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Media Manager Failure
Right, I guess most people know how failed the media manager is but today it really is driving me insane. Note I’m sitting on FCP 6.0x on a Quad G5 and a Octa MacPro.
I have an edit that is about 12 minutes long. It’s filmed in a variety of formats stored on a variety of disk. This includes:
– HDV
– DV
– Apple Intermediate Codec
– Photo JPEG
– SD and HD
– MP3, AIFF and WAV audioAll in all its a mess and since most of the material is HDV I thought I’d just media-manage my way of that to ProRes for my online. Erhm, not so easy it seems.
1. The media manager wants to transcode a few hours (!?) worth of material even if, as stated, the edit is around 12 minutes. I’ve checked the “Delete unused media…” but it doesn’t seem to do anything.
2. The media manger would need a few hours (!?) to do the above operation. It starts at 3 hours and ends at 5 hours, given since I presume it’s actually transcoding EVERY second of media captured to this project shouldn’t be surprised…
Question is how I sort the above. I’m going to go insane doing an online on a HDV-timeline. Everything just takes so long to render and the RT-capabilites are shattered to a large degree. Disregarding this problem I want to move the project to a new system, collect all the media in ONE place (not the 3-4 disks it’s on now). I thought the media-manager made for this, but I might be wrong…
Any help in the above would be appreciated!
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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se -
6 Replies
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I would try using the media manager to collect into a new project without changing codecs. This should just get rid of the unused media. Then take your new project and media manage it again to pro res. I’ve had to do this, but I’m guessing that should solve the problem.
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If clips do not have reel names associated w/them then MM will ‘manage’ the entire source clip. FCP also doesn’t like MP3’s so I don’t know if that’s part of the problem as well.
If your goal is just to consolidate all the media into a central location you don’t need MM for that. Just close FCP, move all the media to where you want it to be using Finder, relaunch FCP and reconnect the media. If you are putting all the media in a single location you’ll just have to reconnect one file and FCP will automatically reconnect to everything else it finds in that folder.
-A
3.2GHz 8-core, FCP 6.0.4, 10.5.5
Blackmagic Multibridge Eclipse (6.8.1) -
First problem is this project was spread out over 3-4 disks with about 10 “untitled” media files so to be honest I’m not 100% sure where everything is or I would have copied in from the finder. Yes, whom ever off-lined and esp.
Still, and more importantly perhaps, I’m still amazed FCP can’t consolidate the media of the given sequence. I had to copy 2 hours of footage where my project might be using 20 minutes if I exaggerate. I don’t get why FCP can’t handle this after almost 10 years as an editor�
The problem lays in the fact if you capture 1 hour of media, edit 10s of this file and then want to media-manage these 10s, FCP will think “oh, okey, I can sort that for you!” and it will want to copy the full 1 hour of original media. This is a huge irritating limitation of how the “media manager” works (or doesn’t�)
Is FCP 7 any better in this regard or is there a solution for this in FCP6? If I exported an EDL and reimported everything from tape it work fine, but the media manager can’t manage what I’d expect anyone would want to do when moving from offline to online, esp. now that we work with a lot of file-based formats.
I guess I’m just lucky I don’t work on long-form offline / online workflows on a daily basis, or have I fundamentally missed something here?
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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se -
[Erik Lindahl] “have I fundamentally missed something here? “
Yes. Project organization from the start.
I don’t mean any disrespect, but from your own description, the multi- format sources, locations, etc. sounds like an accident waiting to happen. It seems like you want MM to be smarter than you are, and just “know” how to clean up your mess. Doesn’t work that way. Garbage in, garbage out. Or, in your case, “chaos” in “chaos” out. MM works best when you follow some simple rules… like labeling media, drives, etc.
If you follow these simple rules, MM will be your friend. We use it day in and day out with a “off-line to on-line workflow”. Pay attention to how you’re introducing media into your project and you’ll be rewarded with a much better media managing experience.
Good luck.
mark
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[Erik Lindahl] “First problem is this project was spread out over 3-4 disks with about 10 “untitled” media files so to be honest I’m not 100% sure where everything is or I would have copied in from the finder. Yes, whom ever off-lined and esp.
It sounds like you need to do a little leg work w/the “reveal in finder” command to track down all the media and organize it properly. It might take an hour or two but it will make things easier down the stretch.
Still, and more importantly perhaps, I’m still amazed FCP can’t consolidate the media of the given sequence. I had to copy 2 hours of footage where my project might be using 20 minutes if I exaggerate. I don’t get why FCP can’t handle this after almost 10 years as an editor� “
Again, if the clip does not have a reel number associated w/it then FCP will MM the whole clip, not just the selection used in the timeline. Just give the clip a reel number (this can be done before or after capture) and the problem goes away. Also, if every tape has the same reel number (someone left it at the default “001” for example) I’ve seen that give FCP problems as sometimes (not always though). Speed changes also problematic sometimes in my experience w/MM using FCP 6 (not sure if its any better in 7 or not).Whomever setup up this project made it a very messy and it’s misplaced blame to point the finger at the software being at fault.
-A
3.2GHz 8-core, FCP 6.0.4, 10.5.5
Blackmagic Multibridge Eclipse (6.8.1) -
First off, big thanks for all the response.
Second off, yes the people who started up this project should seriously reconsider how they work in FCP. Even disregarding the slip-up of NOT adding reel-names to a lot of the media, I do not understand how they could ever work efficiently in this project… It was spread out over multiple, removable FW drives, in about 4 different codecs and a mixtures of file and tape-based media. So yeah. getting the online in my lap I thought I’d best sort this mess out before I start with that…
One of the main issues it seems was the fact a few of the clips DID NOT have a reel-name associated to them. This is human error in regards to the HDV-tapes that didn’t have this. However, all the “digital created media” won’t have this unless you manually sort it out. I still reckon this is something either FCP or the MM should alert me about or even be able to sort out. I don’t understand why it can’t reduce the amount of media just cause this single line of info isn’t available. Yes, it’s probably trying to be clever and see TC X to Y from reel A vs B and so forth but then you should have a different option in the MM to for instance “reduce media on a per clip basis” also or something. I mean, if I work with animation / pure digital created content, I won’t have reels either and the TC will likely be from 00:00:00:00 in every clip I import.
Now, finally, I’ve at least reduced the media amount from 4 hours to 36 minutes and it’s currently being transcoded to ProRes. It will be interesting to see how that goes to say the least…
Valued lesson taut though! All the “normal” things one does in FCP is done for a reason and people not understanding this shouldn’t be allowed near the production work flow. I am however a bit surprised at the short-comings of FCP / MM or perhaps it’s stubbornness / unhelpfulness. I presume if one works with a lot of non-tape created media has to manually remember to add a reel to these files? The given project has quite a few animations in it, and I just assorted them reel “file 1”, “file 2” etc which seems stupid but did cut down the amount of media needed to be transcoded by quite a lot.
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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se
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