[Rich Moos]

Thanks again Shane. The input is appreciated, valuable, and finally puts the issue to bed. I hope this thread is helpful to the next schlub like me that comes along with the “of course it’s possible” assumption to do a real offline/online workflow with tapeless media in FCP7.

Since we are on an EditShare there might yet be a solution to our troubles with their Flow product. I’m looking into it and will report back. I’m also taking a hard look at Lightworks. Will that be the FCP killing game-changer…? Will NAB reveal FCP X to be a dark horse, restoring our faith, and save the Apple day…? Stay tuned.

Cheers
–R.

[Rich Moos]

Hi Shane,

Thanks for chiming in. I think I have read everything you’ve ever posted and every tutorial you’ve ever made that even came close to relating to this topic. Can you say FCPUG Mag 2010? I tried to be as clear and thorough as possible, but I did use a sort of short-hand. But maybe I missed something about the whole process as well.

I L&T-ed everything to ProRes Proxy, the complete camera originals, then recompressed those clips to OfflineRT with Media Manager, (identical clips/names/lengths at OfflineRT compressions which relink fine), and did the cut with the OfflineRT media. Once pix locked, I consolidated the sequence with Media Manager using “Make Offline” to get me a sequence made of just the clips I want to up-rez. This works perfect with clips that are tape based or tapeless clips that were a flavor of ProRes, i.e. offlining ProRes proxy then onlining to ProRes 422– Log and Transfer launches when I want to bring in tapeless media. But the process breaks if I’m using OfflineRT (made from ProRes Proxy that were brought in through L&T) from tapeless media and when I try to batch capture my tapeless media, Log & Capture launches instead.

What I interpret you saying is that I have to keep the full-rez material that I L&T from the start, plus the camera original (for archiving), plus the OfflineRT versions, never really going back to the camera original material– 3 different flavors of the all of the footage? I would do my cut from the OfflineRT, then reload the entire full-rez version that I’ve archived and relink back to that version, bypassing batch capture with L&T altogether? An interesting work around and if the offline/online process really is broken when it comes to tapeless media, I can incorporate this needless/senseless process into my workflow, but is that really the case? Can it be true? I’m having a hard time believing it, especially since it works fine with flavors of ProRes. Is there no real way to offline tapeless in FCP aside from ProRes Proxy? Maybe I should be looking at expanding my EditShare real estate. Even if I double it though, that only buys me a year or so. I need a real offline solution. What does NFL Films do!

I bailed on Avid 4+ years ago, just before Apple bailed on FCP pro users. I’ve been holding out, but I’m hating that I might have to admit I regret the decision.

Premiere anyone?
–R.

[Rich Moos]

Long time reader, first time poster. I manage a med/small facility. We have 9 FCP7 seats connected to an EditShare with 18 TB effective storage. In the recent past we had been working full rez on all projects form start to finish. Rapidly expanding demand and a move from EX1 acquisition to C300 acquisition has forced us to an offline/online workflow. A drag yes, but it’s the way we used to do it right?… before tapeless.

All master footage is brought in through Log & Transfer. We process the master footage in Media Manager to Offline RT with the Recompress method. Cut, then prep sequences in Media Manager with the create offline/delete unused media/with handles method. Open the new project that Media Manager made and launch Log & Transfer, load original media from archived cards and click batch capture. Instead of processing in Log & Transfer, FCP keeps opening Log & Capture as if it was looking for a tape. This happens regardless of the OS or hardware.

I have read the all of the very few posts about this error that are out there. I have also tested and retested multiple ways of Media Managing the material. I have yet to discover a solution. I’ve read unconfirmed suggestions that there is a problem with EX1 footage and Offline RT files, but this is happening with my C300 footage as well. I’m suspecting that I will run into this with every tapeless format. This seems to have affected Red users in the past who did not use L&T to handle their footage. The work around was to use Clipfinder. I thought that might be a work around for us as well, but that option is no longer available as the developer has stopped further development and support of that utility.

The process works fine when we use flavors of ProRes. However, we went with Offlline RT instead of ProRes Proxy because when we assessed overhead, we determined that we would exceed the capacity of our current architecture within a year or so given the current demands. Our work requires us to have access to a large volume of archive material as well as current material.

Based on the lack of posts about this and the age of the posts that do exist, it appears that very few people are offlining now days, or the problem was solved and folks just moved on. But I know that there are those out there in similar situations. Any advise or opinions are extremely welcome.