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media management
Hey so
I am the main editor on a project and have several assistants digitizing in clips from remote locations.
they are providing me with hard drives with the clips and the project files they used to digitize the clips.
what is the best way to now assimilate their digitising sessions into my main project files?
I’m guessing the media manager will come into play.
any workflow tips
thanks
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11 Replies
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“I’m guessing the media manager will come into play. ”
not necessarily… keep it simple.
hook their drives up and copy the media files across to where you want them on your system.
copy the project files, too.remove their drives, open the copied project, and re-connect the media.
now you can copy their logged clips from their project into yours.you could use MM, but it will tie up FCP, and there’d be no real gain, in my opinion.
nick
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thanks Nick,
so once i have dragged and dropped their logged clips from their project to mine, those media clips with logging info will stay connected to my master project and not the projects they were digitized too?
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yes indeed
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yes that;s correct.
the media can easily be attached to any number of projects, AND be “Master Clips” in those projects.
there is one thing you may need to think about.
before FCP6, Master Affiliate relationships didn’t carry across from one project to another.
so if you had a bin of clips, AND a sequence made from those same clips in a project,
a Master Affiliate relationship existed: colour a timeline clip, and the browser clip gets coloured, too.
this also allows you to match back from the timeline or viewer to the bin.but if you copied the bin AND sequence across, the link broke.
the workaround was to only ever copy one instance of a clip.
so copy the sequence into a new project, and then make a new bin n the new project.
it could get a bit complex, if the sequence wasn’t ALL the clips in the bin.as i say this had been fixed in FCP6.
cheers,
nick -
the projects the assistants have been going are bins only ie no sequences have been created other than the default one when you open a new project.
all i want to do is import the bins and clips from these digitising session projects to my master projects for editing.
does that make sense?
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sure.
very simple.
good!and if there’s no extra logging info, like descriptions or whatever,
you don’t even need to do what i suggested.you can simply copy the files across to wherever you want,
then bring in the new files direct from there into FCP,
as long as you can easily distinguish the recently added files.you could use colour labels for that in the finder.
you can change them at any time and it wont affect the clips in FCP.cheers,
nick -
i do need to keep all the logging info. so i think your original suggestion will work best.
oh the luxury of having assistants…i guess this is how the posh editors work!
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Another option is to have them export each of their projects as an XML file. Once you’ve copied the media to your local drive, you import each XML into your existing project & reconnect it’s media. The XML should include all of their logging data. And you don’t have to worry about them being on a newer version of FCP!
Arnie
Now in post: Peristroika, a film by Slava Tsukerman
https://www.arniepix.com/blog -
Paulos,
We work in a a shared storage environment where this kind of workflow is standard. We have teams of “digitizers” that do nothing but bring the media into the system. They then organize it and place it on the storage in folders: example (B-roll, Interviews, Scene 5, etc.) Keep in mind that this media has NO PROJECT attached to it.
When an editor begins work, all they do is import these folders into their own project and begin editing. In some cases they don’t even need to bring the media into their project, they just open up a second project. FCP is quite happy to have multiple projects open simultaneously… you don’t need to have all the media live in one big project.
Working this way will keep your project size small which will result is quicker saves and faster timeline performance.
Good luck.
mark
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unless there’s a specific need (assistants using LATER versions of FCP than you) then there’ no need for XMLs.
keep it simple!
nick
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