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  • reconnecting media hell

    Posted by Ben Jones on April 28, 2008 at 4:22 pm

    Hows it going gang?

    Quick tech question. We have a pretty big job on 2 external glyph drives aswel as the 2 internal hard drives on a brand new g5. The 2 glyph drives match the 2 internal hard drives clip for clip.

    The setup timeline is like this:
    2 x glyph drives both called PHOENIX and ARIZONA and 2 internal hard drives both called PHOENIX and ARIZONA. We were under the impression that naming the drives the same would make the “reconnect media process” easier when moving sequences from computer to computer.

    Heres the problem, the editor took the 2 glyph drives home on the weekend to work, however some of the clips went offline to the point
    where she had to individually reconnect each clip. This is because when the reconnect media button is hit, it searches and finds “an unspecified path.”

    All the media is on the drive and named correctly, however FCP attempts to search for drives which dont exist. IE: the names of the drives before they were changed to PHOENIX and ARIZONA.

    So i guess im asking how to make FCP completely forget about the old drive names and just realise that they have been changed to communicate with another system?

    The idea is that the editor takes the drives to work elsewhere, however it proves quite terrible having to reconnect every clip individually to get the project back online.

    any help?
    thanks in advance gentlemen

    David Roth weiss replied 18 years ago 6 Members · 7 Replies
  • 7 Replies
  • Fred Miller

    April 28, 2008 at 5:18 pm

    Why not just edit off the two external drives all the time. You can take the project to another machine and not have to reconnect. Many projects that I work on must “travel” with me to be finished onsite at the event. A couple days before I fly out. I migrate the project to the external drives using the Media Manager and off I go. In your case, just get everything reconnected to the esternal drives and then hoof them back and forth. If you designate these drives to hold your renders then you won’t lose those either.

    If you insist, you’ll just have to reconnect the media everytime you move. But if all the media is in the same folder, you just need to re-connect one and make sure the check box about “media in the same relative path” (soemthing like that) is checked and FCP should find all the other missing clips. Renders, however will be lost.

    FCP Studio 2
    Dual 3Gg Quad Core
    5Gg RAM
    KONA 2
    OS 10.4.11

  • Ben Jones

    April 28, 2008 at 5:28 pm

    thanks for getting back to me fred,

    i know what your saying, but unfortunately doesn’t work like that. 2 editors on the same job require 2 different sets of media so that one can go elsewhere and the other can stay in the studio and keep working.

    about the reconnecting, i appreciate hoofing the drives back and forth, no problem there, only issue is that each time the drives are taken to a different computer and hooked up, we are forced to reconnect each clip individually, therefore its not just a case of doing it once.

    wouldn’t be a problem if we just had to do it once, however the amount that these drives are being hauled from one studio to another is terrible to do it everytime.

    fcp connects to some of the media automatically, however a substantial amount is being saught on old name drives, drives which have simply kept the same media but have a changed name. am i making sense?

  • Fred Miller

    April 28, 2008 at 6:26 pm

    Making sense, but I don’t have any other answers for you. Sorry.

    FCP Studio 2
    Dual 3Gg Quad Core
    5Gg RAM
    KONA 2
    OS 10.4.11

  • Bob Flood

    April 28, 2008 at 7:48 pm

    ben

    have you tried some of the more remedial things? someimes this
    “unspecified path” bug can be fixed by trashing prefs.

    You could also try media managing all the media over to a new job, thereby re writing the database with the current locations of the media ie move all media a create a new project.

    when ever i get this “unsepcified path” error I relink the files then save as new project.

    btw it is a bug so if you could do an apple feedback and let them know, because apple needs to know that this is broken.

    hope this helps

    “I like video because its so fast!”

    Bob Flood
    Greer & Associates, Inc.

  • Richard Martz

    April 28, 2008 at 10:53 pm

    Perhaps it would make more sense to change the workflow a bit. Have separate timelines for different parts of the program. Those timelines could be linked to specified media contained on specified drives. In the end you can output quicktime files of those timelines and assemble the program from its component parts.

    If that doesn’t work for you this is a perfect justification for some sort of shared media server.

    Richard Martz
    MagicMartz Media

    Final Cut Pro HD
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    PhotoShop
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    Lots of other Fun Stuff!

  • Jason Lyons

    May 2, 2008 at 11:27 pm

    OK, I had the same issue of moving projects from machine to machine and had a handful of pesky clips that would not relink. Matter of fact they had amnesia and didn’t know what file they should be linking to… YIKES very scary as I have several subclips, which oddly enough had also lost the relationship to their master clips. What the heck! So after reading this post, I backtracked and simply recopied the project over to my system and this time everything relinked. I suppose it is possible for the project file to be just corrupt enough to still open, but forget a few links?

    Oh well. I guess all that to say try copying your project file over again and relinking.

    Good luck!
    j

  • David Roth weiss

    May 2, 2008 at 11:37 pm

    For the record gentlemen, if you use Media Manager to copy your project and associated files over to another hard drive, you wil avoid all of the issues mentioned above. I understand that is a bit intimidating to trust something that has been labeled as “Media Mangler,” but that fear can quickly be overcome by a little learning and experimentation.

    David

    David Roth Weiss
    Director/Editor
    David Weiss Productions, Inc.
    Los Angeles

    POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

    A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

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