Media Manager worse than ever!

[Mark Raudonis]

Pete,

We’re experiencing the same thing. Can you post more details of what you’re seeing? Are you using multiclips? Thanks.

mark

[Rich Rubasch]

Jumping in to add that I always believed that FCP could use a simple consolidate and decompose like in the old Avid. I know, it’s not an Avid. But those were two things that made consolidating media and creating a sequence with no associated clips so blasted easy….and it was ultra-reliable.

Apple seems to think we only want to work in full-rez all the time, but once in a while we just want to get rid of the extra media. Consolidate was perfect for that. And if we had all low rez media, decompose would create a sequence and bin full of offline clips that were only what was used in the sequence.

Again, Media Manager has a clunky workflow (make a new project, lots of buttons to click, not intuitive, sorry) and it hasn’t really ever been refined or reworked.

Really needs it. Really.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Carsten Orlt]

can it be that you created the project originally in vers 5.1.x ?
maybe because Apple changed things under the hood projects created and captured in pre vers 6 might cause problems in the latter?

[David Mcclellan]

MEDIA MANAGER SUCKS!!

All of your media has to have timecode in order to be managed. Including hundreds of sound effects and ADR clips. Yeah this is practical.

Media Manager should be able to read EVERYTHING IN THE TIMELINE – ALL THE TIME – including any imported music files and ALL NON-TIMECODED MATERIAL – I.E. EVERYTHING IN THE TIMELINE – and be able to accurately make size reduced NEW projects (with handles) of JUST THE STUFF IN THE TIMELINE. Yet this never works – or if it does it does not work effectively.

Lots of Media used in filmmaking is non timecode based stuff. Pictures, music, ADR tracks, etc… THIS IS CRUCIAL. WHAT GOOD IS A MEDIA MANAGER THAT CAN’T EFFECTIVELY MANAGE ALL YOUR MEDIA???

For Instance: I make a film. it has 150 or so music cues. It has several hundred Sound effect cues. It has 200 lines of ADR. It has CG elements and text elements. All of these elements are NON – Timecode Based bits of media that get imported into FCP and used in the timeline without any issue. I don’t have the time to add timecode tracks to the 500 or so small clips of media – and what is more I shouldn’t have to. Now the movie is done and I want to MEDIA MANAGE IT down to its final timeline with handles of 1 or 2 seconds for all the clips. guess what? I’m Screwed. Why?

Because FCP only media manages timecode based files. All my music and ADR and effects are LOST in any Media Management that I do. This is a HUGE FLAW. As far as I am concerned – if FCP can read the in and out points in the timeline of non timecode based material while I’m editing and printing to tape and Compressing etc… then it should be able to read the correct in’s and out’s when I am Media Managing and – if need be – assign it a timecode track on the fly. If this is so mission critical to FCP – then it should be an option in the media manager window.

Please please please correct this. I’ll give you another $500 if you just freaking correct this Apple. Or maybe you can just pull a few of your iPhone commercials out of prime time to pay for the programming upgrade.

-DM

G5 Dual 2.5Ghz
OSX4 FCP5
Lots of Ram – Lots of cables – Lots of bills…

[Mark Raudonis]

[cofe] “can it be that you created the project originally in vers 5.1.x ?”

In our case, that’s definitely it. We’ve taken the same project BEFORE upgrading and it works just fine. Take it into 6 and we’re left with many, many clips unable to “shed” their unused media. We haven’t done the “6 only” test yet, but in our case there’s so many projects in the pipeline that once we upgrade, we HAVE to bring a lot of projects forward.

Mark

[Joe Murray]

“MEDIA MANAGER SUCKS!!”

I agree…no argument there. It has lots of issues. But I don’t have any issues with non-timecoded files. Stills, music, whatever, if I media manage a sequence those elements show up fine in the new project. Where I have the most problems is clips with speed changes. What happens with your non-timecode elements? They just dissappear?

Joe Murray

[Pete Fausone]

[mark raudonis] “Take it into 6 and we’re left with many, many clips unable to “shed” their unused media.”

Exactly.
The shows I’m doing currently are cut on 5.1.4, I’m not willing to lose my clients by changing their offline in mid season to FCP 6. But the point was why can’t FCP 6 media manage a sequence like 5.1.4
About 70% of the clips trimmed just fine. There is no difference with the clips that failed to trim, none at all. Media manager is just broken again.

So I will just do my online on Monday again in 5.1.4, not able to even try to see what else is broken in FCP 6. I know no one at Apple is doing an HD 1080P online for real, that is why this keeps happening. I know no one from Apple has ever had to match the performance of a real post workflow and turn around a 1 hour network episodic online in 4 or 5 hours with every single clip frame accurate. Much less laying off to HDCAM SR without randomly starting a frame late. Without the over the top effort by the guys at BlackMagic (Doug building me custom drivers that are 100% frame accurate with an SR machine) none of this would even be worth using.

I’m sorry but by now Apple should of have some pros in there making sure the basics work before releasing yet another version of FC. rant rant…I do like the real time HD, wish I could use it.

[Nick Meyers]

DM: All of your media has to have timecode in order to be managed. Including hundreds of sound effects and ADR clips. Yeah this is practical.

NM: yeah, it is.
if it doesn’t come from tape, FCP is not going to let you delete what may be the only copy of the file in the universe.

DM: Lots of Media used in filmmaking is non timecode based stuff. Pictures, music, ADR tracks, etc… THIS IS CRUCIAL. WHAT GOOD IS A MEDIA MANAGER THAT CAN’T EFFECTIVELY MANAGE ALL YOUR MEDIA???

NM: it does manage it.
just wont trim it.
don’t see how you can trim a picture, though…

DM: I don’t have the time to add timecode tracks to the 500 or so small clips…..
(rant rant rant…)
NM: all you need to do is give the files a REEL#.
that would take all of 10 seconds.

nick

[Herb Sevush]

NickM –

If that’s really the thinking behind this limitation in Media Manager it’s moronic. Unlink Media allows you to delete non-tinecoded files with a simple warning dialogue, why couldn’t Media Manager do the same thing? I don’t like the idea of Apple deciding what my work flow ought to be and protecting me from myself – I’m a big boy and would like to make my own decisions.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Aaron Neitz]

When I asked some FCP “gurus” at a recent tradeshow if there were any improvements to Media Manager…. they said “Uh, look! We’ve included Color for free!”

POS = Media Manager. It’s shameful.