Media Manager and Sequences

Hi,
The Media Manager confusses me a bit. I didn't find a propper tutorial about Media Manager, so I am learning on the way. OK, I have a project compossed by 5 sequences (about 9 GB) on each. It's a long film (domestic video). All that media occupes about 56 GB on my hard drive and of course I looked for a way to move them to an external drive.

I used the media manager in order to learn how convenient it could be, which results I get after a,b,c... settings and so on.

OK, I noticed that the project was like duplicated, right? I chose MOVE the media to an external drive. Well, those media are mostly AVI files. AVI are not so friendly to FCP? I don't understand why those AVI files was "readed" or "understood" like BLOCKED.

When I tried to make the MOVING files, I received a messagge saying that those AVI files are blocked and if I wanted always to delete them.... and so son. I could do it. But why that messagge?

Something that really called my attention is that after all media was Offline (because they were already on the external drive), when I opened the project, the sequences could be viewed as if the clips are online!

So, if the clips are offline, why the sequence (related to the offline clips) is still Present!. Other sequences needed rendering to be viewed and other third sequences were viewable without the audio track.

So, anybody can explain me what happened here with that sequences? I was wondering if maybe FCP created a new sequence-file with those clips. If it's so, WHERE ARE those phantom clips? I am concerned because every sequence is about 45 minutes and I guess than the memmory was scratched enough.

One more thing, when I check the "editable-sequences" (I mean the original clips track for editing purposes), no clips are viewed, just say MEDIA OFFLINE. When I select those clips, go to "Reveal on Finder" and says Not Found. And that's my question: If the media is offline, how can they appear in the sequence?

If anybody know any link for Media Manager tutorial, I'll really appreciate it.

Thanks a lot.

"If the media is offline, how can they appear in the sequence?"

Because the files were AVIs they have to be rendered in the FCP sequence. What you're seeing are the render files, but it really sounds as if you've lost your media.

All the best,

Tom

If you want the Media Manager to work properly, you have to work with proper media that FCP can work with. AVIs are NOT proper media. You need to work with footage that you see in the Easy Setups. And you need to make sure that all the footage has REEL numbers. This is one way FCP keeps track of things.

So if you want to use the MM, then you need to transcode your footage to proper FCP codecs.


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