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Final Cut 6.06 Consolidate & Conform. What is my problem?
What am I doing wrong? I have a sequence that I was given of a feature film that has been in edits for the last 3 years. My job is to reconform some of the offline media to 1:1 Uncompressed. I go “Easy!” Consolidate the sequence with no media, batch capture the media that needs to be recaptured & take the money.
Well that is what I thought. First I discover that the editor has been nesting sequences on sequence, on sequences etc. Not good. I conform the nested sequences (that is a real pain) so that all the rushes are in the same timeline. Then I do the consolidate in the Media Manager, using the Create Offline setting, no outside master clips, no affiliates & delete unused media.
The result is a new project with loads of master clips. Here is the problem. For a 50 shot sequence, I have 200 master clips most of them rushes for shots I don’t need. Many of the master clips are not just the shots but the entire master clips (some assistant had the good idea to capture entire tapes of rushes in HDCAM). So for 20 mins of edit, I have over 75 hours of batch capture. This is not right.
Does anyone know how to disconnect the past from a clip so I can get rid of all these hidden connections. I have tried an edl but the assistant did not respect the 3 digit edl reel number convention, so all the clips have the same reel number. I have tried an XML export & then import but it still keeps these strange rushes connections that no longer exist in the timeline.
Any ideas? I am desperate.
Many thanks -
10 Replies
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[Christopher Lowden] ” I have tried an edl but the assistant did not respect the 3 digit edl reel number convention, so all the clips have the same reel number.”
Well, that might be the issue there with the Media Manager too. If it found 6 tapes with the same reel number, then it might be adding footage from all six into that MEDIA bin. Maybe, just a thought.
And the convention is a 6 digit reel number, not 3. I need more than 3 on many tapes.
Sounds like horrid prep from the beginning is causing this nightmare. No proper tape numbering, nesting all over the place. People with no clue about offline/online editing and issues that you need to avoid. Too many FCP editors and assistants are used to capturing at full quality and output…not needing to recapture anything, so they get lazy.
It sounds like you did things right, but that things are just messed up due to improper reel numbering in FCP.[Christopher Lowden] “Many of the master clips are not just the shots but the entire master clips (some assistant had the good idea to capture entire tapes of rushes in HDCAM).”
So Media Manager is NOT deleting the unused media? It wants the full tape? That’s not right. Even if you captured the full tape (a fine practice), if you only used a portion it should only grab that portion.
[Christopher Lowden] “Does anyone know how to disconnect the past from a clip so I can get rid of all these hidden connections.”
Not sure what that means. What hidden connections? The issue can be that there are more than one tape with the same name…and same timecode. That really messes things up.
What you might have to do is go back to the captured offline media, make sure that each tape has the proper name…adding it after the fact…then trying the MAKE OFFLINE option.
Shane
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[Christopher Lowden] “(some assistant had the good idea to capture entire tapes of rushes in HDCAM)”
If they captured on the fly without machine control, FCP won’t break it down into individual clips. Check the master clip for that reel, if it starts at 00:00:00, you’re hooped.
Cheers
John Christie
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I’ve been through this before. What you want is a ‘Decompose’ in Avid-speak not ‘Consolidate’.
But you’ll have to fix the tape names first, and ensure there are no duplicate tape names.
We routinely send out Avid projects to FCP via EDLs and recapture in FCP. We also routinely make EDLs in FCP and use them for scanning/conform. So the FCP-EDL mechanism works just fine.
You need to just figure the tape names. Maybe even by looking at tapes.
If you can send me just the sequence in a project, I can take a look.
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Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India -
Being an edit asistant is often a badly paid job that is given ‘not very competent’ people. On an avid, bad prep work is not good. In FCP, bad prep is even worse. CMX has a 3 figure reel convention, which is still standard, even after CMX closed for business some 20 years ago. I vote for better paid assistants…
Now for the really dumb answer to my question. I have a feature film, there are hundreds of video cuts plus 16 tracks of audio, therefore thousands of elements. I thought that I had got rid of all the nested elements …. but I was wrong, hidden in the audio tracks were 2 frame nested cuts that had been forgotten by the editor. Just 2 frames is enough to have all the nested sequences reappear in the consolidate. As the colouring convention is not that clear in FCP and I know of no “go find me all the nested elements” button, these pesky 2 frame audio bits were just devils.
It would be nice that FCP has a Decompose button, a find nested elements button & above all, a simple way to bring nested cuts to the surface. For that matter, why not be able to cut between sequences normally, without copy paste or drag & drop…
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Another possible gotcha – if a clip has no reel number, then fcp won’t consolidate it – it will keep the whole thing no matter what you tell it to do.
Also, with a long, crazy timeline, corruption can be an issue. Have you tried pasting into a fresh sequence in a fresh project?
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Here’s maybe a helpful trick:
you can highlight multiple clips in the bin, right click on their REEL name, and a list of all the REEL names used in the project appears – simply select one and FCP changes all the reels.
So if you have “HDCAM_DAILIES_TAPE_001”, rename just one clip “001”, and that will appear in your list of REELS.
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[Christopher Lowden] “As the colouring convention is not that clear in FCP and I know of no “go find me all the nested elements” button,”
I would die and go to heaven if, should they EVER make a new version of FCP, we had more options for color. Light grey with mild pastels is not terribly useful.
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Well I thought it was all over … but it ain’t
One of the 4 reels that I am conforming will not play ball.
I have erased all the sound tracks. I have eradicated the nested items. When I consolidate, I now get nice short master clips, just as I wished … BUT!
When I go to batch capture, the capture tools tells that it will capture entire 40 mins tapes for each clip.
I have copied the sequence to a new project, I have doubled checked the nested items, so why do the rushes just appear at the capture & not in the master clip info etc? Any other ideas?
Many thanks
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Get the final sequence into a clean project. Make a bin. Drag all the clips from the timeline into the bin. Sort by duration. This will help you find the bad clips. Maybe you just digitize those clips by hand and cut them in?
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Super important tip on the need for a “reel.” Had I not seen that I would have been up a creek. How were people to have known that?
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