were first “rippo’s” then all stock and then on to shot footage that eventually aired in markets all over the country. I would love to move all the events from the rippo and stock stage into one folder called “Old Footage” and one folder for events that hold the approved generic versions.
I think it was explained to me how this could not happen, but I still pine for it. Perhaps I need to move more toward keyword collections which can then be grouped in folders. Too late for this project however.
Scott Witthaus
Owner, 1708 Inc./Editorial
Managing Partner, Low Country Creative LLC
Professor, VCU Brandcenter
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