Media Manager in FCP Studio 3…

[Sean Lander]

Very accurate description about Avid. The other thing that Avid does differently to FCP is when it makes Motion FX it renders the clips at that speed. So effectively it is still running at your native frame rate, while Final Cut Pro just applies a speed change to the clip. No new media is created, until you render the timeline. This I feel was one of the reasons for some of the problems with MM. The other major difference was that with Avid clips, subclips, freeze frames and sequences were much more logically linked together. You could for example match frame to a freeze frame in your sequence, then match frame from the freeze frame to your subclip from there match frame to your master clip.

Final Cut Pro 6 made Freeze frames and sub clips as MASTER CLIPS! This was really stupid IMHO.
The good news is FCP 7 has fixed all of these issues and it now behaves a lot more like Avid.

Personally now that I’m used to it I much prefer FCPs method of media management. I hate the fact that Avid has to convert everything to it own format especially if you need to share your assets with other workflows such as audio compositing and graphics.

My two cents.

To your original question, so far I’ve found FCS3 to be very stable. The media manager workflow is definitely different to the old version. Now I find that it even separates unused audio and video files from each other. (Not so sure about this yet)

Just about to embark on a large project that will have lots of media management so will try out as many options as are available.

R E D N A I L – M E D I A
web: http://www.rednail.com.au
email: rednail@me.com

[Nick Price]

Hi Michael,
I have have had exactly the same problems with speed changes. Good to hear that it seems to be fixed in FCP7 but like you annoyed that it is intel only. We have G5s here that work fine for documentaries, that will be useless for FCP, and Snow leopard for that matter. Looks like Apple will be making us all buy nice shiny new machines…
best
nick
Evans Woolfe Media