10.1 (Scratch disk workflow–is anyone still keeping there media separate?)

[Moira Elefson]

There are many reasons you may want to keep your media files separate from your library.fcpbundle file. Perhaps you’re collaborating with other editors that are using the media files on a network drive or perhaps you already have all your media files on your hard drive and it would be redundant to copy those files into your library bundle.

[Bret Williams]

I don’t see how keywords would translate into folders in the finder. That’s kind of a one way street. You can certainly have a kc representing a folder of files in the finder, but what about the keywords that apply to files across or just part of multiple folders? I suppose you could have a zillion folders populated with aliases, but that would just be a mess. Not surfeit would translate well to Premiere either. Plus, the power of keywords is combining multiple selections of keywords at once. Bins never translated to finder folders either.

Now, if folders within the event could translate that might be ok in the finder. Those are the hard groupings you’re looking for.

And let’s to forget the current dialog that events are pointless in a library environment.

[Adam Chesbrough]

Yes keywords translating to folder would be a mess, yes folders would be much better. But folders are made up of keywords since you can’t add individual clips to folders (you should be able to do that!). All I’m saying if my organizational FCPX structure could be maintained in the finder then life would be GREAT.

Back to organizing:
I shoot throughout the year and put together a reel that displays some of the person work that I do on the side. It is ideal to have all this media available to use when I open the project. It is also ideal to have that media separated in some form within the finder.

Therefore I am splitting up each “shoot” into an event within the same library. This way I don’t have to keep the media separate and at the end of the year can simply move the library for archival purposes.

Potential problems:
1. Keywords do not run across events and therefore if I want to have a keyword representing clips across different events I am out of luck and have to go into each of those events at different times
2. In the old version of FCPX (10.0.9) the issue was that having all events open at one time slowed everything done. Not sure if this is the case if they are all in the same library.
3. Having to “show content” is a pain in the a** for whenever you want to grab content from other libraries. Yes, you can add the folder to your “favorites” in the finder but that is one more step.

In hindsight maybe events wasn’t the best way to go. Could just keep the media separate and then manually archive with the library later. BUT manual process always will leave something out. There are tutorials that say you should choose where to keep the media based on project type ie sometimes copy media to library sometimes use alias’. I would prefer to have one system so that others that work with me can follow my process and procedures, not make their own calls in terms of organization.

ALSO, WHY DO FOLDERS NOT MAINTAIN WHEN I MERGE EVENTS OR COPY MEDIA? So frustrating!

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