importing P2 media

[Craig Alan]

Nope. it adds it to the original media folder in the library and the new folder of my choosing. I guess it would save a step of creating a backup of rewrapped media. But the common recommendation is to back up the entire card as is.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Bret Williams]

All your media should exist in both places. Everything has to exist in the original folder. The difference with external media is that those are sym links / aliases.

So do those files have little arrows on the corner of their icons? When you cmd+shift+R a clip from the sequence or the event, where does it take you? It should take you to the external media folder, not the sym links in the original folder in the library.

[Andreas Kiel]

You could use the Panasonic ingest tool first instead of doing it directly in FCP X.
https://pro-av.panasonic.net/en/sales_o/p2/cms/

-Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

[Bill Davis]

First, Listen to Andreas. He knows more about this stuff than I’ll ever hope to.

But basically, it’s not just the data, but the entire card volume structure that X looks for.

So finder dragging assets from one folder to another is often where people get their workflows messed up.

If Andreas recommends using that particular P2 card tool for copying your P2 assets – that’s precisely what I’d do.

I’ve only used P2 on a couple of shoots – and when I have, I was able to use Mr. Kiels’ SCDI tool to clone the P2 cards in their entirety – directories intact – and when I did so, as usual, launching the clones, “looked” to X as if I’d remounted the original cards. From that status, my X database would repopulate and I could work as usual.

I believe the key with using any “non-native” FCP-X file types is simply that you need some type of file parser installed that X can use to translate the original files into something X can see. I had this issue with Canon C300 footage a few months ago. I had a kinda messy week because the codec installers hadn’t been updated to work in Mavericks and so I first had to find a Utility to re-wrap every incoming file from MXF into ProRes externally. (a pain in the butt!)

I finally got tired of that and found a way to launch my system in target disk mode from a pre-Mavericks OS – update the MXF converter utility -and once I got that done, X could read the C-300 files directly inside X just like any other native video file type..

This is pretty typical transcoding FUD when you’re working with new file types or OS files in the early weeks after they’re released.

It’s a pain to solve, but once you solve it – it typically stays solved permanently.

That was my experience with both P2 and with Canon MXF.

A hassle for a short while – then the hassle disappeared never to be seen again.

Welcome to modern digital video!

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.

[Craig Alan]

You are correct!
Opened library package>
opened original media folder>
get info on one of these clips saved to a different folder>
and sure enough it’s an alias.
The next time I set up a new project I’ll try saving to a different folder and see if the entire media card is saved outside the library.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

Bill.
I used that P2 program when I got our first P2 cam and needed to edit in FCP 7. It’s a viewer and can rewrap the media. It would be a whole other step and the interface is a bit unintuitive.

As far as I can tell as long as I copy the entire folder structure of a card into a folder in the finder nothing is missing from the structure. FC has no trouble importing and rewrapping it. One time when a project got corrupted, I was able to reimport the media from these folders and had no problems. But I will give Andreas’ program a try anyway.

I starting using his disk bundle creation tool and it saves me time over using the disk utility app. I love the fact that his little app can resize the bundle. I have had little luck doing this in disk utility. However I do not want to create yet more sparse images (for each card folder). I keep an entire project with all assets in a sparse bundle and that organization works for me.

That said FC does not see my folders as a camera or archive. It sees it as media. Not sure why I would care, but willing to learn.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Andreas Kiel]

Kind of summary.

I personally always would make an ISO copy of the card as well. Maybe some files are corrupted and you don’t realize immediately then the issue is hard to fix.
Having an ISO copy you always can copy that to a cam card and have good chances the camera fixes the issues.
You can use my copyCards (https://www.spherico.com/filmtools/copyCards/copyCards.dmg) to make save verified card copies in one step.

With P2 media you can use either the Pana editor (and I agree it is ugly) , Calibrated plug in, MXF4mac plug in (which are kind of pricy, but can make the workflow much faster) or finally FCPX.

FCPX will wrap AND copy the media in any case.
With X 10.1 in most cases (I don’t why sometimes not) you can choose a folder where the wrapped copies can be stored.
There is some weird thing though, the wrap/copy can change the dimensions viewable for other apps outside FCPX. A common example 1440 x 1080 will be 1888 x 1062. That might affect some apps.

Both of the plugins require an app to create an XML to transport the metadata. But in both cases the files can be left in place. Using the XML route can have another option. If you recorded external sound and have TC (LTC) and want to ignore cam sound it will save you a lot of time.

Having libraries finally is a good thing. So any customer project (not the FCPX ‘project’ – I hate the naming conventions in FCPX) can be easily carried around when all media are in the Original Media folder. The can be opened anywhere without problems – as long the other system has all external effects installed. But they might become huge and difficult to transport. So the option to leave the media in place will make them smaller. But often not small enough. There are still Proxies, Optimised media and render files which could use a lot of space. Latter can be cleared directly in FCPX. For the others there are apps available to clean up to make the Library “upload ready”.
I personally use some script-chain to handle Proxies and Optimised Media same way as Media. After running the script all Proxies and Optimised media are in external folders.
Thats where Sparsebundles come in again. You can put the whole customer project on one Sparsebundle to move it around.
With co-workers once they have the original Sparsebundle only the “cleaned” Library has to be exchanged. All file paths will stay the same on every machine. That makes FCPX way faster on launch and doesn’t require any reconnects by the user.

My 2 cents
-Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

[Craig Alan]

Thanks. I followed most of that. I do keep all my individual projects in a sparse image. I’m pretty sure I can copy my card backup back onto a P2 card. I open the folder i put it in and copy the folder and file back onto the card. I’ll try this soon to make sure I’m right. I found that FCP X could not handle 720p 30P coming from one of our cams so I remember copying the media back onto a P2 card, played the media out SDI on the camera and used a Ki Pro to make a copy of the footage and then importing that. As of now my workflow is to copy the P2 card into a folder. Then import that folder into FC saving the rewrapped clips into an external folder and the alias files into the library — all of these are in a sparse bundle with the project name. For important projects, I make an additional copy of the P2 card on a different system and a copy of the sparse image when the project is complete.

If your card copy app can make the first step faster and more bullet proof, I’ll give it a try.

One small request on your sparse bundle creator app. When I type in the name of a new project in your app, I like to do a select all copy of that name so when I make the various folders of this project (library, event, project, external folder of rewrapped media, etc I can just copy the project name into each of these and maybe add or delete from there. For example for the P2 card folder I add P2. But in your app I can’t copy the name I just typed in. No big deal but I have never seen that behavior. My work around is when the sparse bundle is created, I right click on the name and choose rename and then command c to copy the name.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Andreas Kiel]

If your card copy app can make the first step faster and more bullet proof, I’ll give it a try.
It depends on you. If you check the ‘verify’ option it is definitively safer but a bit slower compared to a Finder copy. If you use the backup option additionally it will faster to create two copies of the card since the backup is created from the verified copy on your hard drive and reading speed will be much higher – and it is only one click.
The reason I use ISO as backup is that this will work with any OS not only Mac.

One small request on your sparse bundle creator app…
I will do that in the next weeks and also add some features of my X-Files P add to the app.

-Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

[Andreas Kiel]

I’ve updated SCDI to make “Paste” working.

-Andreas

https://www.spherico.com/filmtools/createDiskImage/CreateDiskImage.dmg

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil