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Compounds and media management disasters
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D’oh. How about breaking apart the remaining compound and selecting just that media (don’t select the mixed audio), copy, paste, etc… Try organizing it without the mixed audio first. Then bring the final audio in and try that. Maybe something strange is happening with the audio whereby it was originally attached to a now non-existant compound clip.
Thinking “crazily way outside the box” – what if you compound the final project and then organize that? Not expecting it to work, but who knows. It’s all about the funky workarounds with X.
Michael Garber
5th Wall – a post production company
Blog: GARBERSHOP -
[Oliver Peters] “The user request was to make media management better, not break it completely. 😉
“My sympathies.
I kinda think about the Event Browser as a land of HUBS with I/O connections to the X database. Moving items into Events makes them “connectable” to other things. Which begs the question when is connecting connected things to other connected things NOT a good idea.
Answer, probably often.
For me, versions are best stored in projects, NOT in events.
Clearly, the fact that once you launch a disk image and “connect” it to your current work, X does NOT want you to disconnect that Image from the database without a fight. Good evidence that it’s NOT happy unless it can constantly communicate the image with the database to update changes.
X is NOT like before X. The database is a living thing and MUST be managed properly or all hell breaks loose.
I think your recent experience, Oliver, is a good example of this. The EB was NOT designed as a “work in progress storage space. It’s better conceived as an inventory management space. Its RECEIVING. Before work moves to the SHOP FLOOR (timeline) then onto the STOCK ROOM (Project Library) or the actual public store shelves (Share Module)
Working against that flow, while possible, has repercussions.
Thanks for posting this. I bet it will help a lot of people clean up sketchy workflows.
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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[Michael Garber] “How about breaking apart the remaining compound and selecting just that media (don’t select the mixed audio), copy, paste, etc… Try organizing it without the mixed audio first. “
Have fun. 😉 At this point, I’ve run the experiments that I have time for and determined it doesn’t work. If I have to go through some crazy workaround to force it to work, then I would never use it in real instances. For now, I will simply swear off compounds, since I know the “normal” way works.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Bill Davis] “For me, versions are best stored in projects, NOT in events. “
Remember that the versions in the Event are only the past versions and not active versions. They are the older rough cuts and are not used in the final edit other than as a “scratch pad”. The Project timeline is theoretically clean of connections. Obviously that’s probably not the case here.
[Bill Davis] “Clearly, the fact that once you launch a disk image and “connect” it to your current work, X does NOT want you to disconnect that Image from the database without a fight.”
I don’t do anything with disk images.
[Bill Davis] “Working against that flow, while possible, has repercussions.”
I’m not sure any of this is working against the flow as designed. Clearly the app allows it. John D seems to have set up his entire facility flow around it. The fact that it’s not working without issues, seems to point to something that still is not right in the application.
In any case, the objective was to end up with a single Project and a single Event containing only the associated media. That part at least is designed into the app and should have worked correctly. Remember that the whole behavior of Duplicate+Used Clips changed at 10.0.6, so it’s quite possible it was broken in that change.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Another strange thing, unless I’m missing something, is that all of my background music files were copied as aliases and not as real files, together with a few png’s after I duplicated project + used clips. They were into different Events, as I don’t care using the music browser, but they should have been copied as well as the other files onto the new “clips for xxx” event, I guess. I had to launch “organize event media” to see the actual files copied into the new event. This happened in all the project I wanted to archive using “duplicate project + used clips”. Archiving is pretty crucial to me as I think for all other editors/producers, I’d like to see an option to duplicate project + used clips excluding the transcoded HQ media together with the render files.
Fabrizio D’Agnano
Rome, Italy -
[Oliver Peters] “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. T”
Why not make a compound in the Event first and copy and paste the Project material in to it?
I want to try and reproduce this.
Basically, compound a bunch of Projects to add to the Event to save as “versions”.
Make a new Project.
Add the Compounds.
Delete 90% of them.
Break Apart the remaining 10%.
Dupe + Used Clips
I should now have a Project with the 10% plus an Event of the reaming 90%?
Is that the proper sequence of steps?
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Why not make a compound in the Event first and copy and paste the Project material in to it?
I want to try and reproduce this.”Have fun testing. 😉
Quite frankly, I probably went back and forth between projects and compounds in the events. It’s been a month ago when this edit was done, so I don’t completely remember every step. As best as I recall, the steps were:
1. Edit Project – 1 per commercial
2. Compound and save to Event
3. Break apart compounded items in the Project.
4. Continue editing and repeat a few times for client editorial process
5. Create new Project for spots to be assembled in a series
6. Copy & paste clips from individual Projects to 1 master project (Note, you should have no compound clips in the project itself at this point)That was the point the edit was done. Then for the current test, these were the steps.
1. Duplicate Project from #6 above.
2. Delete all spots/clips, except last one in the new duplicated project. So you have 1 x 30-sec on the project timeline.
3. Duplicate that Project using Duplicate + Used Clips option. Create New Event as part of this step. (Note, this new Event had both clips and compounded clips in it, in my test.)
4. Organize media for this new Event– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
PS: I should add that during the original edit, some of the compounded clips were “opened in timeline” and had done edits done within. That may or may not affect your test results.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Thank you.
Compounds are essential to my workflow, so if this produces crappy results, I’d like to test it!
And you said that an XML export and import did not shake loose the weirdness, right?
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[Jeremy Garchow] “And you said that an XML export and import did not shake loose the weirdness, right?”
Correct. Didn’t fix it within FCP X.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com
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