Trying to consolidate work done on Duplicate Events

[Dustin Bowser]

Yeah, everything needed for the Event is bundled up within the folder.

[Jeremy Garchow]

I would consolidate the media out of your original Event.

This will allow you to relink the original media to the event from the _external.

Right now, you have both the internal and external event in the same library, is that correct?

[Dustin Bowser]

I tried importing the “_External” event onto my ‘internal’ drive, to bring over the logging work, but that resulted in ‘missing files’ for everything, so right now I have ‘missing files’ on both the Internal and External versions of the Event in my Library on the internal drive. I have the event working on the External drive, but if I try to edit footage form that into my sequence, I get the same Missing Files thing in the timeline.

My questions is….what is the easiest way to be working on a Project on my Edit Bay machine, then be able to do work on a Laptop with an external drive and a duplicate version of the Library, and merge the work back together on the main Edit Machine. There is no way something so simple could be this much of a pain in the neck.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Dustin Bowser] “I tried importing the “_External” event onto my ‘internal’ drive,”

How did you do this exactly, in fcpx?

Dragging one Event in the external library, to the other internal library in the fcpx browser?

[Dustin Bowser] “My questions is….what is the easiest way to be working on a Project on my Edit Bay machine, then be able to do work on a Laptop with an external drive and a duplicate version of the Library, and merge the work back together on the main Edit Machine. There is no way something so simple could be this “

I use libraries, and relink to external media.

Can you send a screengrab of your browser?

[Dustin Bowser]

I saved an Event XML of the “_EXTERNAL” Event, and tried to open it and point it to my Internal Library. It came in with all missing files.

The thing about sharing the Library is, the Project is actually huge, and many Events within the Library. I’m splitting off PER Event to work on sections on my laptop, hoping to then re-merge the work back into my master Project/Library.

I’ve still yet to figure out a smooth way to work this way..

[Jeremy Garchow]

You can make temp libraries with just the events you want to transfer.

I’d forego the XML and just use libraries/events.

Make a new temp library, copy events to it using fcpx browser.

Move temp library to internal, move events to main library using fcpx browser.

I typically use external media and it’s easy to relink.

If your original library is not linked anymore, something went wrong.

[Dustin Bowser]

Yeah, I’d like to use External Media ideally, because all of my footage is also in a giant Folder called “Footage” that maintains the original folder structure off of the 5D.

I’d like to keep it separate, because there is something I don’t trust about letting FCPX have every piece of the footage bundled up in it’s little proprietary structure.
But because of this, I have my footage duplicated unnecessarily. I ended up using “Managed Media” after I was tired of being exasperated so many times when copying an Event over to my External Drive, being out and about and trying to pull it up only to see that many things are offline, audio and whatnot….so I just started having it copy over everything so that it would be bundled up.

Currently, my project is one giant mess of certain events managed, certain not, certain consolidated, etc…..

What would be the best way to clean this all up and get to some kind of simplified linking that opens up that wasted drive space, and is an easy way to work with a Main Machine and an edit laptop as a satellite helper with only parts of the project at any one time.

[Jeremy Garchow]

You can consolidate media out of any library at any time. This only pertains to original media. You can not consolidate Optimized or Proxy media.

If you are using multiple libraries, external media is much easier.

I can’t see your libraries from here, so it’s hard to help as I can’t see your exact situation.

When you first import media to fcpx, it asks if you want to move the media in to the library, leave it in place, or put it in a place of your choosing. I would choose to either leave it in place (which means you will relink to the original 5D media) or put it somewhere of your choosing, which creates another copy of your media outside of the original card structure. This method is easiest, but creates a copy of your media.

Then you’d need to copy either the original card media or the folder of your choosing to the external drive.

Do your work. When you want to move back to the internal:

Connect the external drive to the main computer, drag the needed events from the external library to the main library using the fcpx browser, eject the external drive, and relink the media to the card structure, or wherever you put the media when you imported it.

[Dustin Bowser]

If I have done editing of the footage in various “projects” (Sequences), and it relates to my INTERNAL Event, then when I drag in a duplicate copy from the EXTERNAL drive, is it not going to lose the link to the footage in the sequence, and give me a “Missing Event” warning?

Also, is there not a way to just replace a file and have the metadata update? I’d like to avoid having to make copies of these events each time I’m trying to merge them together. Doesn’t that just risk a whole bunch of stuff constantly going offline and having to re-connect?

I’m having a hard time understanding how this isn’t more straightforward. I can’t imagine someone who isn’t actually computer savvy figuring this out at all.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Dustin Bowser] “If I have done editing of the footage in various “projects” (Sequences), and it relates to my INTERNAL Event, then when I drag in a duplicate copy from the EXTERNAL drive, is it not going to lose the link to the footage in the sequence, and give me a “Missing Event” warning?”

I think we need to back up. There’s a differences between swapping Libraries, Events, and Projects.

Before we go further, have you used FCP7 or any other NLE?