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Using Proxy Media Issue FCPX 10.0.3
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Are u having any lags issues with 10.0.4 during playback?
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Jay,
When clips go offline, it’s the software telling you that it can’t find the source files it needs to create the display clips.
That might just mean the original clip is offline – which happens when you have media stored on a drive and that drive is dis-mounted.
It can also mean that the clips are still there – but that the software simply doesn’t know where to look for them. Since X is constructed around the organizing principal of a relational database, keeping the relationship between where assets are stored and where the program “thinks” they are stored is a big deal.
When you captured your clips, you got the choice (whether you realized it at the time or not) to either link to those assets wherever they were stored and merely have your events reference them – , or to duplicate copies of the footage into your actual Events for internal or external storage.
How and where you set that up to happen is likely the key issue here.
Removing a drive, copying files via the finder, or anything else that alters the specific location where the Database in X expects them to be can cause assets to go offline.
Sometimes getting them back is just a matter of “reLinking” the files in X. But I’ve seen users “think” they are relinking to their original files, only to discover that they’ve made multiple attempts at setting up the FCP-X storage structures with multiple events and multiple projects and that they’re actually NOT linking original files to original locations at all.
The X world of original clips, proxy clips, and links to useable copies of clips in the sharing libraries – any of which the software might use to populate your projects – is nowhere near as simple in X as it was in Legacy – where everything was just a pipe to a Capture Scratch and that could be re-linked easily because it was a simple lookup, not the central hub of a database where everything linked to it needs to expect to find it in a virtual spiderweb of metadata connections.
With this new complexity comes a lot of relational flexibility and power – but definitely requires some learning to manage.
I’d highly recommend you look on the web and read up on Events and Projects in X and how they operate and where they expect to find their assets.
Without that understanding, it’s easy to have stuff “go missing” and not have a clue as to why or where.
Let us know how your search goes.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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Ok I think I know what the problem is, I have my original files stored on an External Hard drive. How do I get FCP X to read the files off the external?
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It actually doesn’t so much “read the files.”
That’s what Legacy used to do. When you pointed it to a capture scratch, it hooked up anything with the correct name – whether or not it was the proper clip, I might add.
The X linkage is MUCH more sophisticated and more complex in design. It’s a giant lookup search and sort metadata database that must have absolute locations for all it’s assets so that the data linkages can be managed.
Essentially the X database expects it’s assets to be in VERY specific places. Assets MUST live in Events and Projects. These often live in the Movies folder in specific Event and Project Libraries – but X actually will “look for” Event and Project libraries on external disks, provided the proper X structure is there for the program to see.
These “location relationships” get properly constructed when you import your clips into events originally and when you express those clips into projects in the interface. You can’t just move stuff around without risking screwing up these links.
If your clip/event/project relationships are broken your best hope is to re-connect the original drive that the clips were stored on – and try using the “relink” command under X’s File menu to see if you can re-link things in the database. This will often work provided the path is exactly the same as it was when the database locations were originally written. If you’ve subsequently tucked asset files into sub-folders or re-named them – you’re kinda hosed unless you can precisely undo that.
If the relationships are undamaged, the next step would typically be to to try re-importing your clips one by one to see if they re-populate your event browser.
If that doesn’t work, then you may have somehow permanently severed the links between your database and your assets and you may need to start over and re-build things. That’s rare, and usually the result of new users trying to move clips around in the finder.
Good luck, and let us know how things work out.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Jay Craig] “Ok I think I know what the problem is, I have my original files stored on an External Hard drive. How do I get FCP X to read the files off the external?”
Jay-
Let’s backup a second.
Where is your current Event stored and what were the exact steps you took when you first imported?
When you click on one of the offline files, click on the info tab of the inspector and look down towards the bottom. Is there a file path associated with the proxy files?
Have you tried to plug in the external drive, and reconnect the media?
Jeremy
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Yea I checked and it looks like the path leads to my desktop. I changed the path to the folder on my externak Hard Drive. I’m at work now so i’ll know when if it worked when I get home from work. Can you guys think of any other step I could be missing?
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Oh and I updated to 10.0.4
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Often I organize my footage in the finder using folders BEFORE I bring anything into X, and I make sure the preference is checked to make folder keywords.
For example, I got a bunch of audio from the audio guy, over several days, including changes. And I put it in a folder named AUDIO and then inside of that are folders named FX, FOLEY, SCORE. As changes occur, I can simply drop them in there and then I drag and drop into X and the benefit is the regularization of the keywords.
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FCPX does make proxies of h.264 footage, just to clear that up.
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After reading through the posts, my best guess is you had your FCPX set up to not copy files to the event folder and to crete optimized media.
That means you have optimized media to play when that option is selected, but no original media to make proxies of.
If you aren’t getting the option to make a proxy file, it likely means that either you’ve already created the proxies, or the source footage is offline.
Verify that the source media is there by selecting “Use optimized/original media.” If the clips come back online, right click it and show original in finder. If the clip is in the optimized folder and not the original media folder, then there’s your problem. If you original media folder only contains shortcuts and not the actual files, I’d suggest moving the files in there.
The easiest way to do that is to go back to your import/capture preferences, select the copy files to event folder on import option, and drag the original files into the event and let it copy over. At this point you should be able to create proxies.
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