[Atilio Menéndez]

If there is a folder named “DCIM” in the root of the external drive, fcpx won’t mount it since it thinks it’s a camera. Probably not what’s going on in your case but who knows…

[Atilio Menéndez]

Glad to hear that.

[Atilio Menéndez]

Wow. Those are some harsh words, Bill.

Yes, I believe you have misconstrued what I said. I have said nothing at all about “working around” Standard Storylines, Connected Clips or Auditions. I use them all the time, just like everyone else. To “make everything a compound clip”? To “toss out” the “rest of the editing constructs” and that these are a “stupid idea”? When did I say that? I most certainly didn’t mean ANYTHING like that.

Let me try to explain again. I was perfectly happy using projects until version 10.0.6. Then the way compound clips work changed, and, since I use compound clips a LOT, and compound clips within auditions and what not, this was a big change. My problem is that if you work on a project which contains compound clips, then as soon as you open a compound and change anything within that compound, the changes are stored not in the project but in an event. I therefore didn’t see much benefit in using projects if these in reality only store the “upper layer” of my edit and everything else is stored within the events. I discovered that I can be perfectly happy not using projects at all and working just with compounds/events. That’s just what works for me. It makes my life easier for the reasons which I have explained as I don’t have to keep track of which event contains the compound clips of which project, etc.

Now, anything you can do by editing a project can be done by editing a compound. Opening a compound in the timeline and opening a project in a timeline, are they truly different? Can you not export (“share”) from a compound? Set its resolution? Can you not use Standard Storylines, Connected Clips, Auditions, other Compound Clips? Can you not do all of these within both, equally well? What is the big sin that I am comitting by not using projects? I still DO use them, by the way, but mostly for my “final renders”, or for the “media-management” features, as a tool. I, personally, am just happier not using them as part of my workflow when I am actually editing. Is that really so awful?

My initial post had, by the way, much less to do with projects than with the problems Adam was facing collaborating on changes made to events. I hope I was useful there. My suggestion regarding projects, which I didn’t even consider so important, was much less the idea that you MUST avoid them than the suggestion that you CAN do so if you want to.

I have not posted much in this forum, true, but have followed it very closely in the last years and have appreciated your contributions. I am somewhat surprised by your reaction, I must say.

[Atilio Menéndez]

Bill, your incredibly condescending answer addresses none of the issues I described which arise when using projects in a collaborative environment. In such circumstances projects are created by different editors which in turn will surely create many different versions. If these projects use compound clips, then one has to keep track of the projects ALONG WITH with their corresponding events. I personally have found it much easier to deal just with events.

You say a compound clip will “never be” a “timeline replacement”. I imagine you meant “project replacement”. Well, please explain why, since I have found that I can do absolutely all of my editing using just compound clips. The only instances when I DO need projects is when I need a “faux media manager” and want to export an edit with only the media which it references.

Look, I use the program daily and have been using is since it was released and previously used fcp7 for several years. I really don’t think I don’t understand the software and have to “inform myself”. I have described the way I like to use the program and which works very well for me. If you disagree then please at least refer to the issues which I described.

[Atilio Menéndez]

Hi Adam,

I don’t think you are missing “lots and lots and lots” of “something easy”. FCPX has no proper collaborating workflow, period. Hopefully it will have, but right now it just doesn’t.

With Final Cut Legacy collaborating was easy: each editor could copy all media to his own drive and then, since all his “work”, that is, all of the information about his organizing and editing was contained within a single and quite small PROJECT FILE, this file could be mailed back and forth, changes made, stuff copied from one sequence to the next, different versions made, backups, etc.

In FCPX this is not at all straightforward, to put it mildly. First of all, all of the information pertainig to the organizing and classifying of media is stored within the events and NOT the projects. The events are not merely containers of -or pointers to- the media, but contain the keyword collections, favorites, ranges, markers, etc. Therefore, in point 4 which you described, you need to bring your editor’s EVENT back into your drive, not his project.

Now, you might think that the actual “editing” will be stored within the projects. Well, not quite. As of version 10.0.6, compound clips can no longer be stored within projects but are ONLY stored within events. That is, changes you make in the timeline to a compound clip which is within a project are not stored in the project itself but in the event to which the project is associated. As a result, in order to manage different versions of a project where compound clips are used, you have to manage the events which contain these compund clips CONCURRENTLY, making always sure that these compound clips are all “unique”. Otherwise, any change you make to a compound clip will update within all projects where it is used, even if these projects are not open. Also, if you have compound clips within a project and, say, copy the project to your editor’s drive, you have to do so within FCPX and make sure it copies the compound clips ALONG WITH the project (there is an option and FCPX will create a new event with these compound clips). Your editor must receive both the project AND an event containing the compound clips used in -and unique to- that project.

Yes, I am also scratching my head.

But let’s go back to your case. So you need to copy the EVENT back from your editor, where he has diligently added keywords, favorites, etc. How to do so without actually copying or moving the media around? If you work the way FCPX expects, that is, keeping your media within the “Original Media” folder, you simply can’t. Final cut will always physically copy or move the media, even within a device.

So you have to do something along the lines of what Bill suggested, keeping the media in a “collection”, outside of the events (note that the media must be outside of the event folder ENTIRELY, not merely outside of the “Original Media” folder!). Only then does fcpx NOT pysically copy or move the media. Still, each time you move or copy an event from one device to another, you will have to relink all of the clips within the new device.

