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Compounds and media management disasters
A while back I had started a thread about working with edits as compound clips in the event versus project. It now appears to me that doing this creates real havoc if you attempt to do any consolidation of media the files within FCP X.
In the original edit, I was cutting 10 spots. Total of about 800-900 master clips. As I edited a rough cut in a project, I would compound it (saving that version to the event), then break apart the compound on the project timeline and continue editing for another variation based on client edit decisions. The result was a number of compound clips saved into the event, which represented the various versions of cuts for each spot. In the end, I had 10 projects, which were the final cut of each spot. All projects had items broken apart, so no compounds (nests) used within any project timeline. Then I copied-pasted project clips to one long master project timeline that was all 10 spots in a sequence with slates, logos, etc.
Yesterday I was doing a test to see how best to deal with media management in FCP X. I took my project of 10 spots and removed all clips except the last spot. My project now had 20 video clips and a single mixed audio track for a single 30 sec. TV spot. I then used the Duplicate+Used Clips option and created a new event and project. In that event, I had the clips, but also ALL compound clips from the original event. Even though NO compound clips appeared in this project timeline. I could not get rid of these, as I got an “in use” message preventing me from removing them.
The next step was to Organize Media, in order to copy all linked files into the new event folder. This should have copied only about 20 media files, but in fact, proceeded to copy over 400 media clips! Obviously it was taking anything tied to the compound clips. A complete mess. I couldn’t even get the background copying to stop and had to force quit to get out of this process.
FWIW – an XML to Premiere Pro or FCP 7 of the same sequence let me do perfect media management of this edited spot, i.e. clips used in the sequence, that were trimmed with handles.
My guess is that even though compound clips did not show up in this project, there’s some under-the-hood voodoo happening to still link the compounds to the project. So from now on, I’m back to avoiding compounds unless absolutely necessary. Just like nests in FCP 7 are evil, I guess, so too, are compounds 😉
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
26 Replies
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This sounds similar to Sony Vegas – where if you put all 10 spots on one timeline then deleted everything but 1 spot all the media would still be in the Media Pool (weird Vegas feature) if you then did any kind of media management, ALL the media would still go with the project. What Vegas has though is a little button to “clean” the Media Pool, leaving only the media that is on the timeline and nothing else. Maybe FCPX needs this type of feature?
I think you could have handled it differently though and just created a project for each spot and pasted the finished spot into each timeline – then you would have had a “clean” project for each spot and managed each spot as needed.
Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Downtown Long Beach, California
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1680680/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1 -
I definitely think the compounds are part of the problem, since these were copied over as part of the creation of the new event. That’s in spite of not being used in the final timeline.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
I had much the same problem archiving 5 finished projects using “duplicate project + used clips) and moving them to a sparse disk image after deleting the transcoded files. One of the projects contained two compound clips, and while with the other four the operation was almost smooth (there was a problem, really, but I don’t want to go O.T.), it caused a “not enough disk space” warning even if the event and the project folders were about 31 Gb and the s.d.i. size was about 100 Gb . When I tried to move them separately, the event invoked a compound clip problem with clips in other events even if I launched “organize event media” a couple of times (I don’t exactly remember the warning), so I left it at root level.
Fabrizio D’Agnano
Rome, Italy -
Yes FCP X is definitely buggy in this respect. Maybe it will be fixed in the next version.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Hey Oliver-
You may have already tried this – but what happens if you copy your final edited timeline into a new project timeline and then organize media, duplicate etc…?
Michael Garber
5th Wall – a post production company
Blog: GARBERSHOP -
Oh no! I took to heart your argument for compounds.
Furthermore, Apple encourages you to use compounds in their Help docs, noting that compounds create no space or speed hits.
Of course, I initially began creating new Projects as though they were tabbed Sequences in Legacy. Then I noticed in the Project Folder that every single project seems to create new Render folders, e.g. they are not sharing renders a la Legacy.
So I started doing exactly what you describe, compounding an edit and labeling it RoughCut v3 and so on.
This part seems to work okay; I may just have to avoid the media management.
Doug D
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[Michael Garber] “You may have already tried this – but what happens if you copy your final edited timeline into a new project timeline and then organize media, duplicate etc…?”
Yep. No difference. Also tried exporting an XML and re-importing it. Also no difference.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Douglas K. Dempsey] “This part seems to work okay; I may just have to avoid the media management.
“As a longtime FCP Classic user I’m conditioned NOT to use Media Management anyway!
Steve Connor
There’s nothing we can’t argue about on the FCPX COW Forum
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[Douglas K. Dempsey] “Oh no! I took to heart your argument for compounds.”
LOL. Yes, me, too!
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Steve Connor] “As a longtime FCP Classic user I’m conditioned NOT to use Media Management anyway!”
The user request was to make media management better, not break it completely. 😉
I’ve actually had OK results with FCP Legacy MM over the years; however, this is one of the reasons I trust Automatic Duck Media Copy far more than I trust Apple. Unfortunately the more you want to do with X the more juggling you do with various pieces and parts to end up with functional workflows.
I’m sure some here will argue to use sparse disk images and save everything, but that’s simply not viable for a lot of productions. I do actually save everything (raw media archived to hard drives or LTO), but I want a tight, compact version for easy changes and versioning later. Why restore 1TB of files, when 10-20GB will do? 😉
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com
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