Organising / consolidating project media – I must be missing something

[Jeremy Garchow]

Why not just drag the files from the card in to the Event and hold option when doing so?

[Bill Davis]

[Jeff Kirkland] “What am I missing?”

What you’re seeing is that X’s database knows where the stuff is – and as long as as the original media is in the same position, it’ll typically automatically resume these processes from where it left off after it gets beyond whatever “delay before going into render mode” you’ve set in the preferences.

You typically don’t have to DO anything in X to restart the process. It’s just automatic unless you’ve unchecked “always do background rendering” in the preferences.

If so, then just click on the circular render indicator that typically shows the percentage of progress of any render.

That’ll bring up the render manager and show you the status of your footage imports, transcodings and renderings. If the bars are stalled (and they might well be if you’ve force quit the processes) then just re-start them manually.

Hope I understood what you’re trying to do and that this helps.

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[Jeremy Garchow]

Organize files is what you want.

Due to the force quit, maybe you scrambled the actions, as Bill points out.

You should be able to copy the files in manually though, with no duplications, by dragging them in.

Jeremy

[Jeff Kirkland]

Thanks for the replies.

@Jeremy: Yes I could do that. I can also re-link the media which will restart the ingest or I could use an app like AliasHerder to do it for me.

@Bill: I guess what I’m trying to find out is under what circumstances do those two menu options actually do anything? The above example was something that happened yesterday that left me with aliases (and FCPX had no intention of restarting the import – dunno why) but not the only reason I may end up with aliases in my events folder.

I guess I’m trying to figure out how to make sure I don’t have any aliases when I archive my projects, and if media has come from diverse places, I don’t want to have to manually go hunting for it to copy the original over – that’s a recipe for accidentally missing something.

Here’s my typical workflow and the reason I’m interested in working this out..

I create a sparse image to hold my FCPX project and event(s). I use PostHaste to set up some extra folders to hold documents, stills, and whatever else may be associated with the project. This gives me one neat package to deal with that’s easily transferrable to another computer and very easy to pick up where I left off should I have to revisit the project at some later date.

As a rule I get FCPX to ingest all the media and copy it to the appropriate events folder within the sparse image.

Now jump to the end of the edit. For one reason or another, I have some ‘real’ media in my events folder and some aliases.

Before I close the sparse image and file it away, I want to make sure that copies of all the original media are contained within the FCPX event folder. I don’t want to re-open it in six months time and find something’s missing.

Shouldn’t one of the two above mentioned commands, more specifically the “Organize Project Files” option, replace any aliases in the event library with the original media?

I’m just trying to get my head around two things:

A) what are those two commands supposed to do if not what their names (and the user manual) suggest, and

B) what is the right ending to my workflow to make sure my event library doesn’t contain any aliases when I archive the sparse image? I can use yet another app to handle the aliases but I really thought FCPX could do this internally. I figure FCPX is so database driven that it’s always better to let it manage media wherever possible.

Cheers,
Jeff K

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

That’s what I’d have thought but in all the time I’ve been using FCPX I’ve never seen anything other than the first dialog telling me there are files outside the project that need copying in, immediately followed by another dialog telling me everything’s already there and there’s nothing for FCPX to do (which is just not true).

I’m at a loss to see any situation where the organize command actually works.

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeremy Garchow]

The command works for me each and every time.

The only difference that I can see between you workflow and mine is the sparse images.

I don’t use them. I think they are a very very clever exploitation of the file system, but they make me kinda nervous.

I would have to do tests with sparse images, but that would be the first place I look.

The other thing to do is simply trash your preferences and see if that clears anything up.

Is any of your media transcoded (optimized)?

Jeremy

[Bret Williams]

As for archiving projects, the closest thing X has is the duplicate project command. You can create a new event with just the used media. But you can’t do any handles. If you used 5 seconds if a 10 minute shot, it’s gonna copy over the whole 10 min file.

[Jeff Kirkland]

In the case of the original example I gave, the project and event were on an internal RAID in my Mac Pro and the media to be copied was on a CF card.

I’ve seen the organise command work in other demos but for me, it doesn’t matter whether the event & project are in a sparse image, on an external drive or on my Mac Pro’s internal RAID – it always starts with a dialog that looks like it is going to work, then tells me there’s nothing to organise.

Nor has it ever worked in any version of FCPX I’ve ever used. Nor does it work on my iMac, either of my MacBook Pros, my Mac Pro or my Mac Mini. Nor does it work under Snow Leopard, Lion, or Mountain Lion.

I can work around it but it’d be great if I could figure out why the command simply doesn’t work for me. It’s something I revisit from time to time and ultimately put in the too hard basket.

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeremy Garchow]

That doesn’t seem right.

Can you show me some screen grabs?

I’d like to see a clip, it’s alias, and if there’s a transcoded media folder in the Event folder.

[Bill Davis]

My gut’s saying the same thing that Jeremy’s seems to be.

There’s something wrong here.

X is rigid about asset locations. There HAS to be an EVENT first. That Event MUST be properly linked to an asset location on a mounted drive that is structured precisely like X expects. This is created automatically when you set up Projects and Events in X, but is rigid and the structure has to be maintained whether it’s on a disk, a virtual disk, or a network node.

That Event stores either the original media or an alias or proxy files IN THE PROPER FOLDERS of the event. Those folders MUST be linked to the ID Data of a mounted storage volume. (IT can be dismounted and re-mounted, and it can even be a cloned – but if it’s where the source data is being referenced by X it MUST be present or X won’t be able to read and write metadata to or from it and therefore you can’t actually work with it.)

So the basic troubleshooting steps are to LOOK in those places and make sure assets are where they’re supposed to be.

It’s this rigid data structure that allows X to understand how to take metadata from one stage – and pass it along to another stage. So the relationships, locations, and pathways between assets are critical to the database in X.

Sparse disks can work just fine in this system, but ONLY if they can be mounted and identified properly by the software. Just like standard disk images I regularly use. These are all seen as X simply as “clones” of the original mounted disk so long as the the internal ID tags are right, so X can open ANY clone and work just as if the original was there.

But it’s absolutely necessary for the disk images to be undamaged and accurate. If something’s been corrupted or has been changed, it’s perfectly sensible for X not to be able to use it because X is NOT AT ALL like legacy where simple finder locations were all that was needed to find clips via it’s extremely simple flat-file locator database.

Please drop back and let us know what you discover. The structural stuff in X is very important and the more we all learn about it, the better off we are.

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.