Online stratigy

[Timothy Auld]

You could try exporting an edl and then importing that edl into a new project and recapturing from that. Theoretically this should work for you provided the reels have been named and logged properly.

[Todd Beabout]

Check out this link:

https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/FCP_4_trim_dang_it.html

That should get you through this somewhat weird process. Once you read it it will make sense, and you can do what you need to.

-Todd Beabout
Vazda Studios

[Mel Matsuoka]

I’ve struggled with the consolidation process myself (btw, grabbing an entire reel of dailies as one or two clips, then subclipping them out, is not an unusual workflow. You’ll find many film editors and editors who work with a director looking over thier shoulder doing it this way, as they often want to see every frame of film/video that was shot), and although the article on KenStone’s site comes the closest in outlining a working “workaround”, I found that it did not really work the way I expected it to.

I finally figured out the process (after many many many hours of troubleshooting, manual reading and kenstone-article-studying), and as a public service, present a WORKING, step-by-step Media consolidation process cheat-sheet for FCP 4.x users (I originally wrote this for my company’s internal use, so my apologies for any snide, anti-FCP jokes you’ll find in it…my company has recently switched over to FCP after many years of being an Avid house, so Media Manager frustrations are plentiful here :P):

——————————————————–
Here’s a step-by-step procedure that’s so simple, your douchebag,
user-unfriendly software-engineer mother can follow it.

Step 1: Open the un-consolidated FCP project that has the sequences
you want to consolidate

Step 2: Create a NEW, BLANK PROJECT (“File/New Project”), then when it
asks you to “Select Sequence Preset”, you can choose anything, it
doesn’t matter.

Step 3: SAVE this new, blank project (call it “tempMM” or
something…it doesnt matter, because you’ll just be using this
project as an “in-between” project before doing the actual Media
Manager operation, and then deleting it when youre done.

Step 4: DELETE the blank sequence from the Browser window in the new
“temp” project

Step 5: Next, “tear off” the tab in the Browser window for the “temp”
project, so it appears in its own floating window (you need to do this
so you can drag-copy sequences from one Project to another)

Step 6: DRAG OVER the sequence(s) you want to consolidate FROM the
ORIGINAL project, TO the TEMP project. MAKE SURE YOU ***COPY*** the
sequence and don’t move it!

Step 7: In the Browser, CLOSE THE ORIGINAL PROJECT (leaving the “temp”
project open). Don’t save changes, if it asks you.

Step 8: In the “temp” project, HIGHLIGHT the sequence(s) you just
dragged over, then RIGHT-CLICK, and choose “Make Sequence Clips
Independent” (there is NO visual feedback that lets you know that you
made the sequence clips independent, btw…another Final Cut Novice
moment)

Step 9: Now it’s time to invoke the MEDIA MANGLER. While the
sequence(s) are still highlighted in the Browser, Select “File/Media
Manager” (you can also right-click again, and choose Media Manager
from the contextal-menu.

Step 10: These are the all-important settings to make in the Media
Manager window:

— “Create Offline” media referenced by duplicated sequence.
— Set sequences to “Uncompressed 10-bit NTSC 48khz”
— The ONLY CHECKBOX that should be checked is “Delete unused
media from duplicated sequences, UNLESS you want to add handles to the
consolidated media. Then check “Use Handles” ans set an appropriate
handle length.

Make ABSOLUTELY SURE that “Include Master Clips…” and “Include
Affiliate clips…” are NOT CHECKED! Those two options are the little
bastards that can screw up a consolidation operation.

— Base Media file names on “EXISTING FILE NAMES” (This is
SUPER IMPORTANT! It avoids the annoying “Existing file name” dialog
box that keeps popping up when you try and redigitize the sequence).

alternative: if you are the type who wants the actual media file
to have the same name as the clipname (i.e. you’ve renamed your
timeline clips, which I actually like to do when I need to bring timeline
clips into After Effects), then choose “use clip names”, instead.

Step 11: Click “OK” at the bottom of the Media Mangler window. It will
ask you for a name for the new project file it will create. Call this
“YourProjectName_consolidated.fcp” (i.e. the same name as the
original, unconsolidated project, but with “_consolidated” added to
the end.)

Step 12: Close the “temp ” project (and at this point, you can delete
the project file from the disk)

Step 13: In the new “YourProjectName_consoldated” project, DELETE THE
BIN (yes, DELETE!!!) that the Media Manager automatically created
containing all the clips for the sequences (the bin will be called
“Master Clips for blah blah blah….” .

You should only be left with the actual sequence(s) in the Browser
window (i.e. if you only have one sequence to consolidate, there
should ONLY be ONE physical item appearing in your Browser window for
the _consolidated project…in other words, you should have NO BINS in
your project. Keeping bins in your project is what causes the annoying
“duplicate item found” error message when you try to recapture.

