Things could get… interesting…

[Jeremy Garchow]

Whatever dude.

Libraries are shite.

😀

[Charlie Austin]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Whatever dude.

Libraries are shite.”

Yeah, you’re right. I guess I should give up trying to pretend I like X too. I’ve been working in 7 an Pr this week. I Love Tracks!

😛

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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~

[Jeremy Garchow]

There’s a lot of great info in there. Thanks for sending this.

Jeremy

[Charlie Austin]

[Jeremy Garchow] “There’s a lot of great info in there. Thanks for sending this.”

Yeah, very nicely laid out. Someone linked to it on a FB group and I thought it should get a wider view. 🙂

————————————————————-

~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~

[Bob Woodhead]

Ditto on the thanks. This is a fantastic read.

[Brett Sherman]

I think maybe your griping about my opinion here because I seem to be one of the few here not completely behind the new library structure. Let me clarify my position here so it’s not misrepresented.

I’m not against the library structure. I see future efficiencies it will create. But these are created at the expense of more manual management of files, at least for me.

I’d be 100% behind it if they had done three things differently:

1. Allowed you to use material from a different library without having to copy media files or event files.
2. Allowed you to also externally locate render and transcode files
3. In the conversion to libraries allowed you to convert from managed files to external files leaving all media in place.

It makes using events across multiple libraries inconvenient. Since this is what I do all the time it is an inconvenience. I basically have to create multiple versions of the same event. This means if I favorite part of a clip in an event for one library it won’t show up in another library that I use the same event. Sometimes that’s okay, sometimes it makes thing inefficient. I have to go favorite the same stuff again. Now if I’m super organized I can copy the event that I’ve modified to the other library. But quite frankly, I don’t have a staff like you do. I have to rely on my memory about which event I last modified and I don’t have time for this kind of manual management. I wish a did, but reality intervenes.

When moving libraries around, you’ll have to delete all the render files and transcodes to get them to a size that can be portable – again manual management. I’m hoping for a utility that will duplicate and backup a library and strip out all the render, thumbnail and transcode files automatically.

Then finally, the conversion to the new library system I don’t think is particularly well-implemented. As I’ve said in other posts, they should have allowed you to convert events and projects from managed to external media leaving all existing media in place so you don’t have to create these new gigantic library files that waste hard disk space and take a lot of time and risk. But maybe I’m not completely understanding how it works.

What I can’t quite understand is why they made it impossible to utilize material from another library without copying it into your current library. I’m sure there is a reason for this, but it would make my life a lot easier if I could.

[Michael Sanders]

Yep very interesting and as you say could potentially put a cat among pigeons.

My one qualm over the paper (and elsewhere) is that it doesn’t make crystal clear that libraries need to reside on a fast drive. Render files still live inside the event folder so need to live on a fast drive otherwise performance will suffer.

Whilst I think the new structure is in someways better I would still like a way of keeping render files outside the event folder. But hey Still better than most. That said I thought the previous layout would work amazingly in a news bureaux.

Michael Sanders
London Based DP/Editor

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Brett Sherman] “I think maybe your griping about my opinion here because I seem to be one of the few here not completely behind the new library structure. Let me clarify my position here so it’s not misrepresented.”

No, I am sorry. I am not griping to you or to anyone. I apologize.

[Brett Sherman] “I’m not against the library structure. I see future efficiencies it will create. But these are created at the expense of more manual management of files, at least for me.”

I think that you had a workflow down and it suited what you needed to do. This update has addressed a lot of concern for other people who the 10.0 FCPX media management was unsuitable.

[Brett Sherman] “1. Allowed you to use material from a different library without having to copy media files or event files. “

I would like media to be able to live in a Library by itself to. For now, it must live in an Event. If you read the various whitepapers and 3rd party guides, you will learn that media is only copied when it’s managed in the Event, and when the media has been generated. The generated media is still a problem as it was in 10.0. It has to live in a Library unless you manually move it out. If the media is managed media in a Library, it is very easy to move the media OUT of the Library before copying using Consolidate. After you Consolidate it out of the Library, then moving clips around only moves the symbolic link around. Externla media stays where it is.

[Brett Sherman] “2. Allowed you to also externally locate render and transcode files”

This has been an issue with FCPX since the inception. There are at least, better methods for handling the media upon import which means that a Library can remain relatively small, even if that means deleting render files from time to time.

