cleaning up after a project

Is there a tutorial out there that will help a rookie like me do the cleanup after one finishes a job.

what can I trash, what should I keep in case the customer calls me back next year and wants his movie back but with just some modifocations...

a tutorial that explains where to store what is really needed and what I can dispose of without loosiing all.

thank-you...........Katah

Thre is this

[www.lafcpug.org]

Michael Horton
-------------------

If you're new to this, I suggest you backup all files first -- useful or not, in the tutorial or not -- and do a "mock cleanup". Then try to reconstruct your project using the files you've left, see if it works. If not, revert to the backup and troubleshoot what went wrong. If so, you're in business.


www.derekmok.com

Katah, I'd love it if your question is answered thoroughly. I've been wrestling with this same question for almost a year.

Here's what I think would be a great solution for our problem:

1. Make a self-contained movie of the finished project at its highest quality.

2. Copy all the media files to data DVD discs.

3. Save the complete project on DVDs in all its elements.

4. Delete everything but the self-contained movie.

Is this a possible solution?

Vic's outline will only work for projects at the lowest level, such as DV and HDV with only an hour's worth of raw footage. Try that on a DigiBeta-quality show with Uncompressed 10-bit media, or a documentary with 20 one-hour DV tapes, and you'll end up needing about 40 DVDs for backup. Not practical by any stretch of the imagination -- just the burning of the data DVDs will take days.

General maxims:

1. If you'd logged and captured tapes properly, and the tapes had good timecode, then there's little reason to back up the batch-captured media. Simply preserve your master tapes (as you would always want to do) and your project file and you can recapture from tape easily.

2. Media Manager, if you know how to use it, can reduce the amount of media you need to backup drastically. My opinion, however, is that any media that can safely be "manhandled" by Media Manager, ie. timecoded clips, also don't need to be backed up at all for a long-term archive.

3. Save your project file, and multiple time/date-stamped copies of it. It is the brain of your project. Lose it and all your edits are gone.

4. Don't ever bother with render files. They're useless in the long run. In fact, you may want to dump them right before performing the archiving.

5. Any non-timecoded media -- music files extracted from CD, graphics clips from AfterEffects, Motion and LiveType project files being used in the timeline or forming the basis of graphics-clip exports, Photoshop documents, second-generation movie files exported from an FCP sequence -- is non-expendable. You must back it up or any edit you do with it will be lost.

6. Consolidate. Try not to have too many unnecessary folders. Separate files by group and function, but, for example, don't allow an iTunes "artist - album" folder for every one of the 300 music tracks you used in the film.

7. Make sure every single file used in your editing has a unique name. Unfortunately, this is hard to ensure at the archiving stage -- you pretty much had to keep doing this as you added new files to your project from the beginning.

8. Whatever backup location you're using -- an external drive, data DVDs, Flash sticks -- your backup is useless unless you know what it contains. A comprehensive labelling system is absolutely essential. Name your project, put a date on it, and don't have redundant multiple copies.



This is an example of a good archived file system:

Titanic Master Folder Backup 013007
- Titanic Archive 013007
L Titanic.proj 011407 1600
L Titanic.proj 013007 PICLOCK
- Titanic Audio 013007
L Music 01 Editor
L Music 02 Director
L Voice-Overs 01 Temp
L Voice-Overs 02 Final
- Titanic Documents 013007
- Titanic Graphics 013007
L Final Logos
L Lower 3rds
- Titanic Manual Clips 013007
L Reel 103 Clip 01 MANUAL
L Reel 105 Clip 02 MANUAL
- Titanic Project 013007



This is an example of a bad one:

For My Movie
- /\&*%^----.132.mov
- Capture Scratch
L Capture Scratch
L Capture Scratch
- Editing
- Editing copy
- even MORRe Edditingg
- final
- Final!
- Lots of Editing
- More Editing
- Movies
- MyGreatMovie
- Tunes groovy!

How do you tell which "Editing" folder/file is the latest? Which "final" is final? What does "movie" mean -- movie files? Your project file? Other elements such as graphics and editing notes? What does "MyMovie" mean -- your $30,000 short film intended to break you in as a filmmaker, or that home video you shot two weeks ago of your cat licking itself? And who is the "me" in the folder name -- you, your editor, your producer, your second editor, your sound mixer, the first director on the project, your kid, or your maid? And so on.

Good archiving really starts at the beginning. If a project is set up properly, and the operator has a good understanding of file management and file types within the editing process, then archiving is a breeze. If a project's organization was bungled in the beginning, even the best FCP operator will be bound hands and feet when it comes time for the archiving.


www.derekmok.com