[Jeff Kirkland]

When you create a project you can choose ProRes LT as the render format.

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

When I exported a range from a project timeline FCPX added about two seconds of extra audio at the end. I’ve exported a few more segments and it hasn’t happened again so maybe it was just a one time glitch…

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

[Andy Neil] ” That’s strange. I could see it being a toggle if it were mapped to modifier key like say CMD+OPT or something, but it’s weird to hold down a regular keyboard character.”
I guess holding down the key avoids forgetting whether the option is on or off and/or having to add some sort of indicator to tell you which mode you are in.

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

Thanks guys – mission accomplished. Once case of user error resolved. You’d think after all this time I’d have spotted the difference between “project” and “event” but there you go…

And now while I’m learning how to read, I’ll ask what sorts of files can be in a project that would be outside of the current project folder and be the target of the command I was trying to use?

~jeff k

[Jeff Kirkland]

Thanks Bill & Jeremy,

For what it’s worth I am a firm believer that, as a database driven app, the best work practice is to let FCPX handle all the media so I don’t do any media management outside of the app.

So here’s what I’m doing step by step (with screen shots for Jeremy :-). I’ve never managed to make this command work so if anyone can can spot the user error on my part, or give me a way to easily achieve this, I’ll be very happy.

1. I create a sparse image to hold the project and event. In the case of this test, the event and media are in a sparse image on external USB drive media is on my Mac Pro’s internal RAID.

I then go to FCPX and import the media. Again, for this test I chose to not copy the media into the event library so there would be some aliases created for the media.

As expected, I now have an event library with aliases in my Original Media folder.

Moving right along, I create a project, edit some footage into the timeline and then want to replace those aliases with copies of the real media. i choose “Organize Project Files”…

At this point I get my hopes up because FCPX seems to know what I want to do…

But as soon as click “continue..” I get the following

And i still have an event library full of aliases.

For the sake of it, I then try “Consolidate Media Files…” but no joy there either.

So if this works for everyone else, where am I going wrong?

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

In the case of the original example I gave, the project and event were on an internal RAID in my Mac Pro and the media to be copied was on a CF card.

I’ve seen the organise command work in other demos but for me, it doesn’t matter whether the event & project are in a sparse image, on an external drive or on my Mac Pro’s internal RAID – it always starts with a dialog that looks like it is going to work, then tells me there’s nothing to organise.

Nor has it ever worked in any version of FCPX I’ve ever used. Nor does it work on my iMac, either of my MacBook Pros, my Mac Pro or my Mac Mini. Nor does it work under Snow Leopard, Lion, or Mountain Lion.

I can work around it but it’d be great if I could figure out why the command simply doesn’t work for me. It’s something I revisit from time to time and ultimately put in the too hard basket.

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

That’s what I’d have thought but in all the time I’ve been using FCPX I’ve never seen anything other than the first dialog telling me there are files outside the project that need copying in, immediately followed by another dialog telling me everything’s already there and there’s nothing for FCPX to do (which is just not true).

I’m at a loss to see any situation where the organize command actually works.

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

Thanks for the replies.

@Jeremy: Yes I could do that. I can also re-link the media which will restart the ingest or I could use an app like AliasHerder to do it for me.

@Bill: I guess what I’m trying to find out is under what circumstances do those two menu options actually do anything? The above example was something that happened yesterday that left me with aliases (and FCPX had no intention of restarting the import – dunno why) but not the only reason I may end up with aliases in my events folder.

I guess I’m trying to figure out how to make sure I don’t have any aliases when I archive my projects, and if media has come from diverse places, I don’t want to have to manually go hunting for it to copy the original over – that’s a recipe for accidentally missing something.

Here’s my typical workflow and the reason I’m interested in working this out..

I create a sparse image to hold my FCPX project and event(s). I use PostHaste to set up some extra folders to hold documents, stills, and whatever else may be associated with the project. This gives me one neat package to deal with that’s easily transferrable to another computer and very easy to pick up where I left off should I have to revisit the project at some later date.

As a rule I get FCPX to ingest all the media and copy it to the appropriate events folder within the sparse image.

Now jump to the end of the edit. For one reason or another, I have some ‘real’ media in my events folder and some aliases.

Before I close the sparse image and file it away, I want to make sure that copies of all the original media are contained within the FCPX event folder. I don’t want to re-open it in six months time and find something’s missing.

Shouldn’t one of the two above mentioned commands, more specifically the “Organize Project Files” option, replace any aliases in the event library with the original media?

I’m just trying to get my head around two things:

A) what are those two commands supposed to do if not what their names (and the user manual) suggest, and

B) what is the right ending to my workflow to make sure my event library doesn’t contain any aliases when I archive the sparse image? I can use yet another app to handle the aliases but I really thought FCPX could do this internally. I figure FCPX is so database driven that it’s always better to let it manage media wherever possible.

Cheers,
Jeff K

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

Two things come to mind… Delete the bits you don’t want using Motion and re-save, or turn the generated clip into a compound clip and cut it as you did in FCP 7.

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

You’ll probably want to tell us what system you’re doing the compression on. The RAM, CPU and GPU available make a difference to compression time, as does whether or not the media was optimised before you output the timeline.

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland