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Media Manager trouble
I am having a very difficult time with Media Manager.
I rarely use Media Manager. I normally capture all my footage at full resolution and don’t normally need to use Media Manager to “create an offline” for re-capture at a higher resolution.
The current project I am working on was shot in HDV. It was an all-day seminar with one presenter. We rolled tape on three cameras the entire day. Wide shot and close up from the back of the room and cutaways of participants asking questions shot from the front of the room. We utilized 80-minute Mini-DV tapes and shot a total of 18 tapes (6 X 3) for a total of 19.5 hours of footage. My RAID did not have enough available space to capture all of the footage at 1920X1080 HD resolution, so I captured all 18 tapes of footage in the standard definition codec of ProRes Anamorphic. I then edited using multiclips. The tapes are assigned reel numbers of 1A (CU with wireless lav audio), 1B (WS – no audio), 1C (audience cutaways with handheld wireless audio). All of the reel numbers use this same naming convention, i.e. 1A/1B/1C, 2A/2B/2C, etc.
My edit suite has a Sony HVR-1500 deck and a Blackmagic Decklink HD Extreme capture card. My intention was to capture all of the footage in SD anamorphic, do all of my editing, and then utilize Media Manager to re-capture in HD only the footage used in the sequence.
My final SD “offline” sequence is just under 4 hours in length. It only has one video track and two audio tracks. There are no dissolves, filters, or effects of any kind. Before I utilize Media Manager, I select all of the clips in the sequence, “Collapse Multiclips”, then un-link the clips by de-selecting “Link”. I then close the sequence, select the sequence in my bin, open Media Manager, and exactly follow the instructions in this Ken Stone article: https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/basic_onlining_jordan.html
When FCP asks me to save the project, I specify a new name and save the project. I close all of my projects, then re-open the new Media Managed HD offline. I open the bin with all of my new Media Managed Master Clips, and here is where I run into trouble…
The bin has not “broken down” some of my clips. For instance, most of the CU shots (the “A” reels) only have one, hour-long master clip. In other words, I would have to capture the entire tape – even segments of the tape that are not actually in my sequence. For example, footage at the beginning of the tape when we were rolling for 2-3 minutes waiting for the presenter to start his presentation. Some of the WS “B” reels are broken down into individual clips (decomposed for all you former Avid editors) but some reels are not and require me to capture the entire tape. All of the “C” reels are broken into individual clips. The Master Clips bin does not have any clips that are audio only. On top of that, the Media Manager has now assigned 1 video and 16(!) audio tracks to all of my master clips – even for clips that do not supply any audio to the sequence.
If I select all of the clips in the Master Clips bin and tell it to batch capture everything, it says it is going to capture over 11 hours of footage for a grand total of 2.5 terabytes. Keep in mind that my sequence is less than four hours. Even with 2 second handles, it should only need to capture (maybe) 4.5 hours of footage.
On an Avid, I would simply “Decompose” my sequence and I would then have a bin with ONLY the footage ACTUALLY used in the sequence plus handles. My bin would have BOTH audio only and video only Master Clips.
All of my software (FCP, Mac OS, and Blackmagic) is up-to-date.
Anybody have any ideas on what I am doing wrong? Or is this yet another case of Media Manager not working correctly? Should I locate somebody with Automatic Duck that can export this sequence to Avid, Decompose, and then re-save it as a FCP project?
Thanks in advance for any help.
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12 Replies
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If you followed the steps in that article, you did everything correctly. Sounds like one of those things that makes people hate MM.
Have you tried creating a new empty project….copy/paste your sequence into it. Close the original project…now try Media Manager (using all steps, including “Make Sequence Clips Independent”).
You might get a different result.
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I hate to say it, but if you had captured everything as HDV via firewire, it would have used less space than SD ProRes and there would have been no reason to recapture. However…
Did you include all the audio again or just picture, because it might need to recapture the whole tape for the audio. There is no need to recapture audio – you already have it. Make a new sequence, copy paste your video only tracks and then media manage that. Recapture mute and there should only be the pictures you need plus handles, not whole tapes.
Then copy paste the audio from the original sequence and all should be good.
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>Have you tried creating a new empty project….copy/paste your sequence into it. Close the original >project…now try Media Manager (using all steps, including “Make Sequence Clips Independent”).
>You might get a different result.
Thanks for the reply. I tried your suggestion (twice). Both times I got the spinning beach ball. I had to force quit after waiting 10 minutes on the first attempt, and 30 minutes on the second.
Another thing I tried was deleting my preferences and it didn’t help. Deleting preferences is the usual suggestion people make and frankly it has never worked for me – not even once. I’ve been using FCP since version 1 (1998?) and I have deleted my prefs more times than I could possibly remember.
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[Ken Jones] “I then close the sequence, select the sequence in my bin, open Media Manager, and exactly follow the instructions in this Ken Stone article: https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/basic_onlining_jordan.html “
That article is kind of old (FCP v4) and a few options and check boxes have changed, although it will get you close and the principles remain the same. Another wild card is the multi-clip aspect of it, for which that article predates. Copying and pasting the sequence (which has already been suggested) into a new project and THEN media managing might get you to where you need to be. I would think your media manager window would want to look something like this:
Jeremy
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>I hate to say it, but if you had captured everything as HDV via firewire, it would have used less space
>than SD ProRes and there would have been no reason to recapture. However…If I was editing on a laptop or if my final sequence was going to be cuts only I would have considered using the HDV codec. I have tried editing in HDV and it drove me nuts with how much rendering it required and how sluggish it made my system. My current 8-core Mac Pro equipment setup allows me to work in 1920X1080 with minimal rendering. I am also going to be creating a lot of graphics in After Effects and I find it easier and more reliable to just go ahead work in 1920X1080.
>Did you include all the audio again or just picture, because it might need to recapture the whole tape
>for the audio. There is no need to recapture audio – you already have it. Make a new sequence, copy
>paste your video only tracks and then media manage that. Recapture mute and there should only be the
>pictures you need plus handles, not whole tapes.
>Then copy paste the audio from the original sequence and all should be good.Good suggestion. I tried this a few days ago and it didn’t change anything. Media Manager created the exact same Master Clips bin. In fact, even though there was not any audio in the sequence all of the clips had either 15 or 16 channels of audio. If this HAD worked – I would have had no choice but to retain all of the media from my offline SD sequence (663 GB of SD ProRes video & audio) because the audio would be linked to the video.
Thanks for the reply.
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>That article is kind of old (FCP v4) and a few options and check boxes have changed, although it will get
>you close and the principles remain the same. Another wild card is the multi-clip aspect of it, for which
>that article predates. Copying and pasting the sequence (which has already been suggested) into a new
>project and THEN media managing might get you to where you need to be. I would think your media
>manager window would want to look something like this:I do realize that article is from 2004. I looked all over the web for a more recent article and even subscribed to Lynda.com to watch a tutorial on Media Manager (which didn’t even go over the “Create Offline” option).
Thanks for posting the screen grab. My window looks exactly the same – except mine has 2:00 handles and uses a Blackmagic HD codec. I dod not have any other boxes checked.
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[Ken Jones] “Thanks for posting the screen grab. My window looks exactly the same – except mine has 2:00 handles and uses a Blackmagic HD codec. I dod not have any other boxes checked.”
I think it has to do with the multiclip aspect. Have you tried to copy and paste the sd sequence to a new sequence in a new project, then running media manger yet?
[Ken Jones] “I have tried editing in HDV and it drove me nuts with how much rendering it required and how sluggish it made my system.”
There’s no doubt about that. You made the right decision. Next time though, for the offline, just use the dv codec. It’ll save you some space.
Jeremy
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It sure seems like MM is at fault because Ken’s original description was so thorough and the follow-up seems to have disproved any operator error.
If your still looking for a workaround, you would want to somehow discard all the multiclip info which MM can’t seem to do. How about exporting your video only sequence as an EDL then bring it back in to a new project, Media Manage it, and recapture the clips?
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Or maybe XML?
An EDL will certainly lose the multiclip info but it’s very primitive having only 1 video track and only 6 characters for reel names, etc.
If XML can be counted on to lose the multiclip info than it would be a better way to carry forward the info of the sequence.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “I think it has to do with the multiclip aspect. Have you tried to copy and paste the sd sequence to a new sequence in a new project, then running media manger yet? “
As I stated in a previous post, I tried it twice and both times I got the spinning beach ball. I had to force quit after waiting 10 minutes on the first attempt, and 30 minutes on the second.
[Jeremy Garchow] “Next time though, for the offline, just use the dv codec. It’ll save you some space. “
My original plan was to capture in DV anamorphic for my offline, but I have had some MAJOR issues with the HVR-1500 batch capturing reliably. Since my final output is going to be an SD DVD, I decided to capture in SD ProRes Anamorphic in case I was unable to batch capture my on-line in HD. I was finally able to get the HVR-1500 to reliably batch capture – but only by utilizing a 10 second (!) pre-roll. I want to go ahead and edit the program in HD since the producer will probably re-release the DVD in Blu-ray in a couple of years. By doing all the graphics in HD now, I won’t have to re-do everything when it is time to release the Blu-ray disc.
Thanks for your replies.
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