a media manager workflow question...

Hi everyone

I'm getting toward the offline phase of my first big project on FCP. It's a project divided into 12 short-ish (12-15 mins) episodes.

I've been working in a single project with a bin and timeline for each episode. Some media that's referenced by multiple episodes is sitting in the main project browser bin. All the other media is in the individual bins, sorted by episode. Most is at offline quality, but over the course of the edit I have re-digitized some stuff at online quality and have ended up using that in the odd episode timeline (obviously it needed rendered to offline quality), so I don't need/want to re-dig that stuff. Because there's so much footage and so many tapes (60ish) I want to make sure I get the migration to online right before pushing the button. I also want to keep the offline material available (I have enough space), and I want to do things in one go so I only have to enter each of the 60 tapes into the deck once.

Having meditated on this, I think my basic question is this: when I'm ready to start onlining, should I manually create a single new project at online quality (DV PAL Anamorphic in my case), copying and paste each episode into a single timeline (3 hours), then use media manager to create a new batch capture list? Or is there a better way to get media manager to create the online project from the initial 'overview' project file that contains all 12 ep timelines?

Any thoughts on the best way to approach this would be much appreciated.

All the best

Z'Rennk

What I would do is create a project,

drag in your 12 timelines, create on off-line project using mediamanager

and redigitize that project on the required settings.

> What I would do is create a project,
> drag in your 12 timelines, create on off-line project using mediamanager

The first step is unnecessary.
Just select the sequences you want to media-manage and run Media Manager.


www.derekmok.com

Derek if I do that without creating a single project, won't I have to do 12 x batch re-digitizings instead of just one? Or can I open multiple sequences with Media Manager?

> Derek if I do that without creating a single project, won't I have to do 12 x batch re-
> digitizings instead of just one? Or can I open multiple sequences with Media Manager?

You are creating a project -- an offline project will be generated by Media Manager if you choose "Make offline" (which you have to if you're changing project settings). Media Manager will put all the clips from all the Sequences selected into one bin containing all the offline clips. Which is why there's no point in making a new project before running Media Manager.


www.derekmok.com

OK Derek... just to be ultra clear... You are saying I should:

(i) I go through each episode bin, and drag the relevant 'sequence' file back into the main project browser window (so they are all in the same place so I can select them all at once).

(ii) I group-select all 12 sequence files/icons in the browser.

(iii) right click on 'em and select 'media manager'

(iv) ask media manager to create a new offline project with DV Pal Anamorphic settings.

(v) open this new project and I will see in the browser all the clips (offline) for all the episodes, and 12 x new sequences (with most of the media offline).

Do I have this right? Will the new project recognize that some of the existing media is at the correct setting and does not need to be redigitized? Or will I have to either manually re-connect shots in the new offline project that refer to the already-online-quality material, or de-select each shot manually before asking for the new batch capture?

Will this really be easier using Media Manager than if I followed Chris's original reply and create a new project+timeline manually, drag and drop each episode in there to make one big timeline, select all, de-select the bits that don't need to be re-digitized, then right click and select 'batch digitize' for those that do?

Sorry if I'm being dense, just don't want to skip off gaily in the wrong direction and make a lot more work by going for the wrong procedure.

"Do I have this right?"

yes

"Will the new project recognize that some of the existing media is at the correct setting and does not need to be redigitized?"

no

"Or will I have to either manually re-connect shots in the new offline project that refer to the already-online-quality material, or de-select each shot manually before asking for the new batch capture?"

no again.

just forget about the stuff you already captured.
you could spend hours worrying about that,
or spend a few extra minutes re-capturing it.


nick

Nick there is a good reason I wish not to redigitize the stuff that's already in at online quality: 15 out of 60 tapes were on Digibeta and I do not wish to re-hire the deck since the stuff's already in there. However the sequences which reference this material are pretty discrete so I can easily isolate em. Not fiddly. Does this factor change your advice?

