media manager to back up media

[Ben Insler]

Yup, media manager will handle that. The media manager is a scary tool because it can be used to alter your media all at once.. but with time it can be used very effectively. For your purposes, click on your project’s tab in the browser window and then press Comman+A (select all) to select everything in your project. Then go to the media manager. Everything nested within your browser folders will deselect, but that’s fine. All root folders will remain selected and that selection will propogate to everything in your browser.

In the media manager, set your media settings to “Copy.” Don’t include render files (you can always re-render, and they usually don’t reconnect properly anyway…). Make sure the “Include master clips outside selection” checkbox is checked if you have the option to do so (it sould be checked and grayed out). MAKE SURE the “Delete unused media from selected clip” option is UNCHECKED – this should gray out the two nested options below this one. Set “Base media file names on ‘existing file names.'”

Under the Project Section, If you check “Duplicate selected clip and palce into a new project,” it will copy all the media to the location you specify, then save a new project file that has all of your footage in the browser llinked to your new location (although your media may be organized in a new way). The new project will also have duplicates of all your sequences. If you only want to back up your media, then you don’t need to duplicate your project, but it might be a nice thing to have in case your main project file crashes – at least you have a backup of the edit.

Obviously in the Media Destination you are telling FCP where to put the media. If we make a folder called ‘Backup’, FCP will create a new folder structure within ‘Backup’ and place all your copied footage into a folder called ‘media’ within ‘Backup’ all of your files will be placed into this one ‘media’ folder, so if you have a capture file structure that you’re working with (i.e. each tape gets captured to is own individual folder to keep your captured reels organized), you may wish to media manage reel by reel rather than doing the whole project at once.

Also, just a quick note. Frequently when you media manage and then reconnect your footage at a later date, speed changes to footage (Especialy variable speed ramps) do not reconnect properly. If you end up removing and then reconnecting your footage, you may have to recreate any speed ramps that you have created.

Good luck,

Ben

[Melissa]

thanks. you’re very helpful.

[Frank Nolan]

Of course if you just want a back up of the quicktime files then you could just go to the finder and drag and drop the capture scratch folder to another hard drive.

[Ben Insler]

Frank Brings up a good point. There is a drawback to this though. You copy everything, not just everything that’s relevant. For example, if you save a new project file every day (as I do, because if my current one crashes or becomes corrupt I don’t want to lose more than a day’s worth of work), you can have a jumble or worthless render files in your capture scratch from old files. There are ways to clean all these files up using the render manager, but for the time being let’s just say that all those render files are still sitting in your capture scratch somewhere. You may end up copying all of those unnecessary render files. Furthermore, let’s say you were switching between two projects and one day forgot to reset your capture scratch and capture footage from Project A into Project B’s capture scratch archive. The media manager already knows where the footage is and will copy it, whereas if you do this manually you will have to remember all locations where you captured footage and copy each one.

But yes, if you’ve kept your project organized, you can just copy your entire capture scratch folder.

Best,

Ben

[Frank Nolan]

The original question was about backing up media. So, if you navigate to the drive set as the scratch disk, there will be a folder titled “Final Cut Pro Documents”. Inside that there are several folders, apart from the audio render files, render files, cache file folders, there will be a folder titled “Capture Scratch”. Inside that there will be seperate folders for each project title. You just need to drag and drop these folders to another drive and you will have your Quicktime files backed up. It wont copy any render files or project files. However if you have set a Folder in your scratch dik settings instead of just selecting a drive, then you could run into the problem Ben has mentioned about files from Project A ending up in project B.

[David Bogie]

the original question has been posted on other FCP forums, too.
Do us the favor of closing all of them out, will you please? It would be a great service to everyone who is trying to help you out if you synopsized the answers you have received.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[Melissa]

oops. i ddin’t think of that..

[Melissa]

i am trying to only back up the full orginial clips that are in my active sequence…not everythiing in the project

[Ben Insler]

Then you definately need to media manage – trying to find and copy files in the finder would take forever. Follow the same steps that I mentioned earlier, but only select the sequence you want to back up in your browser (rather than selecting all with command+A).

Best,
Ben

Ben Insler
Editor
Telemark Films

[Melissa]

sound like the plan..thanks again to everyone. sorry about the multiple posts around the web.