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MC and P2 files: preserving clip names?
Hi all:
I’ve been doing some tests with Avid MC 2.7 and footage shot on Panasonic P2 cards, in order to understand better the workflow. I already understand the basics: “File/Import P2/Clips to Bin”, followed by “File/Import P2/Media” in order to bring the MXFs into Avid’s storage and avoid “media offline” errors. However, I’ve also found some oddities, and I don’t know whether they are normal or if there’s any workaround for them:
1) Say I open a card (or rather the files contained in it and stored in a hard drive), import its clips to a bin, and go through all the clips in it, deleting the ones that aren’t useful and renaming/importing media for the ones that are useful. If I unmount that card and then try to mount it again, I get an error “Can’t find any files! Are you sure it’s a P2 media card?”, or something like it. The only way around it is quitting and restarting Avid. Basically, it looks as if you can only mount each card once in every session.
2) Let’s say I spend some time renaming the clips that come from the P2. If I mount again the card they came from, all the clip names get reset: instead of the name I gave them, they go back to “002YH1” or whatever. Also, even if the media in those clips had already been imported, they go back to pointing at the footage in the P2 card, and
you have to import the media all over again (I haven’t found a way to relink the clips to the MXFs that are already in Avid’s local drive).As I said, all of this is in Media Composer 2.7. Thanks in advance for any help.
Paulo.
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3 Replies
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Importing the P2 card MXF files just creates clips that point to the media that is on the cards…it doesn’t bring it onto your media drives. TO do that you need to CONSOLIDATE them to the drive. That is how you copy them from the card.
I always prefer to NOT deal with the original contents on the card. I dump the card first into card dump folders on drives that I will archive (those being my tape masters in essence). Then I will import them into the Avid, then CONSOLIDATE…THEN start naming and organizing.
P2 import differs from all of the other means of importing into an Avid, in that all that does is make clips that points to the exisiting media, instead of importing and copying the footage. Very FCP like behavior.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
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[Shane Ross] “Importing the P2 card MXF files just creates clips that point to the media that is on the cards…it doesn’t bring it onto your media drives. TO do that you need to CONSOLIDATE them to the drive. That is how you copy them from the card.”
I know, and I’ve tried importing the MXFs both with “Consolidate” and with “File/Import P2/Media”, which is also a recommended way to do it, as per this tutorial:
https://community.avid.com/forums/post/313268.aspx
However, with both ways I’m finding the problems I’ve described above. How do you guys do it? Do you never rename the clips and just edit them with their original (“009IFP”) names? 🙂
Also, sorry for the confusion, but I should clarify that, when I talked about “mounting cards”, “importing cards” and so in my original post, I meant the “card-like” file structure, after it’s been offloaded to my hard drive. The “CONTENTS + LASTCLIP.TXT” folder, in other words, which I guess you could call a “virtual card”, residing in my hard drive. (I just wrote “card” because, after all, it’s much shorter than writing “virtual card folder” or whatever…).
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[Paulo Jan] “How do you guys do it? Do you never rename the clips and just edit them with their original (“009IFP”) names? :-)”
I rename the clips after I consolidate. That doesn’t change the source file name at all. Things work fine for me.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def
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