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Rebuilding a project – what’s your strategy?
When we archive a project we delete all of the optimized and proxy media that we shot ourselves because we backup the source camera cards as (reel) folders; therefore being able to reimport. All we keep are elements such as photos and music that didn’t originate from a camera and/or was give to us by an outside party. The other reason why we do this is because FCP X has yet to have a media management feature like FCP 7. Unfortunately it keeps more than the actual media in the project needed which costs us too much space and money to backup.
That being said…
I am restoring/rebuilding an older FCP X project. I’d hoped to select the project and just have it reimport/retranscode the media it needs from the original reels we have backed up, but that does’t seem to work; essentially trying to mimic rebuilding a tapeless sequence in FCP 7 using the log and transfer feature – works like a charm.
Well this hasn’t worked for us at all. We’re not sure why. We don’t want to reimport all of the media for the event just to relink clips for the project.
One workaround someone found is that first the reels have to be made into archives using the FCP X feature that converts content into an archive, then supposedly what I am trying to do will work. That’s a reaaalllly long process just to rebuild something.
It’s astounding how lacking FCP X is in regard to media management for archiving just what you need.
Any ideas folks?
Mac Pro/ OS 10.8.2/ FCP X 10.0.7
Tangier
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17 Replies
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What format is your original footage?
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I guess it doesn’t matter so here goes.
Yes, you are right, unless you reimport the whole Event, or know exactly which clips to reimport, then you have to so some real searching to import the exact clips from your Project. A process that should be unnecessary.
You are right it doesn’t work like FCP7. You are right that it needs to be improved.
For the future, here’s a suggestion until Apple clears this up:
When you are done with your Project, you use the built in tool to “Duplicate” your Project (FIle > Duplicate Project from the Project Browser). You will get a host of options. One of them is to “Duplicate Project + Used Clips”.
You will notice that there’s some options and dialogue. FCPX will create a New Event with just the clips you used (they are not trimmed, but rather the whole clip). Name the Event to what you want, FCPX defaults to “Clips for NameOfYourEvent”. In your Original Event, you can now choose to delete render files.
Quit FCPX.
In the Finder, delete the media in your Original Event. Then find the “Clips for …” Event and find the media inside of it. Drag that media to the proper place in your Original Event. Basically, what we have done here is cleared out the media in your Original Event, and then put back the only the media from your Project in the Original Event.
Now open FCPX.
Your original Project should be relinked along with all the pertinent clips from that Project in your Original Event.
Make sense?
It’s a bonkers work around using both FCPX and the Finder, but it does work. Please send feedback to Apple to make this a smoother process.
Jeremy
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Thanks Jeremy. I was afraid I’d get that very response. That’s one of the methods we’ve been using – duplicating the project and clips only for the final project. I was hoping to do this differently, but it seems that’s not built into FCP X in any way right now.
T
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What did you find out about your Spotlight indexing problem?
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Full reinstall of the OS and apps. Still rebuilding. Though others in the office are having some issues with spotlight since the last MacOS 10.8 update.
Tangier
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Good to know.
Thanks, Tangier.
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Remember to add the step to organize the media, so that the used clips end up inside the new event. This behavior changed after 10.0.6. This way only used media is located in a single location – the new event folder.
Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
To test it, I’ve just rebuilt a random project from the archive. It worked fine.
I’ve taken the project and using the combination of “Relink Project Files…” for non-camera originated content and “Reimport from Camera/Archive…” recreated the whole timeline. Just like you, we backup the source camera cards as (reel) folders (not FCPX camera archives) and FCP was able to reimport. The original footage was XDCAM EX. The new Event is two times smaller than original. Still miss trimming…
Unfortunately, there seems to be no way to “help” FCP locate those cards (folders) in case you moved them to a place, different from what it was at the time of importing… except creating “Camera Archives”…Hope that helps
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[Oliver Peters] “Remember to add the step to organize the media, so that the used clips end up inside the new event. This behavior changed after 10.0.6. This way only used media is located in a single location – the new event folder.”
Actually, in this case, it works differently.
When you dupe a project and choose “+ used clips” it creates a brand new Event with only the media you need, and it copies it.
It’s a decent way to make a new copy of your Event with just the media you need.
When you dupe an Event, you will have to organize it.
Jeremy
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[Jeremy Garchow] “When you dupe a project and choose “+ used clips” it creates a brand new Event with only the media you need, and it copies it.”
It no longer does this if the media is linked externally and not copied into the event. In that case it only copies aliases. If you have media linked externally, you have to add the organize media step.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com
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