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media management
Posted by Dan Crouch on April 5, 2009 at 1:35 amI have been using Avid for 6 years and have just cut a US job on Final Cut Pro. I am now doing another on it. I really want to like it, I really do, but the way it deals with media is so rubbish I can hardly believe it!!!
In both jobs the relationship between the media and the clips itself is slender at best. I have to relink some clips every other day. Even then the FCP can’t find them and I have to manually find them and de-select the ‘match name and reel only’.
I have talked to other editors who have the misfortune to work with FCP and they have had similar experiences.
Could anyone please tell me how to improve this problem?
Thankyou in advance.
Dan CDan Crouch replied 15 years, 10 months ago 8 Members · 12 Replies -
12 Replies
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Andrew Kimery
April 5, 2009 at 6:08 pmW/o knowing your specific system setup and workflow it’s kinda hard to tell you want could be improved. 😉
My first reaction is that something is definitely not right. For the past couple of years I’ve been one of dozen or so editors working daily on an xSan with, give or take, 900hrs of footage coming and going and I can only thing of handful of instances where FCP has ‘lost’ a clip for no apparent reason. MM isn’t one of FCP’s strong suits, but what you are describing I haven’t run into before.
And, just out of curiosity, have the other editors you talked w/also been Avid editors that aren’t very familiar w/FCP?
Shane Ross, one of the community leaders here, has a very good DVD about project management for FCP.
https://store.creativecow.net/p/63/getting_organized_in_final_cut_pro-A
3.2GHz 8-core, FCP 6.0.4, 10.5.5
Blackmagic Multibridge Eclipse (6.8.1) -
Dan Crouch
April 5, 2009 at 9:15 pmHi Andrew, thanks for the post.
I am running an intel G5 with 8 gigs of ram. FCP version – 6.0.5
I think I may have found the problem, if I could run it by you.
All the media is on 3 terrabite drives. It was dig’d (by someone else) into what seem’s to me quite random capture scratch folders scattered across the drives including internal HD. Some are folders within folders. The project lives on one of the TB drives.Admittedly, I am thinking in an ‘Avid could handle this’ sort of way, but perhaps you could tell me if this description rings any alarm bells for you?
Yes the other editors I referred to are Avid editors… point taken 😉
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Mark Suszko
April 5, 2009 at 10:00 pmWhen this happens to me, it’s always come down to “pilot error”, putting clips or elements into play without going thru the proper importation dialogs, or changing a preset or scratch drive assignment. Like forgetting that an element on my thumb drive needs to actually be imported to the proper bin in the proper drive, if I want to see it again tomorrow. But that’s me. Avid is undisputed king of media organization. Maybe they make it harder to do it wrong in the first place and still function?
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Dan Crouch
April 5, 2009 at 10:12 pmHi Mark, thanks for the post. If you don’t mind could you expand on this?
“Like forgetting that an element on my thumb drive needs to actually be imported to the proper bin in the proper drive”
I still haven’t fully grasped the protocol of where media should live. ie all on one drive, or has to be together with project drive??
Cheers,
Dan. -
Bill Davis
April 6, 2009 at 6:39 amLook, with FCP media doesn’t exactly HAVE to be anywhere. I’ve known guys who insist on capturing to their system drives, which is generally considered silly, because you don’t want the system looking for code and OS resources while the same drive heads are trying to access and play footage. But they do it.
That said, I got a cold chill down my spine when you said your footage was batched by a bunch of different people using multiple scratch discs – some within other folders.
That’s just silly. Any NLE has enough file management stuff going on without making it run down needless electronic cooridors looking for pointers to other pointers that point to the original footage.
Generally speaking, video footage should be kept on INTERNAL buss attached drives in a single Capture scratch folder with one level deep sub folders – clearly named for the divisions you want to break your work into – whether that’s projects, chapters, reels or whatever.
Don’t misunderstand me. FCP will often work FINE with nested folders, drives hung on external firewire busses, etc. Right up until something gets screwed up, and then it’s hell to try to troubleshoot a complex system.
Just last month I had a major hassle when a co-worker batched to a new Firewire 800 drive that happend to hang off a machine with an already attached Firewire 400 drive. One of them didn’t like the presence of the other and until we moved all the clips to the internal drive, we had a lot of trouble.
But once we did that things were instantly OK.
You shouldn’t lose ANY on-line clips unless you remove the drive that they’re on, or choose to un-link them.
My advice is to re-think your clips storage. Put all the clips on their own drive and re-link them to your timeline clips in big batches.
Avid spent a LOT more time building a robust media management world than did FCP. That’s pretty much a reality. But understand that a lot of us have been using it for a full decade now (introduced at NAB 99!) and we would have abandoned it long ago if it wasn’t a dependable and solid editing tool.
Good luck.
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Dan Crouch
April 6, 2009 at 7:34 amDear Bill,
Thanks for that, that was a very clear explanation. I think this project is too far gone and would it be more hassle to get all the rushes together on to to ne drive. But I will follow your suggestions for the next one. Cheers V much, Dan. -
Trent Whittington
April 6, 2009 at 8:40 amIt also comes down to organization. Set out a specific way you will name and capture all footage and insist on everyone who is working on the project to do the same thing.
There is a great article in the latest COW Magazine by Dustin Lau on media management also; be sure to check it out 🙂
best of luck.
Trent Whittington – Currently studying Associate Degree in Digital Television
iMac – 24inch 3.06Ghz, FC STUDIO 2, Adobe Production Premium CS4.
Asus eee – 8.9inch 1.6Ghz 1Gb Ram, Windows XP -
Richard Herd
April 6, 2009 at 6:20 pm[Bill Davis] “My advice is to re-think your clips storage. Put all the clips on their own drive and re-link them to your timeline clips in big batches”
Something similar can be done after-the-fact using “Media Manager.”
File > Media Manager…
(There’s details to wade through, but they’re self-explanatory.)
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Mark Raudonis
April 7, 2009 at 3:11 amIt is a poor carpenter who blames his hammer for a botched job.
Would you approach an Avid project this unprepared or uniformed?
’nuff said.
Mark
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Dan Crouch
April 7, 2009 at 3:25 amummmmmm, yes I did. For my first film using Avid I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, it was a total clentch fest! I could cut ok but media management was a distant engineering term I daren’t even think about. But with the help of really handy forums like this everything turned up rosy…
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