(A workaround to avoid relinking is to replace just the CurrentVersion.fcpevent file. This works nicely once the alises in the “Original Media” folder are correctly pointing to the media within its device, that is, after relinking once. Nevertheless, this is somewhat a hack since the CurrentVersion.fcpevent file also contains information about render files, transcoded media, etc. which is almost surely different between systems. I don’t know if this could cause problems. As a precaution you might want to have FCPX delete all render files on both events before moving the CurrentVersion.fcpevent file around.)

For all of these reasons I now stick to the following practices:

1. Keep all media outside of the events and manage my media manually.
2. Work only with events. Do all editing in compound clips and never use projects.

Needless to say, none of this is properly documented by Apple. Imagine a team of editors, new to the program, trying to sort this all out? Whoah!

[Atilio Menéndez]

Yes, the Events/Projects organization in fcx is unelegant as hell. It is even worse than what you described, Oliver, if you work with compound clips, since these are now stored not within the projects but within the events. What’s the point of using projects then? I’ve no idea. I now use events exclusively, never projects. One event = one project, as in fcp7. These can then be stored and organized much like you described, with “just” the inconvenience that to open them you have to move them to the events folder first and then move them back afterwards. It’s ugly, yes, absolutely, but it’s not so different than using fcp7 or PPro.
In my opinion it’s proper tools for multi-user cooperation what FCX, as a professional tool, is sorely lacking. Even more than the integration with AE or the Events/Projects organization.

[Atilio Menéndez]

hi Dave,

you made me curious so I looked into my “method” again and discovered a way of working which is even more effective.

FIRST lay the interview on the timeline and by looking at the waveforms quickly insert edits at the pauses or remove chunks of silence, so you are more or less left with the interview divided into the “answers”.

THEN start working on the timeline index as i described. you should never have to touch the mouse during the process.

as you start playing the first clip you press “enter” to change its name. you can then type as the clip keeps playing and you can finish typing even as the next clip is already playing. you then press “enter”, then your shortcut for “select clip” (I use a key right next to “enter”) then “enter” again and begin typing again. if you type fast enough you never even have to stop playback. this is indeed very effective, especially since you type as the clips play and between clips only three very fast keytrokes are needed.

nice thing is when you are done you can organize the clips with help of the index. just looking at the list of clips you can, for instance, select several clips which are not next to each other but belong to the same “topic”. you can drag them around on the timeline and they automatically end neatly next to each other, no gaps in between. seems to me that it would suit very well the way you work and you DO see the clip names clearly both on the timeline and in the index.

here fcp7 is quite different. you must make clips independent first, renaming a clip stops playback, thumbnails get in the way of the names and filmstrips can’t be displayed together with names, and there is no timeline index, which is a huge help to select clips and see their names properly. also the “magnetism” makes organizing clips a breeze. how does premiere work here?

I don’t think the method is truly a “workaround”, rather a different manner of working. the “type as you play” aspect is a huge timesaver!

what still bugs me is the resulting lack of integration with keywords. ideally, i think, there should be proper subclips, and these would be listed under the parent clip, just like favorites, markers and keywords are. one method of creating these subclips could even be to open a clip in the timeline and to work like I described above.

[Atilio Menéndez]

Oh yes, I truly agree that transcribing interviews is needlessly difficult with FCPX. I too haven’t found a way which I am happy with, I hate mousing myself!

Perhaps the following could work for you: put your interview clip(s) in a compound clip, open it, go to the timeline index, select the first clip and let go of the mouse. Now you can play back and forth, insert edits (blade all), navigate/select segments (using up and down arrow keys), rename the segments (by pressing enter and typing) and delete useless segments, all without ever touching the mouse. For this to work clicking on the index first is important otherwise pressing enter to rename has strangely no effect.

It is not quite as good as what you describe but kinda close. Only problem is the edits then “live” within the compound clip and that limits organizing the material using keywords and searching. You can still apply keywords to the compound clips themselves, move and copy the edited segments from one compound clip to the other and so forth, but it is not quite the same. The compound clips then resemble the traditional bins, but you cannot easily look inside. If one could only “expand” the compound clips in the event browser and see the clips within this would be much better.

[Atilio Menéndez]

You must be on list view and the clip has to be “expanded” (click on the little rigth arrow or press alt+right arrow). Then click next to the green star and change “favorite” to anything you want. You don’t want to rename the clip itself since that renames all of its “instances” (differently as when when working on the timeline).

But I don’t think that’s the best workflow. I instead use markers (eh, “tags”) for the more detailed descriptions and keywords for the more general categories. You can be as detailed as you want and use several markers within a keyword range or a favoritized segment, with none of the “mess”. You can then see all markers neatly listed by selecting the clips and “expanding” them by pressing alt+right arrow. Works quite well except for one thing: the view always resets to the “collapsed” state instead of staying in the “expanded” state.

Searching through the markers using smart collections works fine, and on the timeline I find the timeline index extremely useful to search/navigate/rename markers, rename clips, etc.

[Atilio Menéndez]

Well, there are significantly less steps involved.

Avid or FCP7:

1. Set IN
2. Set OUT
3. Make subclip
4. Rename subclip (several keystrokes)
5. Go back to parent clip

FCPX:

1. Set IN
2. Set OUT
3. Apply keyword or favorite (usually just one keystroke)

Repeat this all day and it makes a huge difference!

Keyword ranges can also overlap and be filtered in many ways, something which is much more powerful than organizing footage using bins and keywords in the subclip names.

And also when editing there is no need to keep removing subclip limits as in FCP7.