Using files from earlier version of fcp

Hi,

I'm trying to transfer a project created with fcp version 3 into my computer that runs version 5.

I'm transferring the files using an OWC Mercury Elite Pro external hard drive.

When I made the transfer, some items went missing. Specifically, the opening credits were missing and a couple aiff files of songs.

I'm wondering if there are any steps to this process that I may have missed. I checked the faq page, figuring this was a novice question, but I couldn't find anything. Any help would be awesome. Thanks.

Josh Barry

I have made the same transfer from 3 to 5 that you did, and there's nothing special about it that would cause trouble. What I think happened in your case is that the files that went missing were somewhere else on the original system, and didn't get transferred. It can happen by having the Capture Scratch location different during an edit session; render files get written to another place where you don't expect them. And it's easy to import sound files from library sources and forget that they aren't stored with the project.

Scott

another way to move files is to do it from within FCP:

select everything & open Media Manager.
use COPY mode
DONT delete unused
Base Media File Names on: Existing file names.

ask for a new project

this will do a clean move of everything in your project,
and create a new copy of your project that is connected to the new media.

downsides:
1- it will bundle all the media into ONE new location,
so if you had special folders for music & sound fx, graphics and vfx, etc.
you will lose them.
you can re-create that on the new location, but that can be a fair bit of work

2- if you had some media in these folders, or your capture scratch folder that for whatever reason was NOT in your project,
you wouldn't get that copied across.


another idea is to use the Source column in the browser prior to a move.
it's not available by defualt, so you have to open it:
right or control click on the column heading of any column (other than "Name" to get a list of columns.

you can sort by the source column, too, which is good.

along with my "Simple" column layout for editing, i have a "Simple+Source" column layout,
so it's always easy for me to see the source location for any of my media.
gee... that must make me a "power user"



nick


nick

Nick - a little bit off topic, sorry , but what if you're doing an uprez on another computer - is there an easy way to bundle just the gfx and audio that you won't be recapturing from tape?

Specifically, I had trouble with a whole bunch of freeze frames in my DV offline. I ended up exporting them manually, but would love to know if there is a media manager way of handling this.

that's a great question Jude.
one reason i cant give a total answer is i work on long form, and it;s been a while since i actually had to do that.

but one way would be to do a Media Manage of the project,
and Use "Create Offline"

that new project will cling onto any non-timecode based media.
it should be in the timeline amongst the off-line clips.
you could then do another MM and copy all those files to a new location.

but this doesn't deal with freeze frames.
i though FCP would just re-capture the frames?
i never had a problem with them, so i never analysed how they get dealt with.


cheers,
nick

No - it didn't deal with the freeze frames at all - they were all heavily effected ... hmm... maybe I had thrown them out to photoshop for adjustment and then re-imported them.. I don't think I did, but it's possible.

So anyway, I did do that - a proper 'create offline' version, but all the freeze frames were just listed as offline in the new version, even though the correct frame had clearly been re-captured because it was a copy of the frame immediately before it.

I know FCP has trouble match framing to a freeze, so maybe it's just too deeply embedded in the code to get around right now.