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FCP X media tracking
In case people haven’t encountered it yet, FCP X (10.1 and later) is extraordinarily good about keeping track of external media. If you change externally-linked media file locations at the Finder level – including moving files to other folders or renaming host folders – FCP X is able to track these changes without the media going offline.
I suspect there’s a handshake between OS X (Spotlight maybe) and FCP X. If you do the same think with Premiere Pro or Media Composer (when files are AMA-linked), your files will go offline and you’ll have to relink.
So far I’ve only tested this on the same drive and haven’t moved media from one drive to another. Nevertheless, this is pretty impressive and it’s worth kudos to Apple, given how flaky things were at times with “legacy”.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
7 Replies
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Doesn’t work on their XSAN. Maybe it does use spotlight indexing then.
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[Oliver Peters] “So far I’ve only tested this on the same drive and haven’t moved media from one drive to another. Nevertheless, this is pretty impressive and it’s worth kudos to Apple, given how flaky things were at times with “legacy”.”
Funny story about this, when I was using FCP Legend on an Xsan many moons ago there was software update at some point that caused FCP to be able to ‘follow’ the media no matter where you moved it to. No matter where an editor moved a piece of media after the fact it would never go offline inside FCP (even if the editor put the piece of media in the trash).
While sounding nifty, this bug actually tossed a monkey wrench into our workflow because as part of our archiving process we would move media into a “prepping for archive” folder in order to break any links in FCP so if someone was unknowingly still using ‘old’ media we would find out before deleting it from the Xsan.
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I was going to add that this capability had been around for a while. I don’t know if it was a prokit update or something, but I can do this on a San with Legend and X.
It may have been right around the time X came out.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “It may have been right around the time X came out.”
I don’t think so. The early versions of X were very touchy about anything to do with media. Changing things related to the path names were definitely a problem requiring reconnection of the media.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
I can’t remember offhand, I’ll try and look it up.
It’s a handy feature, none the less.
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Are you talking about while the app is running? It’s always worked this way if the app is running. Legend or X.
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I also really like how you can rename the media file in finder and FCPX still links to it as long as it is open when you do it!
Oren Hercz
Editor, Post-Production Manager
Journeyman Film Company
http://www.journeymanfilm.com
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