Renaming source file PRIOR to ingesting them.

[Bill Davis]

[Alexander Signer] “Hello all. Understand that renaming files within FCPX triggers all sorts of issues.”

Not really. In X, clip names and tags associated with clips are all just metadata. Renaming stuff is trivial since it’s just appending bits of new data to the old data. The machine tracks assets using the underlying code that you never see – so what things are named should never be a problem.

Except in one sense.

People who are conditioned to a simple flat-file arrangement like FCP-Legacy where re-liinking was easy – and there was little penalty for those who liked to drag stuff like Capture Scratches and Folders of Titles around on their desktop via the Finder then re-link them later.

X doesn’t work like that anymore since it’s relational database is more complex.

If you try to operate X from the finder like Legacy – dragging folders or files around on your desktop, you can screw things up because the program need to ABSOLUTELY know where the assets the database is tracking are located.

So just use the programs built in commands like MOVE – which transfers things to new drives or location while keeping all the location relationships intact.

Pretty easy actually.

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]

[Alexander Signer] “Understand that renaming files within FCPX triggers all sorts of issues. “

You can always go back to the original name with the metadata controls.

Renaming R3D files in the Finder isn’t a very good idea as the internal r3d system also relies on those filenames and other metadata.

Renaming files in fcpx is probably the best thing to do, actually.

You can now eve setup custom or preset metadata groupings and export an fcpx XML with those settings.

Jeremy