Reconnect Clips Automatically after finder modification.

[Craig Seeman]

Just a hunch but I suspect changing the media changes the metadata in way that FCPX does not recognize it as the same clip. In other words, FCPX is making its association to the media on more or other things than FCP7 did. It may well be part of the reason why there’s no round tripping between FCPX and Motion. Of course one hopes that will change but it may be a bit more complex to implement.

[Tangier Clarke]

I found something that’s supposed to work for the project properties with a feature/button called “modify project references” that’s supposed to take care of the issue, but it didn’t work.

Tangier

[Jeremy Garchow]

Did you try reimporting?

From what I can gather FCPx tags each piece of media with a unique ID. If anything changes, the ID is no longer there.

Modify event references seems to work on media that has been moved to another place/folder, but not replaced/ over written media.

[Marcus Samuel-gaskin]

Yeah, I’d imagine you’d have to re-import.In Avid, which is also databased you have the “Batch Import > File Location” command for that sort of thing.

[Alban Egger]

Right now it looks like FCPX is not able to re-connect a file that´s been re-written. Even if the name/location/duration are the same. I hope they fix this, because it is a common procedure and one of the real dealbreakers right now.

[Craig Seeman]

[alban egger] “it is a common procedure”

Under what circumstance is this occurring?
FCPX is using more metadata to identify the file than other programs (NLEs) so if the metadata changes, FCPX does not see it as the same file. Keep in mind the other side of the issue, that may have resulted in this implementation. That was FCP legacy making the connection to the wrong file.

FCPX is still seems very primitive in some aspects. One might guess there will eventually be a “safe” way to reconnect to files altered in another program.

It may have been a “common procedure” precisely because previously NLEs were sloppy in what they could reconnect to. Of course the other extreme can be problematic is well.

Think about how FCPX works and then think about what might be done to improve that. Think in the context of database management and it might point to something Apple can implement. Currently you’d be asking the database to “ignore fields” to accept a modified file as a replacement for the original and that can be havoc for a database. Eventually it may have to more like “create new fields” on reconnection when encountering metadata that is created from other programs.

[Alban Egger]

Hey Craig, I agree the database can´t ignore fields on its own. But in legacy FCP I had the option to override it and even use a totally different clip (new name, new codec, even different duration).

FCPX does so MANY things so they are “safe” for their databse, but they have to implement manual overrides just like in this case, if they really want to make this software usable on all levels.

If FCPX has to skip a field it should simply ask “are you sure” and you say yes or no. I don´t see a huge problem there changing this, but I see a huge problem for many users if they don´t.

[Jeremy Garchow]

I tried this the other day for a different situation, so you’d have to test this. Have you tried simply dragging the newly rendered file on to the event?

While no where near as convenient, it does seem to relink then file without having to reimport and reedit.

[Alban Egger]

Jeremy I have tried that, but it doesn´t work for me. It adds a new clip to the event, but doesn´t replace the existing one (same codec, same duration, same name and directory).

[Jeremy Garchow]

[alban egger] “Jeremy I have tried that, but it doesn´t work for me.”

Hmm. It worked for me, I’ll have to do more testing. Thanks for the response.