Media Manager Q....???

Anyone know of a good in-depth tutorial on how to best use Media Manager? Does it work for all media in your sequence or your project etc...? I need to free up some harddrive space and have almost 30 tapes worth of stuff captured for a feature, but we have the cut finalized. There's a lot of options when I run media manager and I want to make sure I use it to the best of its abilities but also understand what it's doing. Thanks.

Here's one:

[www.larryjordan.biz]

It's not THAT in-depth but it's what I do and it hasn't steered me wrong.

cool, thanks! do you rccomend using Media Manager in FCP 5.0.4 or FCP 5.1? I assume the most recent version the better, although some say 4.5's was better than 5's...

The media manager in 5.1 is the best there has been.

The only thing not addressed are speed changes when you consolidate all the media used in your cut. That is because speed changes CREATE NO MEDIA. It'd be nice if that clip information still remained, but alas.

Some day.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

Shane Ross Wrote:
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> The media manager in 5.1 is the best there has
> been.
>
> The only thing not addressed are speed changes
> when you consolidate all the media used in your
> cut. That is because speed changes CREATE NO
> MEDIA. It'd be nice if that clip information
> still remained, but alas.
>
> Some day.

So what do you do? Do you make a seperate QT movie or just re-do it when needed?

> So what do you do? Do you make a seperate QT movie or just re-do it when needed?

The most common technique is to make sure the piece(s) with speed changes also exist in the timeline in a version without any speed modifications. It will recapture properly, and then you re-execute the speed change in the online version.


www.derekmok.com

When I worked on a show that used lots of speed changes I had a simple method for getting good info to the online using EDLs.
I used a "speed track" which was an empty track above everything else that I created before generating EDLs. Step through sequence looking for speed change clips, move them to speed track, lock other tracks to prevent slipping sync and remove speed change setting. Ensuring that the clips' start was aligned with the start of the hole underneath where it came from I could generate an EDL for the speed track that the online editor could easily digitize and the hole underneath in the main EDL gave a good idea of what stretching/squeezing had to take place.

Works with audio too, although with audio I would provide a mixdown of the effected clip so the mix house knew what to aim for. Duplicate audio, remove effects. Select original audio, mixdown.

You could probably do something like this for a job with media manager. Makes it easy to find all the speed change clips and you know where they have to go.

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

Another method: Speed-changed clips, if they were logged and captured properly, generally don't slip if you simply recapture them. It's the trimming done in Media Manager that they have a problem with. So another thing to try is to simply copy the old master clip over and recapture it using a new Capture Preset at online quality. In other words, let those clips bypass Media Manager.


www.derekmok.com

>So what do you do? Do you make a seperate QT movie or just re-do it when needed?

I don't use the Media Manager. Haven't had the need yet.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

Andrew Kines Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> When I worked on a show that used lots of speed
> changes I had a simple method for getting good
> info to the online using EDLs.
> I used a "speed track" which was an empty track
> above everything else that I created before
> generating EDLs. Step through sequence looking for
> speed change clips, move them to speed track, lock
> other tracks to prevent slipping sync and remove
> speed change setting. Ensuring that the clips'
> start was aligned with the start of the hole
> underneath where it came from I could generate an
> EDL for the speed track that the online editor
> could easily digitize and the hole underneath in
> the main EDL gave a good idea of what
> stretching/squeezing had to take place.
>
So the (original) clip material up above on the speed track would appear longer or shorter than the hole it was meant to fill below and this would clue the on-line guy what needs to be done?

On the old Avids, you could write little notes at given points in the EDL for the on-line guys. Is this possible in FCP?

> So the (original) clip material up above on the speed track would appear longer or shorter
> than the hole it was meant to fill below and this would clue the on-line guy what needs to be
> done?

Presumably you'd tell the online editor what to do. A lot of us also serve as online editors for our editing work, so in many cases it's a moot point.

When you have the non-speed-changed version of the clip positioned with its In point matching the offline speed-changed clip's position, then all you have to do is use "Fit to Fill".


www.derekmok.com

Quote
derekmok
Presumably you'd tell the online editor what to do

There were always editors notes but relying solely on the notes is asking for trouble when there is an episode a week in the online pipeline and up to four editors generating new offlines.
My speed track was a workaround for non existant support of speed changes in EDLs and a high workload on the offline and online side. Never the same online operator or digitizer and no guarantee that notes would get there before capture or at all.

Quote
TimJBD
On the old Avids, you could write little notes at given points in the EDL for the on-line guys. Is this possible in FCP?

There is a functionality for adding comments in FCP EDLs but I have never tested it. You can include the master comments 1-4 columns as event notes as well.

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!