Did you read my previous post? Just colour-code the clips you don't want to recapture so you can spot them easily. Also, when recapturing at online quality, make a new folder for the new clips and protect your offline clips. You should be doing that anyhow. There's no automatic way to make FCP take some clips offline but not others.


www.derekmok.com

"However the sequences which reference this material are pretty discrete so I can easily isolate em"

ok, so you recaptured whole sequences already?
that does make it easy.
but may be NOT whole sequences...
a few stragling low-res DV clips.

as the recaptured stuff seems to have come off certain reels (digibeta)
no need to use colour as an identifier,
you can use reel#.

but it will be very hard to make FCP reference that material in other sequences.
you'd pretty much have to manually cut them in.
that might be just as easy as trying to reconnect, i suspect.

when you did recapture these digi tapes did you capture whole tapes / clips?
or did you use Media Manager or some manual means and just recapture what was in the timeline?

if you recaptured whole existing clips, that;s good.
and the time to connect the other sequences to the digi clips is NOW,
before any further Media Management or re-captureing.
then when you've connected all sequences to as much didi material as possible,
instead of using "Create Online" in MM,
use COPY mode.

in the new projects browser
sort or search the results by reel#, or compressor
make all the non-digi clips offline.

change the sequence settings to DV and recapture.

only remaining problem is if you've applied any motion fx.
they may not translate.


ok,
how to reconnect your various sequences now to the digi shots...
best way is to take the low-res versions of the same shots Offline.

one way to do that would be to find them in the finder, and simply change their names somehow.
add an X to the front of the names, perhaps.
otherwise, you know their reeel#, so do a browser search for that reel, sort by compressor,
select al the low-res versions, and use File Menu > Make Offline (or is that under the Modify Menu??) i use Shift D to summon the MAke Offline window.

you;d have to send them to the trash, otherwise they may not all go offline in the sequences.

then select your sequences, File Menu > Reconnect, and opt to reconnect the offline clips only.
connect to your digi versions and you're done.

hope that works,
nick

Thanks chaps it's all working perfectly.

I used the copy function in Media Manager to export all 12 timelines to a new project with full res settings, and it's been easy to group and select the low res clips in the browser for re-digitizing, even without color coding.

One thing that was slightly weird is that the DV quality clips appeared in the DV quality timeline at their old offline RT size - I had to 'remove attributes' on all the clips to get em up to size. (They didn't need rendering, they were just small.)

That aside it's all gone smoothly, only one 3rd party plugin transition failed to translate properly (flashframe by TMTS) but it was v quick to slap it on again.

Anyway, thanks again.

That's because you weren't using Media Manager in the usual way for an online. You used "Copy", which is actually for moving media files. In reading his old post, I'm pretty sure Nick was only recommending that for the clips you had already recaptured and edited into timelines at online quality.

The normal way for an online is to use "Create offline" to make a new project with new settings, then use the new project's batch list to recapture, at which point the recaptured clips will have the correct online settings and their frame size and codec would be adjusted in their new timelines, and any titles/FCP-generated effects would be changed to the new settings as well.

What you've done, as far as I can see, is actually just used your offline project file and recaptured media from it. With this approach, there was no reason to run Media Manager, even. You could have made a copy of the old project file, taken the files offline, recaptured, changed the timeline settings, adjusted the clips' settings manually to fit the new frame size. As far as I can tell, you did by hand what Media Manager was designed to do automatically.


www.derekmok.com

Derek I get the distinction - but the one element of the process that Media Manager was able to do cleanly and with one push of the button that I don't know how I could have done with a clunky manual copy procedure as you describe is to 'trim' the media so that I only re-capture the stuff that's needed for each sequence (plus handles).

This way I ended up with a clean new project with only the parts of the old master clips I needed in its clip bin. This is also mentally cleansing as much as anything else after several months of hard editing and the ensuing browser item sprawl.

So if I hadda do it again, I would use Media Manager, procedural redundancy or not! :-) Anyway thanks for the comment and your previous advice.