Browser does not reflect timeline ???

[Stephan Walfridsson]

[Tom Headle] “Question-1: How come FCP can have a mismatch between the browser and the timeline? This is so confusing coming from PPro and AE. “

Well there is actually no mismatch (but I see your point). The browser contains information about clips availiable to you. It doesn’t contain the actual media files, only links to them. If you delete something from the browser it doesn’t remove the media file from your system. And in the same way that you can have clips in the browser that aren’t used in the timeline, you can have clips in the timeline that aren’t availiable in the browser anymore.

[Tom Headle] “Question-2: If that is true, where does FCP keep a list of all media files used in the project? I can’t believe the answer is “the timeline” as that seems to me to be very sloppy.. “

Well, that is the answer. The timeline contains links to the original source file, not to the clip in the browser. Basically the timeline contains a list of items like this: On track 1 between frames 1 and 50 use frames 239 to 289 from the file “Macintosh HD/Capture Scratch/Myshot.mov”

I don’t understand why this would be sloppy….

Stephan

[Tom]

Thanks Stephan.

I am just so use to having the BROWSER area being my “database-container” of media that it is hard to separate from my current Adobe-Paradigm.

Since FCP allows you the flexibility to drop things on the timeline from Finder, it comes off as a little scary in terms of project management; I liked having my media-management completely separate from my artistic canvas.

I would be curious if anybody else had advice here – esp. those from an AE background.

– TH