[Andreas Kiel]

The question is pretty funny in a certain way. I’m not native English so I use words in a different way or translate them my own way.
So what is the difference between duplicate or copy – from my understanding these are not the original. A clone would be exactly the same as the original.

What makes sense with FCPX?
Duplicating a project from inside FCPX will create a new structure which will work like with the original, but all references and UUIDs will be replaced and that applies to the alias files as well. Therefore the dupe is independent from the original.

A copy via Finder to another disk finally is a clone since all references and UUIDs are exactly the same.
But the problem with FCPX is that the app will get confused finding exactly same events and projects on two different volumes and you may get a lot of trouble.

So what’s the solution?
First don’t use the Duplicate command.

Use the Clone option. But you have to be careful. Assuming that all events and projects for this master project are on an external disk you can do the following:
1. Quit FCPX!
2. Connect the drive you want to use for the Clone and name it same as your “project drive” (just for security).
3. Use CarbonCopyCloner or a similar app to make a secure clone of everything on the “clone drive”.
4. Send the disk to the coworker to have a good start.

While collaborating it get’s more complicated since you can’t merge projects — even if you got the same material. Unfortunately with FCP and FCPX there is no “change log” and it’s hard to figure out what has been changed by the one or other (with FCP there had been options with XML which are lost with FCPX).
So each of the coworkers can send a renamed project (as zip) to the counterpart which will be placed in the “Final Cut Projects” folder.
Adding new files to any event involved is also a bit complicated in case you got more than one event. To do that you need instructions where to install both the alias and the source media. Along with these instructions send the alias of the new file and the source as a zipped file to the coworker.

This way both parties always work exactly the same using same data and references.

-Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

[Andreas Kiel]

[Jeremy] “I’m glad there’s at least a mouse hole. That means we can still have some cheese. Looks like we have to wait a little longer for the wine.”

Mice don’t like cheese, but they do love cookies — so we have to wait for a coffee 🙂

– Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

[Andreas Kiel]

If you got more stuff on the RAID other than FCPX things I would use CarbonCopyCloner (or something similar) as it does a better verification while copying compared to the Finder.
But as Jeremy mentioned with this method FCPX will be confused when both volumes are mounted since the IDs are not replaced.
So an option would be to make a safe copy of everything beside FCPX stuff and than use FCPX to transfer it’s own stuff.

-Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

[Andreas Kiel]

[Jeremy]

[Gerry Fraiberg] “I believe that MovieSlate is camera agnostic. The FCPXML is generated on the iPad based on timecode, not codec.”

Right. But you can’t reconnect in FCPX via tc.

Maybe it’s just a “keyword creator” and you can drag your footage to them once imported.

If shooting say, P2 for example, this slate and the imported report have nothing in common, except tc.

Using XML you can do pre-editing-keywords. To import this XML flawless you probably need some little third party app.
So the issue is to find the right clip. The iApp has to know on which drive/volume the event will be stored and on which drive/volume the clips will be stored. With clips it also needs the exact name of the clip to make it work flawless. Latter one can be painful.

In case the event volume can’t be found the event will be created on the boot drive. In case the clips aren’t found they are offline but can be relinked. And there the trouble with names come up.
That’s no workflow I like.

Depending on the camera type you’ve to edit scene, take, note, angle etc additionally and that’s another part of the workflow which is no fun.

Jeremy’s P2 example is a good example for the long way FCPX and 3rd party developers still have to go.
With P2 the P2 XML is recognized by FCPX and many metadata will be imported, but it takes way to much time to wrap these clips into containers and to copy them (in my opinion). But at least you got some metadata – if they where present. But you also get a kind of messy data as the camera name is retrieved from the P2 card name, makes no sense at all, also reel names are made from the P2 card name which makes even less sense in the ages of file based workflows (spanned clips will in theory have two reels)

Anyway, now if you want to use the described iApp you have to merge the metadata of the P2 files with the metadata of the FCPXML – and there is the dead end.
You can import the FCPXML and relink the files, but then your files metadata are lost, but you have markers and keywords. You can build a new XML (in theory) which will have both the keywords and the original metadata, but no metadata like reel, scene, take, comments are supported by FCPX with XML.
And now imagine you want to use external audio and merge the metadata of the audio with a clip – you’re back again with everything to zero.

It wasn’t possible with FCP as well, but the structure of legacy FCP XML left the door open for a big truck, FCPX XML gives you a mouse hole.

So the app is a nice gadget for FCPX for those who only care about keywords. FCPX is not ready for this app, as well as for the apps the company has created.

Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

[Andreas Kiel]

Vero,

For Avid it should be easy to convert your Word doc to an Avid compatible text format.

It’s format looks like below:
TC In space char TC Out return char Subtitle double-return.

01:00:00:00 01:00:03:12
Just some made up subtitle text 01

01:00:04:08 01:00:09:16
Just some made up subtitle text 02

01:00:10:13 01:00:15:21
Just some made up subtitle text 03

Once you have done that you need to add a header at the start:
@ Header

You may experiment with the numbers.

You also need to add a "closing" tag at the end of the document:

So finally your Word document will look somehow like below:

@ Header

In Word now save as plain text and import into Avid.

-Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

[Andreas Kiel]

by Michael Garber on Jun 28, 2012 at 6:15:52 pm

Andreas – thanks!!! That is a great helper app. So, the key with sparse bundles is that you can’t expand their size, only shrink, correct?

Michael Garber

Micheal I updated the app last week but there was a stupid error (nothing serious)
So it’s up again with the option to expand the size.

Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

[Andreas Kiel]

A quote from
https://www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/news/867-metronome-celebrate-a-documentary-series-cut-on-fcpx-with-a-birthday-cake

The assistant editor creates a sparse disk image for every single story on our server. This way, editors and journalists are able to access and share events and projects on a “check in check out basis”. We are not on a Xsan network but work entirely on an ethernet platform connected to a Mac Pro server. We have nine clients connected to this server and each user gets about 109 mb pr second.

Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

[Andreas Kiel]

Thanks Simon,

Just a few minutes ago I made an update of this app with some cosmetic fixes (numbers where swapped between the volume sizes).
Though this bug wouldn’t do any harm, it’s recommend to download the updated version.

Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

[Andreas Kiel]

Micheal,

Sparse(bundle) images are pretty helpful for me as they can grow and shrink and I can keep customers and their projects cleanly separated.

You can use use them for archiving finished projects as well.

But keep in mind that they behave like virtual hard disks. So if the disk is full it is full. So when creating a sparse(bundle) make it big enough allow enough room for later changes.

They also allow to use non SAN volumes to share projects.

I made a little free utility that allows easy creation of sparse(bundle) disk images and shrinking of them as well, without running commands in Terminal.

https://www.spherico.com/filmtools/createDiskImage

Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

[Andreas Kiel]

A large amount of compound clips seems to be the issue. As far as I know Apple is aware of that and I’m pretty sure it will be fixed in the next update. In the meantime be careful with them and make backups of events and projects — either by copy everything or just project/event

https://help.apple.com/finalcutpro/mac/10.0/#ver397277a3

-Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools