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FCP won’t reconnect some XD CAM conversion clips
Hi all – this may be a minor problem, but today I noticed on my Imac, after recently importing many Sony EX 1 cards into FCP 6 for the first time, that there was only 25 GBs left when there should be about 250! I found in my “movies” folder that there was an XD CAM transfer folder with a whack of converted movs from the original MP4s. I guess I naively assumed that the MP4s were somehow made readable in FCP, but not outright converted into a whole other movie and stored – a la preferences – into my “movies” folder.
Anyway, I moved that movies folder onto my Lacie external and just tucked the original movies folder on my imac in the trash for safe keeping – and now I cannot reconnect all the clips in FCP 6. It just does not recognize some of the clips. In the reconnect media window it just lists the directory name, but no clips. I’ll open a folder (I’ve imported the clips as Card folders) and click on the clip icon (with the red slash) and try to reconnect every which way, but it just won’t play ball. I’ve already at a rough assembly point and don’t want to have to reimport and manually eyeball it.
Any suggestions? Or was that really muddled and unclear?
Many thanks
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5 Replies
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I’m not going to try and figure out what you’ve done wrong but instead I’ll tell you how it’s supposed to work and you can take what you’ve learned and apply it to your situation.
The EX SxS Pro memory cards have one media folder called the BPAV folder. You can drag these folders to a hard drive right from the card and the folder will copy over just fine. The BPAV name should never be altered in any way, otherwise the Sony Transfer Tool will not see it. You can use the Sony Transfer Tool as a stand-alone app to import the clips from all BPAV folders and turn them into MOV files, which is the format FCP can use. You can set a destination folder for your MOV clips in the Transfer Tool preferences menu. If you don’t set a destination with the Sony Transfer Tool it will default to importing them to your startup drive as you’ve just discovered. Once that’s done navigate to all your BPAV folders in Transfer Tool window and import them.
It’s important to remember that each BPAV folder should reside in its own unique folder with a naming convention such as: Card one – Offload one, Card Two – Offload one, etc. Whatever you’re comfortable with. This is so a BPAV folder doesn’t get overwritten with another one because the names are the same. And remember you can’t change the BPAV name. When you navigate to a BPAV folder within the Sony Transfer Tool you just have to get to the folder that you’ve named. The program will see the BPAV folder inside your folder and will display the clip icons within that BPAV folder ready for the import. I don’t know why you can’t reconnect some of your clips in FCP’s Browser but what you’re trying to connect to have to be files already in .mov format and probably can’t already be in the trash.
Hope this helps.
– Don
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Thanks for this. I do think my problem is thus: before I copied the movies folder onto the lacie external I renamed my hard drive (because a friend who had been messing with my keyboard inadvertently renamed the hard drive on the desktop something nonsensical, “eithrkd”). And so for half of those mov clips, it is searching for a directory called “eithrkd” which does not exist anymore.
Can I somehow point these offline clips to the exact same clip, now in a different location (on the lacie as opposed to my Imac harddrive)? I’ve tried reveal in finder, to rename but it won’t give me that option. Or is there a way I can “change the directory” so to speak?
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[Hugh John Murray] “Can I somehow point these offline clips to the exact same clip, now in a different location (on the lacie as opposed to my Imac harddrive)?”
I just did a little test where I made a clip offline in the Browser (which made it also offline in the sequence) then using the “Reconnect Media” command I reconnected the same clip from a backup hard drive. Worked like a charm, so I’m not sure why you can’t do it at your end. Keep in mind that the clip you’re reconnecting to has to be named exactly the same as the offline clip, but it doesn’t seem to matter that it’s on another hard drive.
– Don
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Tried it and it doesn’t recognize the clip, it just says directory “erithrkd” – the weird name. Can’t figure it out, it should work, same name…hmph. Thanks for trying!
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When I get info on the offline clip, it says next to “source” – eithrkd is missing. I tried renaming the folder eithrkd but it’s not reading it…
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