Step 14: Highlight the sequence(s), then right click and choose “Batch Capture”.

Step 15: Rinse. Lather. Repeat (if necessary)

Step 16: Fly to NAB to hunt down the FCP engineer who “designed” the Media
Manager, and slap him/her repeatedly in the head with a large trout.

Aloha,
mel

[Oliver Peters]

Mel,

This is a good concise post. The offline/consolidate/online procedure is the way this business is SUPPOSED to be done. It is not the exception. Without turning this into an Avid/FCP thing, this is the biggest single weakness for FCP when comparing the two and something that Avid has largely done right since near the beginning. The one thing I would add is to be careful of nested sequences. These are frequent problem areas in my experience with FCP onlines.

Sincerely,
Oliver

Oliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Mel Matsuoka]

Hi Oliver,

THANK YOU for validating my feelings about professional NLE workflow. I posted a comment over on Phillip Hodgett’s blog about how I’m sick and tired of us FCP “evangelists” constantly making excuses for FCP’s completely horrible Media Management. I feel that the fact that “workarounds” like the one I posted *do* exist is one of the reasons why Apple doesn’t have Media Manager fixes/rewrites at the top of its TODO list.

I am completely disappointed that FCP5 has nothing new in terms of Media Management. Apple had a great opportunity to woo away all the Avid holdouts, but in my opinion, they blew it big time. I’d wager that more Avid people haven’t made the switch to FCP because of Media Management issues and NOT because it lacked Multi-cam.

Aloha,
mel

[Mel Matsuoka]

It should also be noted that, in addition to nested sequences, speed changes and freezeframes are not properly translated during a consolidate and up-rez in FCP4.

God have mercy on the poor soul who has to uprez and eye-match a music video or something that has hundreds of stillframes and speed effects in the timeline…

Aloha,
mel

[Tom Wolsky]

You could do all that, but about 4/5 of it is unnecessary. Simply copying a sequence into a new project, will break it’s links to the material in the original. Changing the sequence presets and deleting the existing sequence in the new project will do nothing at all. If you’re doing a single sequence that’s all you need.

There are many problems with MM, but your workflow doesn’t address any of them, i.e. speed changes, time remapping, freeze frames, nests, etc. Work was done on FCP5 to improve speed changes and MM, though how well that really works, especially on time remapped clips remains to be seen.

All the best,

Tom

[Tom Wolsky]

You could do all that, but about 4/5 of it is unnecessary. Simply copying a sequence into a new project, will break it’s links to the material in the original. Changing the sequence presets and deleting the existing sequence in the new project will do nothing at all. If you’re doing a single sequence that’s all you need.

There are many problems with MM, but your workflow doesn’t address any of them, i.e. speed changes, time remapping, freeze frames, nests, etc. Work was done on FCP5 to improve speed changes and MM, though how well that really works, especially on time remapped clips remains to be seen.

All the best,

Tom

[Michael Alberts]

Mel,
While I will agree with you that the MM is one of FCP’s weakest links that Avid users can point to it’s not as dire as you make it out to be. We online FCP shows here about once a week. Other than the freeze frame and speed change issues the MM works fairly well. You don’t have to jump through as many hoops as you detailed in your post.
Another scenario that the FCP MM seems get wrong every time is in the handling of audio files that no longer has picture associated with it. For example, if you had a 30 minute sequence of video clips on V1 and one long 30 minute clip of audio on A1 the MM wouldn’t parse out the video from the audio on A1. In other words, when you recapture the sequence FCP will digitize both the audio and video for the 30 minute audio clip when all you wanted was the audio. In cases like this we just delete the audio from a duplicate sequence and MM that. Then copy the audio from your offline sequence over.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that FCP 5 address’ most of these MM issues. We’ll know in a 2-5 weeks when it finally ships.

Michael Alberts
Ambidextrous Productions, Inc.

[Nick Meyers]

i had success with my last big MM’s slow-mos.

i;d prepared for problems by tracking down all the slo-mo shots, copying them to the end of the timeline,
and removing ther speed attibutes.

i figuered if something went wrong with the speed mod versions in the cut, i;d have the frames i needed coutesey of these.
(i had a very small window for capturing/checking before losing the deck)

but nothing went wrong.
all speed mods came out perfect.
now maybe it was because they were fairly simple (constant reate speed mods, no extreme %s, and not too many of them)
or MAYBE it was because i had the 100% versions in there as well…
maybe that ensured i captured the correct portion of the shos??

i’d do it again, though this IS suposed to be fixed in FCP5

nick