Bit of a disaster relinking media

[Andy Neil]

Did you backup through FCPX, or did you just grab the event and copy it over with the Finder? The problem with doing it the Finder way is risking just what apparently happened.

You can use the Finder to copy your events, but you have to know for sure that all the media was copied to the event folder. The problem is, when people start running out of hard drive space, they stop doing that for some or all of a project. If you media manage through the app, it’ll make sure to grab all the media, wherever it lies and copy it to your backup drive.

Now, what kind of media was it? Was it digitized media or imported media? Will you be able to reimport and relink your offline clips?

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[James Ewart]

Well I thought I had copied the event through the app t another drive and then wen I copied the project also I got muddles..trashed the original event on the fist drive and KABOOM…ARMAGEDDON…RED LINES EVERYWHERE.

I have found a bunch of movies in the trash..reimported them and after several attempts I have successfully relinked media but in the process I have duplicate and triplicate clips in the event browser…trouble is I do not know which of the three triplicates FCPX is using in the project because the original files were renamed and have remained renamed in the project timeline (touched on this a while back regarding renaming clips). So although FCPX has successfully managed to relink the files through metadata other than the clip name, I have no way of finding out which are the duplicate and triplicate clips in the Event Browser that I could trash and free up space.
So…a good lesson…renaming clips does not prevent relinking files as has been suggested in the past…and have projects with clips all in tact in timeline including text (bizarrely as I thought I would have to redo that).

But it’s a minefield of alias files when you start looking around.

I always optimise and create proxy as advised by some Apple bloke in Amsterdam way back which may have further complicated things.

Bottom line I’ve got away with it but not quite sure how.

[Andy Neil]

If you relinked some files in your project but also have duplicates of those files, here’s what you can do:

Select an online file in your timeline, one that was relinked. Hit SHIFT+F and it will select it’s corresponding clip in the event browser. Then you just delete the other duplicates. Do this for all your online clips.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Bret Williams]

You can always right click and reveal in finder too. If that takes you to an alias, right click it to show original.

You say you duplicated an event through FCP X. I’m curious if you duplicated an event in the event window, or if you duplicated a project & created new event. That’s the new “media manager” sort of archive method, but I haven’t fully tested it myself. If it just creates aliases when doing that, then something is terribly wrong with the concept.

[James Ewart]

well it worries me but as we say over here “the problem may have been between the user and the keyboard”

But where did those alias files come from and what for…might they have been the proxy files?

[Andy Neil]

Alias files are created when you import footage into your event and you choose NOT to have it copy the media to the event folder. The alias is created to point to the original file, wherever you keep it. You can change this in the preferences, or on a case by case basis whenever you import footage.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Bret Williams]

That’s how I work at all times. Atlthough, it will create optimized media for some things no matter what you do, like importing mp3s for example. So for me, I put everything that exists for a project in one folder on my raid 5. Grahphics, AE projects, ps docs, scripts, original camera media (of course exists on a portable drive as well) renders, anything really. I don’t mess with proxys or optimized because so far it’s all been pro res or h264. I can play 3 streams of h264 without much of a hiccup. If I need a little better playback I switch to better performance. I just import and don’t copy to the event folder. Pretty much how I worked in legacy. The only difference is X puts an alias to the original in the event folder instead of just linking to it directly. I understand why. It’s because in the event you have folders for the optimized, originals, and proxys. Checking the playback prefs between proxys and original just switches the folder it looks to. So instead of having to keep up with thounsands of individual proxy and original links, it keeps up with one set, and changes the directory address prefix. So it has to have aliases in the originals, otherwise it would have to keep up with every single link individually.

[James Ewart]

It puzzles me how it handles h264 so easily when this is meant to be a codec that you cannot edit in.