[Brett Sherman] “3. In the conversion to libraries allowed you to convert from managed files to external files leaving all media in place.”

You can do that afterwords with Consolidate.

[Brett Sherman] “It makes using events across multiple libraries inconvenient. Since this is what I do all the time it is an inconvenience. I basically have to create multiple versions of the same event. This means if I favorite part of a clip in an event for one library it won’t show up in another library that I use the same event. Sometimes that’s okay, sometimes it makes thing inefficient. I have to go favorite the same stuff again. Now if I’m super organized I can copy the event that I’ve modified to the other library. But quite frankly, I don’t have a staff like you do. I have to rely on my memory about which event I last modified and I don’t have time for this kind of manual management. I wish a did, but reality intervenes.”

I don’t have a staff. There’s only several of us and we certainly don’t have assistants t track our every move.

If you need to have favorites show up in multiple Events, you have to come up with a way of updating your Events to the other machine. The media management whipper has a few suggestions, as well as the document linked in Charlie’s original post. It will take a little but of retooling, but if it’s for the best, then it may be worth it.

Just like FCP 10.0, if you have duplicate copies of the media in the two separate places you need to be, then relinking and sharing is pretty easy.

[Brett Sherman] “Then finally, the conversion to the new library system I don’t think is particularly well-implemented. As I’ve said in other posts, they should have allowed you to convert events and projects from managed to external media leaving all existing media in place so you don’t have to create these new gigantic library files that waste hard disk space and take a lot of time and risk. But maybe I’m not completely understanding how it works.”

I think you should use Event Manager X, as it’s now free. It allows you to move in smaller increments and keep things organized and make multiple Libraries per drive:

https://www.philiphodgetts.com/2013/12/upgrade-your-events-and-project-to-fcp-x-10-1-libraries-the-better-way/

FCPX allows you to save all of your old Events and Projects. There’s minimal risk.

If the media is external to begin with, the media stays external. If it is not and you want it to be, you can make it external with a simple command. Generated media (high quality and proxy) will be managed in the Library. As of right now, I don’t think there’s a way to make Generated media Extenral media, which is unfortunate.

[Brett Sherman] “What I can’t quite understand is why they made it impossible to utilize material from another library without copying it into your current library. I’m sure there is a reason for this, but it would make my life a lot easier if I could.”

If you move any of those libraries, that means the link to the footage, if it wasn’t in the Library, would vanish. A piece of media, or link to it, has to be in the library in order for FCPX to know where it is.

Render files and generated media can be recreated.

Jeremy

[Michael Sanders]

After reading this further.. here’s what I don’t get.

Why did they go down the route of locking libraries. If its all just metadata and symlinks why can the lock file be on the project – which makes sense. Why can’t libraries and event’s be active across many users at once. Now that media has to be in the library the new system is a bit of a pain for big shows (say a reality show) that may want to access material from other shows.

It would make far more sense if the you could have the library called “Reality show season 1”, then an event called “Ep 1”. All the media for EP 1 lives in that event, along with the edits. You could have compound clip or project file called “Pt 1” and another called “Pt 2” with different editors working on Pt 1 and 2. The lock could be on the compound clip or project file so the media could be accessed by anyone.

At least that way an editor working on EP 2 (itself an event in the master library) could be use material from Ep 1.

No that I know much about these things (my UNIX is very very rusty) but isn’t it just down to which file is locked?

Michael Sanders
London Based DP/Editor

[Jeremy Garchow]

For whatever reason, FCPX does not allow the mounting of read only databases.

In Avid, the way sharing works, is that one person has read/write acess to a bin, and read only access to everyone else’s bins.

You can look at other editors bins, but you can’t save anything new in to their bins. You can pull stuff from other peoples bins in to your bin and continue working. Then if someone needs what you’ve done, they pull it back to their bin.

If FCPX allowed read only browsing of libraries, it could work very similarly.

Ironically, when fcpx has the separate Event/Project structure, I thought that it made sense from a sharing perspective. Eventually, editors would have access to read only Events, they could have thier own Event, and they could create a Project that had Events from both media. If you needed to move anything FCPX could take the media in the project, and send it anywhere you needed, creating a new Event in the process. X was very good with projects telling you exactly which Events your Project media was located.

Now, I’m not sure. I have to do some more testing and try to see what’s going on.