I’ve created a monster! Need to stabilise my project

[James Bayliss-smith]

Wow! Okay that was pretty easy just copied them over re-opened FCPX and it all worked. I thought one was not supposed to move things outside of X (i.e. using the finder) as it got all confused? I’m confused now.

Okay next problem (which I may or may not tackle depending on System performance)

So I want to merge the 4 events. I went through and deleted the keywords from all the footage in 3 of the events. The one event that is most important to me is Event 1 as ALL my footage has at least one keyword assigned to it. These were assigned when I translated from 7 using 7toX from my original extensive sub clips. These are most important to me as I can quickly navigate my footage. If I merge my events it doesn’t really matter because as long as I have these keywords my footage is organised. It does not matter that there may be several duplicates of my footage in the event. So I merged a couple of events no problem. Now I tried to merge the main events and I get the following message.

The operation cannot be completed.

Two or more media files use the same name. Rename the file or files and start again.

So anyway. Do you think I should try to merge these events somehow. Will the performance get better do you think? How would I do this? Any ideas comments. I’m going to leave it all for now but I’m interested in Hypothetical scenarios. Does FCPX work better with one huge event or lots of smaller ones.

In the day job (a different computer) I’m currently in the process of sorting through 18 months worth of news footage that I have shot into a great archive. Do I go down the one huge event with lots of footage keyworded or do I have several events

e.g. Keywords: economy/military/pollution/politics/etc or events: economy/military/pollution/politics/etc

What will work better?

Cheers

[Jeremy Garchow]

[James Bayliss-Smith] “Wow! Okay that was pretty easy just copied them over re-opened FCPX and it all worked. I thought one was not supposed to move things outside of X (i.e. using the finder) as it got all confused? I’m confused now.”

Using the Finder can be just fine. This is the perfect case for it.

The advantage to using the Finder is that if you are using referenced media like you have, you can move just the Event/Project files and references, and everything will just work.

The disadvantage is that the copies aren’t verified, and using the Finder can cause conflict issues if duplicating elements in the Finder.

For example, if you had Events/Projects, duped them in the Finder, moved it to another machine via Finder, then tried to bring that same material back to the original machine, FCPX would have a conflict because those Events/Projects would have the same ID number. When you use FCPX to dupe things, a new ID number is created and FCPX will have no problem discerning the difference between the two.

Using FCPX to Move or Duplicate, or most any of the media management in FCPX will cause all of the media to import in to the Event. This isn’t good if you want to keep your media referenced in the Event. An upside is that all moves and copies are verified ensuring everything gets over to the destination properly. It also allows you to keep working while this process is happening.

So, there’s a time and a place for using the Finder and using FCPX’s media management capabilities and it wholly depends on what you need to do, how many machines you’ll be working on, and if you need to pass information back and forth.

[James Bayliss-Smith] “So anyway. Do you think I should try to merge these events somehow. Will the performance get better do you think? How would I do this? Any ideas comments. I’m going to leave it all for now but I’m interested in Hypothetical scenarios. Does FCPX work better with one huge event or lots of smaller ones.”

I don’t really know. I don’t use a bunch of smaller Events, I use one big Event per project and load it up. If you are using a bunch of smaller Events, you are potentially having to constantly autosave all of them which might bring down performance. With one Event, the Event will be bigger (longer save) but it’s only saving one file. Trial and error will be your friend here.

As far as the error, do you think that the file that has the same name was somehow imported separately? Perhaps a file has two different UUIDs with the same name and FCPX doesn’t like it, or the media was duped in the Finder and there’s a conflict.

[James Bayliss-Smith] “e.g. Keywords: economy/military/pollution/politics/etc or events: economy/military/pollution/politics/etc

What will work better?”

I tend to keep things together, but that is just the way I like to keep things organized. Once everything starts to get fragmented, it gets harder and harder to track in my mind. Plus, for archive and restore, having things in as few places as possible helps to ensure you are archiving everything and restoring everything.

If you think of an Event as a traditional FCP7 project, would you rather have one project with all of that in it, or a separate project for each subject? I know that FCPX works differently, but you can see the correlation.

I think that “working better” is relative to your needs and situation. If you find that multiple Events works better for you, then by all means go for it. No matter what, make sure you have a decent backup system in place.

Jeremy

[James Bayliss-smith]

Thanks Jeremy I really appreciate your responses. I opened my project with the other events closed and re-linked all the media in my latest edit and bob’s your uncle I’m up and running with only one event and one project referencing only that event. Happy days.

‘m getting a new hard drive. Do you think it is smart to have FCPX duplicate that event fully then I’ll work of that one and mirror the drive. This is as opposed to keeping the files where they are and having the media foider full of Alias files?

[Jeremy Garchow]

[James Bayliss-Smith] “Do you think it is smart to have FCPX duplicate that event fully then I’ll work of that one and mirror the drive. This is as opposed to keeping the files where they are and having the media foider full of Alias files?”

It’s really up to you. There’s nothing wrong with alias files to my knowledge, but this is all new so I can’t pretend to be an expert in this matter.

The trick is, if you do backup your Events/Projects on to another drive, make sure you don’t backup to a “Final cut events/Projects” file on the root level of the second drive as fcpx will attempt to load those.

Put them in a “Backup” or whatever named folder on the second drive to “hide” them from FCPX.

Make sense?

As far as determining an aliased or not workflow, it really depends on what is good for you.

The nice thing about bringing the media in to your event is that you make a copy of the footage right away.

The bad thing is that you make a copy and double your disk space requirements. A bit of a catch22.

I haven’t noticed any performance difference working either way.

You can always bring referenced media in to fcpx using the “organize” function shoud you change your mind later.