FCPX 10.0.6 , how to media Import video only ?

[Kyle Bass]

Do you mean only the video portions of an audio/video stream? No. If you just want the video, you’ll have to edit it into the timeline using the Video Only option.

[Bill Willins]

Thanks Kyle. This would appear to be a paradigm shift from any other professional edit system I’ve ever worked with. From Avid to FCP 7 , you have always been able to select exactly what you want to import, either just audio, just video etc. I think this feature should be included in future versions, other Cowheads please pipe in with your shared wisdom and thoughts.

[Bret Williams]

Haven’t cared about that feature since pre-DV days around 1998 when all we had was 50 gigs of storage. Doesn’t mean there isn’t some use for it. Which is…

[Bill Davis]

I dunno…

Most incoming digital files are multiplexed clips with video and audio in a single digital stream. Not sure it makes sense to break them apart during the process so you have the ability to pick and choose.

Makes more sense to me to just take read digital stream as it exists in the original file.

Gotta make error checking on ingest a WHOLE lot easier don’t you think?

Picking one or the other made huge sense back in the analog era when you had different signals on different wires. But that was then…

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[Morten]

Log and transfer in legacy let us partly select which parts of an asset to import. Nice when you have used the camera for recording audio, or don’t need 4 empty audio tracks IMHO

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[Jari Innanen]

There is an option to remove silent channels in the import prefs.

[Bret Williams]

I guess what might make more sense would be a need to just import the audio, if for example you used a camera to record VO with no need for the video. But, still, it seems like that was a problem of yesteryear. With drive space being such a non issue these days, it hardly seems a necessity. Even back in the day, I can remember loading something as video or audio only, and then accidentally logging and loading the next batch incorrectly because I forgot to switch the preference back. I quickly learned to always load audio and video.

[Bill Willins]

Your right Brett, forgetting to turn off “video only” and them importing my next clip the same way because I forgot to turn it back on ….. is something we’ve all done. Thank everyone for your input. This is one of those things that there is no clear “right” answer, I could argue for the media import window to have this feature or not. For me personally, I would lean towards the give me the option position, let me decide. Cheers everyone.

[Bob Geile]

I agree that this is a useful feature and will put my name behind adding it to the feature request list.

Re: hard drive space being what it is today. Just because we have a lot of space in a dump does’t mean you should go ahead and make a lot of needless trash. If you know you only need audio of video from a file, then the option should be there for you to import only what you need.