.mts (AVCHD) pains me

[Doug Metz]

[James Taylor] “So what did you end up with for media?”

Clip #1.mov, Clip #2.mov, etc…

[James Taylor] “At the moment, I use clipwrap to wrap everything in an .mov file. I archive the originals. I then import the wrapped files into FCPX. That keeps my libraries as small as possible.”

That’s exactly how I was using it. I want to keep everything external, and I don’t want or need to transcode everything.

Because we do so much media sharing between jobs, I create one Library per volume and then each new job is an Event in that Library. Makes things easy to share, keeps the job folders separate and clean, and I can put 50+ jobs on my RAID before I need to move stuff off. I can’t justify one drive per job, I’ve already got too many… it’s just too much hardware.

I don’t particularly want to open FCPX prefs every time I import, but with AVCHD I now have to. Generally, crew transfers footage from cards to portable HDD (one folder per card). I store this original media by job (in a job folder with a name that makes it easy to find).

Now I’ll have a ‘Final Cut Original Media’ folder in each job, with another folder inside with a date stamp. Date stamps. They’re nice and all, but when I’m searching for a 2-year-old edit, I search by job name and/or number. How the fig would I remember what date it was shot? So, more Finder management.

[James Taylor] “When you import the AVCHD files into FCPX, do you just have the one set of files? Or do you end up with originals and the wrapped files? Is the file size for the library double?”

Generally speaking: untouched original camera files and re-wrapped .mov where necessary for edit. All external.

Doug Metz

Anode