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1. My report on manglement in fcp4.5 versus fcp5 and 2. ….help!
Hi all!
In may, FCP 4.5 badly mangled a mere six minute piece. (I did the right things — made independent; new proj; delete unused; no master or affiliate, etc etc). The before was 16 GB and after was 4.5 GB. Speed changes of course screwed up, other motion keyframes screwed up badly, and worst of all, not enough or the wrong parts of media copied so that relinking fudged and the timeline forever changed (pardon, edit out-points automatically “adjusted” because there was “not enough media” so say the wise box). All the same-olds. Media management never, ever, ever, ever, has worked for me. But this show is the poster child for media manglement. My friend and I watched the result again tonight for laughs — it really is quite entertaining. When the movie of this demo is public, I can share this manglement on the forums. It’s got all the signature bugs, all in one. Post-modern.
My .02 btw is that problem is more fundamental to FCP’s database, since EDL’s and even mere relinking of existing projects to media simply moved to new drives can be oh so messed up. Don’t get me started on the PBS documentary I onlined for broadcast last year…. ended up driving out to client’s house at 3am and bringing their computer with drives into the bay and installing all the SDI hardware on it. Only way to get an error free show in time.
Sooo, tonight I tried mangling my six minute demo in the new FCP 5 (with latest update that came out friday) to see if things have gotten any better. Well, they have, somewhat. The mangled show had only one error — MUCH better!!! (That’s still one more error than avid would have done; and remember, this is a fairly simple show and only six minutes long.) But here is the one thing that is terribly wrong: THE MM DID NOT DELETE UNUSED MEDIA (mostly). With “delete unused…” selected, it reduced the show from 16 to 14.5 GB. (Oh, if I turned off handles, then it reduced it to an amazing 14.3 GB, a .2 GB savings.) Amazing. Has anybody else noticed this new “feature”? When all done, I looked at the managed media sources and indeed, they are either the full extents of the original, or only slightly, slightly consolidated.
So…. on these forums I often see recommendations to use the famous clunky workarounds for media mangler, but I have never actually seen the workarounds described. Anybody got documentation or links? Really what I need help for is this: This thursday I am scheduled to media manage a feature documentary that is full of speed changes and keyframed titles and graphics. On the clock. Help!!!
Thank you!!! Cheers….
“THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA”
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10 Replies
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Did you use “Make sequence clips independent”? Uncheck other affiliate clips or whatever it says down there?
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Just tested it again. Didn’t need to make clips independent. This may have changed in 5 or 5.0.2. Thirty second commercial with a copy function cut down to 3.5G from 12.6G.
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Yup yup, did all that, all my steps fevorishly spelled out in my post. Thanks!
“THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA”
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Can’t help you I’m afraid. Can’t see why it doesn’t work on your machine and does work on mine. Maybe something about the way the material’s captured, but I can’t think what. Mine’s captured in long blocks and it works as it should, at least as far as consolidating and deleting unused goes.
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Seems others are having this problem too, so at least I’m not (as) crazy:
https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?univpostid=857593&forumid=8&postid=857593&pview=tI wonder if it is with v5 altogether, or just since friday’s update? In terms of how I captured footage, I do have a lot of pass-through capture now material. And a DV media clip digitized by someone else in another program (Vegas). But, well, that wouldn’t explain all of the instances. Oh but hey, one common variable: Do you use a lot of speed changes? I have a lot of speed changes in my demo, and all of the material (that used to get mangled in 4.5), that now remains as nearly the entire media files after 5’s MM, includes sections of those huge “[not]deleted” media files that are used with speed changes at various edits.
Anyway, as I speculated in the other thread, this smells like a kludge on Apple’s part to finally fix linking problems in FCP. But in some or even many conditions it has the unfortunate side-effect of erroring WAY on the side of retaining extra extents in clip info. That’s my bet. (Dear Apple, hire a crack firm to fix MM — no errors, not one or two — and FINALLY blow Avid away!)
Cheers
“THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA” –
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Time remapping requires you to capture all the material for that piece of media. The way time remapping works is you select a frame number and position it at different frame number in the clip. Because this is based on the whole piece of media you can’t change the number of frames in the media or the time remap will kludge. That’s why you’re getting so little file size reduction when you MM. This was changed in v5 because speed was such a mess in media manager in earlier versions. It’s not a great solution, but it’s the only one they’ve come up with.
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Hi, thanks for your reply/ies!!! So this is true even for simple speed changes (not ramped changes)?
So I guess I was right about the kludge, huh. Yes, speed changes have been a big problem in MM. I don’t know if motion keyframes have been fixed too — have they? I learned in 4 to make sure to have an extra keyframe exactly at the in and out points of its clip in order to lessen mangling. So I didn’t have that to test. There were definately the odd errors, like at least two edits in the 4.5 MM where the wrong portion of NORMAL SPEED / NOT KEYFRAMED picture was chosen. Those sections were managed correctly in 5. Has relinking of non-MM’d projects been fixed? As I described in my original post, FCP has had the same problems there too.
Just so I understand you — for instance: One of media files I have in our demo is a seventeen MINUTE TV news story. I use probably about fifteen seconds of it, the face of our subject in slow motion. I use probably another twenty second clip of the anchorman talking later on in the show. So that’s two clips, a total of 32 seconds used.
Because I use slow motion on twelve SECONDS of it, MM keeps the nearly the ENTIRE seventeen MINUTES? If that’s what it is supposed to do, indeed, that is what it has done. Is that correct as things stand? Then that’s good to know!
The answer for people on the forum is this: Need to observe a work around for the time-being. Identify and export and reimport all of your speed changes as new media.
Sounds like you’ve got the inside scoop. Thanks Tom!!!! At least it (mostly) worked now in five. There was still one error, and it was a speed change — seems to have chosen the wrong part of the clip. (When the lid is off, I’d love to show somebody at Apple this demo as it came out the other side of 4.5’s MM!)
“THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA” –
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That seems to be the case for anything it sees as variable speed change. It shouldn’t do it for a constant speed change, but if a clip uses time remapping just to make a freeze frame or a constant slomo, it’ll be treated the same way.
Material brought from sequences created in earlier versions may not MM properly. I never had a chance to try that enough. The wrong section of material for speed changes is a common problem with material that’s captured in lengths of more than 10-15 minutes. It still may be a problem with some material in v5.
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I’m going to take it all back. I was wrong. I ran some tests and I’m not getting that behavior in 5.0.2. I know I saw it in earlier versions like 5.0 I think, but not sure what’s happening now. As it seems to work with speed correctly, simply pulling the frames it needs to make the slomo regardless of now I remap. If I pull a lot of frames from outside the slip area, from other parts of media, then it pulls extra frames in MM, but not beyond what’s needed to make the speed change.
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Doh! Well, thanks hugely for checking all that. Okay, in the next few days I’ll see if I can find any common variables in my project, which media is too big and what of it is used, etc….
You’ve touched on nature of source material maybe being part of issue? In may case 1. My FCP5 project came from a FCP 4.5 (where I couldn’t do MM because it mangled a result beyond usability); 2. News clips were capture-now material from VHS work tapes. 3. Another news clip came from a DV digital file handed to me from someone who acquired it in Vegas Video…..
“THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA” –
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