Organising / consolidating project media – I must be missing something

[Jeff Kirkland]

Thanks Bill & Jeremy,

For what it’s worth I am a firm believer that, as a database driven app, the best work practice is to let FCPX handle all the media so I don’t do any media management outside of the app.

So here’s what I’m doing step by step (with screen shots for Jeremy :-). I’ve never managed to make this command work so if anyone can can spot the user error on my part, or give me a way to easily achieve this, I’ll be very happy.

1. I create a sparse image to hold the project and event. In the case of this test, the event and media are in a sparse image on external USB drive media is on my Mac Pro’s internal RAID.

I then go to FCPX and import the media. Again, for this test I chose to not copy the media into the event library so there would be some aliases created for the media.

As expected, I now have an event library with aliases in my Original Media folder.

Moving right along, I create a project, edit some footage into the timeline and then want to replace those aliases with copies of the real media. i choose “Organize Project Files”…

At this point I get my hopes up because FCPX seems to know what I want to do…

But as soon as click “continue..” I get the following

And i still have an event library full of aliases.

For the sake of it, I then try “Consolidate Media Files…” but no joy there either.

So if this works for everyone else, where am I going wrong?

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

[Jeremy Garchow]

Thank you so much for those screen grabs. It was well worth it.

Media files live in an Event, not a Project. That command isn’t what you want to do.

You can choose to Duplicate that Project to your sparse image, when choose Dupkicate, choose the “Project and Used Clips Only”. This will copy your Project and any media and create a new Event on your sparse image.

There’s a caveat, the “used clips” aren’t trimmed. So if you have a four piece of media (just as an example) and you use 3.5 seconds of that four piece of media, fcpx will copy all four hours to your sparse image.

Hopefully trimming will come in a later update.

Alternatively, if you want to save both Events and Projects in their entirety, choose to Organize your Event and all media will come in to the Event.

Again, thanks for the grabs.

Jeremy

[Bret Williams]

I think it sounds like all he wants to do is to replace the aliases with the actual media. IOW he didn’t want to copy the media to the events folder first, but now he does. If that’s the case, I have seen a few posts from you Jeremy that accomplishes exactly that, because I don’t see a command to accomplish it.

To replace all your clip aliases with ACTUAL files, simply reimport them by dragging the originals from the finder window to their respective event folder while holding down option. Yup. Just like the finder. Except FCP doesn’t seem to let you have multiples of the same file, so it replaces every instance of the files you’re dragging with the new ones. And bingo, your aliases go away and are replaced with actual copies.

Now, if you want to go back to aliases, it seems it’s as simple as just dragging the files again, but this time without the option key held, and I’m pretty sure you have to have the don’t copy files preference set in your import prefereneces. Neither of the above methods will give you any sort of import dialog.

In 12 years of FCP I’ve never used an import dialog. I just drag to the bin or event from the finder. But I hadn’t realized the “option” key override of the import preference setting. Handy.

But it seems a simple right click on the event with a selection to “copy files to event folder” choice would be a little more natural and obvious. You can already highlight them and choose transcode, which would be used if you were using h264 and wanted to transcode them after the fact to ProRes for example.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Bret Williams] “I think it sounds like all he wants to do is to replace the aliases with the actual media. IOW he didn’t want to copy the media to the events folder first, but now he does. If that’s the case, I have seen a few posts from you Jeremy that accomplishes exactly that, because I don’t see a command to accomplish it.”

Single click the Event.

File > Organize Event Files

You can also option drag the files in, but that would involve hunting them all down.

Organize Event Files does this automatically no matter what the location.

[Jeff Kirkland]

Thanks guys – mission accomplished. Once case of user error resolved. You’d think after all this time I’d have spotted the difference between “project” and “event” but there you go…

And now while I’m learning how to read, I’ll ask what sorts of files can be in a project that would be outside of the current project folder and be the target of the command I was trying to use?

~jeff k

[Bill Davis]

[Jeff Kirkland] “And now while I’m learning how to read, I’ll ask what sorts of files can be in a project that would be outside of the current project folder and be the target of the command I was trying to use?”

I would think lots.

Still Images. Audio clips. Logos from a client’s web server you’ve downloaded…. etc. etc. etc.

Anything that X could reference via pointer – that could subsequently disappear unless it’s fully “read into” the Project library as a local asset.

It’s the same as choosing to handle your clips via reference (alias), rather than importing the originals into your Original Media folder. The benefit of reference is that your projects stay much smaller, but are less “self-contained.”

Pick your preference.

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.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Jeff Kirkland] “And now while I’m learning how to read, I’ll ask what sorts of files can be in a project that would be outside of the current project folder and be the target of the command I was trying to use?”

Magic files that are full of magic?

😉

I think it’s to restart any background processes in case of accidental quitting.

There’s no media files (besides Thumbnails and Render files) that are stored with the Project.

[Bill Davis]

[Jeremy Garchow] “There’s no media files (besides Thumbnails and Render files) that are stored with the Project.”

Ah, in this context, Jeremy is again correct.

I took this to mean what files are “on-line” to the project – rather than which are “off-line.”

He’s correct that the actual copies of the media data are never stored as code inside an project or event. Only in the folders that live in the Movies sub-folder inside your the Original Media or Transcoded media folders.

It’s never technically “embedded” in your working files until you share it out.

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.