I'm working on a 90 minute film and need to organise clips thousands of clips from hundreds of tapes - The material could be orgainised easily into 3 areas - but any clip may in the end be used anywhere in the finished film.
The big drawback I seem have working in diferent projects - is when I need to match a clip in the timeline and find it in it's bin.
As soon as you copy a sequence to a different project in order to complile the assembly you lose the seq will find the original clip in the viewr but loses it link with the bin from which it came - Sorry this is a bit unclear . but I want FCP to behave like my Avid - matchframe and then find clip in bin. - always
If I can't match a shot in the timeline back to it's bin - I have to look throuhg hunreds of bins for it !
Any suggestions
Thanks

the short answer is NOT to separate your cuts from your rushes.

this could lead to project bloat if you like to keep lots of copies of cuts in your project.
the solution there is you DONT do that.

you keep all your rushes, and ONE version of your cut.
when you complete a pass thru the film, and want to start re-working it,
make a copy of the PROJECT file, and date that.

i generally start re-working after having completed a pass thru the film, and having a screening of it.
so i add a note about what particular screening it was in the project file's COMMENT feild.
(select the file, apple i, or "get info" to open it's "info" window.
add comments in there.
in the finder window where the files are kept, sort by list view, apple J to open view options and tick "Comments" to open the comments column.)

WITHIN the project:

as you say there are many ways to organise the material.
you;re going to have to choose a way.

the doco i've been working on is an unfolding narrative, so we're pretty happy sorting chronologically.
each major shoot has been given a new prefix, and the tapes get numbered accordingly. (we capture whole tapes)
the sixth shoot's tapes started at 601.
the seventh, 701
this works for us.
within the 700 bin,
we have "Clustered" tapes according to subject, and collected them in bins.
701-704 might be interview Joe,
705-708 might be Joe's 'hood
(if subjects crossed over tapes we subclip that tape into 2)

in the bins we also have a sequence where all the clips are laid out
we have a lot of 2 camera IVs,
so having them in sequences is the only way we can deal with that
we also like searching for things in the sequences.
it;s a quick way to search thru a lot of material.
we use sequence markers a LOT to help
these aren't searchable in the browser, tho.

we haven't been breaking down our tapes into individual shots much.
sometimes we do, but not very often.

everyone will have their own way, and this method, while it works for us, will be anathema to others.

for a DRAMA,
it's much-much easier
sort the clips by scenes.
number the scene bins. if your scenes go into the hundreds, number sc 1 as 001. this will keep them sorted correctly in FCP
in the bins i have my clips broken down into slates & takes, and i have my bins set to display large icons.
if i could i might have all the takes for a particular slate kept within one clip, with markers defining them,
but i work in PAL 24@25, and that's not possible
i again have a sequence in the bin with all the clips laid out. good for searching.

as far as maintaining the Master/Affiliate relationship.
while i say keeping all rushes and one cut in a project is the way,
i'll also say it's almost IMPOSSIBLE to FULLY maintain it.

i;m working with an assistant who is often pulling out shots for me in her version of the project.
she sends those shots over to me in a smaller project,
so right away those shots will not have a Master/Affiliate relationship when i cut them into my project.
i could copy her bin of selects into my project, though, and work from that, in which case i WOULD keep the link.
so there are ways,
but TWICE now, on large projects FCP has spat the dummy, given up the ghost, thrown it;s hands in the air, and said "it's all too much!"
what' happened is i;ve gotten a warning saying "your Master/Affiliate relationships have become corrupt"
which means: no more "reveal in bin"!

luckily, due the the organisation of the project, that doesn't matter so much,
as i know where to find clips myself.


cheers,
nick

> you keep all your rushes, and ONE version of your cut.
> when you complete a pass thru the film, and want to start re-working it,
> make a copy of the PROJECT file, and date that.

Amen to that. I usually keep no more than one old version of scenes, sequences etc. It also discourages directors from dilly-dallying between cuts trying to find out if those two frames we cut out really were better.

> we haven't been breaking down our tapes into individual shots much.

I've always advised people against describing the shot in the clip names, even for subclips. You wanna know what the shot is? Double-click, scrub through with a mouse, bingo. What I'd usually do is either an alpha-numeric, almost Dewey Decimal-like approach (eg. "10-02A-01" or, in the case of documentaries, brief descriptions (eg. "Lyman Interview 01". As for content notes, that's what all those other Log Notes, Master Comment and Comment columns are for.

don't know why you would not give a sub clip a descriptive name?
sound like making life hard for yourself unnecessarily!

in some cases a logging-system name is best for the clip itself.
we use reel# and brief description for captured whole-tape clips in our doco.
a drama of course would have either the Labroll, or slate/take, depending on how you capture.

but in a doco, why not have descriptive names, if the clips are then organised in an appropriately named bin?


nick

many thanks everybody

very useful tips - especially that FCP despite diligence of use may just one day give up and lose the links.

I,m clear on ideas for organizing - I've done it many ways in the past on Avid - and usually keep intermediate copies of sequences and assemblies all in the same project - I'm going to need to change habits like that .

Best wishes

Phil R

www.garbagewrrior.com

[www.insearchofmozart.com]

[www.theboywhoplaysonthebuddhasofbamiyan.co.uk]

www.urmumfilms.co.uk

> don't know why you would not give a sub clip a descriptive name?
> sound like making life hard for yourself unnecessarily!

Not at all. I usually don't describe the shot angle and camera movement because that's available at a click. But I would use subclip names to describe characters, audio content (such as what a segment of interview is saying), story context, keywords. And in rare cases, such as a cameraman sweeping through a workshop, a corridor and into the storespace outside, I'd call it that in the subclip because there's no other function to the shot.

My system is based more on narrative film, where if you call something "wide shot" or "WS", all your wide shots in a bin would get bunched together with no narrative logic. And in narrative film, there are no shots whose narrative context is not clear, because there's a script, and I'd prefer to name a subclip by its context rather than its camera angle.

And for one thing, if I were editing, I generally wouldn't use subclips at all.

All good advice so far. Due to the size of our projects and our networked workflow, we take a bit of a different approach. Some of this workflow may be helpful for your project. Here's what we do.

First: NEVER use the file name (master or subclip) for a description. That info belongs in a "comments" column, NOT the "file name" column. The tendency to "rename" clips comes from Avid users where each file name is give a unique number that made no sense to the end user. So AVID gave editors a "name" column, which has NOTHING to do with the actual file name. Imagine it as a "comments" column. Now in the FCP world, files ARE actually tracked by their "name". If you change it from what you've entered when digitizing, you're in for a world of hurt. Get used to using the "Comments" column for that info.

2nd: On a large project, the idea of keeping both clips and sequences in the same project becomes impossible. In a networked environment, it just doesn't make sense. So, imagine your storage as ONE BIG PROJECT. Use intelligent organization for your folders and you will be able to find whatever you need. You can use the "reveal in finder" function to have FCP show you exactly where the original clip lives. I agree that this is a much different way of working than in Avid land, but it does work.

3rd. Did I mention, "never rename your clips"?

"You can use the "reveal in finder" function to have FCP show you exactly where the original clip lives."

that sounds like you're saying you can do a "reveal in bin" from a timeline clip, which you cant.
well you can, but only if the clip lives in the same project as the cut sequence.
(and BTW, when it works, it works *better* in FCP than in avid.
you don't have to matchframe to viewer 1st. do it direct from the timeline.
Shift F works from viewer or timeline)

you are probably referring to when you find a clip using the search function:
select browser, apple F to open search box, enter clip name, hit "find all"
then there is a "reveal in browser" button at the bottom of the search results window.

and as you say, intelligent organisation is a must.


sorting the clips chronologically is easy, and not at all reliant on clip name: sort the browser by reel# & media start.
(click on "Reel" column head, hold SHIFT, and click on Media Start" column head)
i'll say, though, that this works only in list view.
in icon view you only have "sort by name" and the imbecilic "Sort by duration"

still no really compelling argument against using descriptive names,
just advice not to

here's one possible CON:
duplicate filenames.
if for some reason you had two clips with the same name, that would cause problems.
if called a clip WS Mike,
then a couple of days later logged and captured another clip as WS Mike,
the clip would keep the name WWS Mike, but the file, (if captured from within the dame project) would call itself WS Mike-1.
down the track if you eve needed to reconnect, you;d be left wondering which file belonged to which clip.
and could easily get it wrong.

worse would be if you captured the 2 like-named clips from within 2 different projects.
then the files would, because they are saved to different locations, have identical names!
now that could hurt down the track..

putting the reel# in the clip names has helped us prevent that,
but then we capture whole tapes.

--- the bigger the project, the more compelling the reasons to be more, uh... "Scientific" with your file/clip names

and just so you know...
the descriptive comments in FCP are not permanent.
reel# & TC do live with the file, as of course does file name.
anything else exists only within the FCP project, and can be volatile.

for instance:
create and keep a clip in project A: comments are OK
cut it into a sequence in Project B: comments OK
MATCH FRAME and edit into timeline again: COMMENTS GONE

this may not be such a terrible state of affairs.
you may only need the comments, etc in the browser for finding clips.
(too bad if you've got copyright info, for instance, in there, and need to do a tally at the end of your cut!)

workaround:
COPY clips from project A into project B browser before cutting into timeline.


all the best,
nick

ya see, the project im working on currently has 280 tapes,and more are coming, all the clips are translogged and data about them are kept in filemaker pro, than when digitized, all the litle bits of data about the tapes are coppied into the comments section of each tape.
each tape is than broken up into 15 min sections and dropped into projects about each person.

i think the issues we're gonna have is doing a title seqence
right now, im guess were going to have about 90 projects, maybe more. it' kinda crazy but we'e trying to g like super anal over organization.

it' dffinitly gonnecazy



Amateur Teacher

> right now, im guess were going to have about 90 projects, maybe more. it'
> kinda crazy but we'e trying to g like super anal over

Ninety project files for one film!?!? Even if you were editing Berliner Alexanderplatz, you shouldn't have that many. What exactly are you doing?

Use multiple Sequences and organize them well. No sane editor would be willing to deal with 90 separate project files for a single project.

Very instructive stuff, although most of it is above my head. I have a simple question to ask regarding organizing clips, and maybe this will be helpful to everyone and relevant to this thread.

Take a project that is based on a play shot from three camera angles. There are, say, two one hour tapes per camera angle, so that makes it six one hour tapes -- each one a continuous take.

Assume that the project would require a lot of cuts.

Is it advisable to keep placing in and out points every time and dragging the same shots to the timeline shot by shot without making subclips? How would you organize such an editing job.

Now I think this approximates a documentary project also.

> Is it advisable to keep placing in and out points every time and dragging the
> same shots to the timeline shot by shot without making subclips? How
> would you organize such an editing job.

No. You'd line up the sync points and put the entire play into the timeline, then either use Multiclip or checkerboard cuts. The Razorblade will be your dominant tool; every time you want a section of the play cut out (in a project like this, that's not very likely -- more likely they would want the entire play, intnact), you'd use the Razor or the Razor across All Tracks command (CONTROL-V) to cut all three angles at the same time. Subclips would almost certainly be useless in this job because the play is chronological and you don't have any alternate takes whatsoever.