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Event scope is limit for keywords
Does anyone else not find it extremely limiting that keywords are limited in scope to Events ?
Sure, I can assign the SAME keyword to videos in different events, but I can’t create a smart folder at the uber-event level, or see a keyword folder across events.
So for example assuming I have events for each project I do… I might want to be able to easily see all for videos that have squirrels in them.
In an event, I’d have my squirrel keyword folder.
But across events, all I can do is search at that level and enter the keywords – I can not save the search as a smart folder.
Obviously the real power of smart folders comes from combining keywords, etc and yet they have been limited to the scope of one event ??
Seems madness ?
stu
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9 Replies
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At the risk of giving you an “Apple-esque” answer, I think you need to rework your Events strategy. Think of an Event as your older (FCP 7) project subfolder for media within the Capture Scratch folder. If you are working a single large production, then all the media for that production should be imported into a single Event. Now you can freely organize within that Event, using Smart Collections and Keyword Collections.
Your FCP X Projects are sequences or timelines in the FCP 7 sense. So you can have multiple Projects that all relate to the edits made for this single production – all related to the same media in this one Event folder. You can create folders in the Project browser and stick all related Projects (timelines) into a single folder for organizational purposes.
To keep Projects and Events folders and media organized, move all inactive Events (media) folders and Project folders OUT of the default folders at the Finder level. For example on my drives, I’ve created “Final Cut Events – Inactive” and “Final Cut Projects – Inactive” folders to park all items NOT currently involved in my active FCP X session. Move the subfolders between these and the default “Final Cut Events” and “Final Cut Projects” folders at the Finder level, as needed. Philip Hodgetts also has a small app to Show/Hide active/inactive Events.
Although, FCP X has absorbed many FC Server tools, it isn’t an asset management tool. I know the things you are asking for would have made sense in the FCP 7 design, but that’s no longer how the program is organized. Hope that helps.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
The moving of folders at Finder level is a clunky workaround, but it works!
Hopefully Apple will give us more control within FCPX about which projects are visible in an update
Steve Connor
Adrenalin TelevisionHave you tried “Search Posts”? Enlightenment may be there.
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[Steve Connor] ” The moving of folders at Finder level is a clunky workaround, but it works!”
Agreed.
Essentially what Apple has done is that they copied how Avid deals with media files. There, media is imported or captured to a common Avid Media Files folder at the root of the drive. Your “visibility” to this media is controlled by the editing project you are working in. Similar with Autodesk and Quantel.
In the case of FCP X, they’ve taken this one step further, by organizing the media inside the FC Events folder on the drive into subfolders that are accessible by the user at the Finder level.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
hmm. It’s not really an FCP7 thing – its a meta-data thing.
I’d give a better comparison with Aperture.
Here I have similar structures, metadata, tags, etc.
In aperture I may very well have done certain shoots for certain client projects, however I am building a database of material as I go.
When I later work with a new client project, I have an easy way of looking through all my ‘night skyline’ footage and selecting some across my whole catalog of shots.
That is the beauty of meta-data. It can be organised in 100s of different ways all ‘at once’ rather than via a fixed folder style structure.
And the idea of having to move events in and out of the folder is really naff and clunky. The whole idea is to abstract the media out of the file system so the user does not need to know about it (hence autosave, Lion’s hiding of the file system, etc). Facts like sneeking behind the scenes and changing your footage breaks the links to the media in the event bare this out.
What FCPX does is give you this, but ONLY to the level of an event, and above that you still have a fixed folder type structure (events only).
I am positive this is just a bug. When I try to create the smart folder I get ‘The operation could not be completed. No information is available about the problem’ dialog.
Which sounds like a bug to me.
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[stu smythe] “In aperture I may very well have done certain shoots for certain client projects, however I am building a database of material as I go.
When I later work with a new client project, I have an easy way of looking through all my ‘night skyline’ footage and selecting some across my whole catalog of shots.”
I completely understand what you are saying. It’s just that FCP X doesn’t work that way today. Maybe in future versions. This would depend on how much of FC Server gets rolled into the application.
And yes, the Finder gyrations are clunky, but for now, that’s Apple’s recommendation.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Stu,
I believe searching across events is possible by first selecting the disk icon which contains the events in the event browser. This “loads” all the events on that into the current context and then searching keywords works across them all.
Let me know if that helps,
– Oren -
yes, as I say searching works. what does not work is saving your search as a smart folder. that gets you the weird error.
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Searching might be possible, but smart-collections and folders are event-restricted. and Stu is right, that is complicating things.
We also ran into problems when merging events, because a merge also destroys your folders and existing smart-collections in BOTH events involved.I hope they change that, because it works in Aperture and should be possible from a database-programming-standpoint.
Example: You follow a team. If not every week/game, then let´s say you make every YEAR ONE event. In the second year you look for all scores from one player in home games shot from the low-angle……and maybe you also have an event from another team…so three events involved….there are workarounds, but then why have smart collections at all?
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[alban egger] “because it works in Aperture and should be possible from a database-programming-standpoint”
Sure, it should, but I wouldn’t be so sure that it will. In the case of Aperture, the database is in a single Aperture Library file. In FCP X, there is separate database info in each of the various Project and Event folders.
When you look at how Final Cut Server works, there are also divisions. For example, in FC Srvr, certain info is derived from an uploaded FCP 7 project. The material is typically organized in two groups: “assets” and “productions”. Assets can be searched within the “productions” branch based on metadata added within an FCP 7 project during editing. For example, text info added in a Comments or Description column. However, that info exists only as long as the project file is part of the FC Srvr database. Delete the project and that criteria is not searchable, even though the assets are still in the system. OTOH, if you go down the “assets” branch, searches using this project-based criteria won’t yield any results.
So, it could be an easily updated feature down the road – or – it could be limited by the code.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com
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