Cutting up a long clip

N

nyvideo

Active member
I have some 1-hour HD television programs stored as .m4p files (~9 GB each). When I bring them in to FCPX the work files are about 60 or 65 GB. All well and good: I have enough disks and disk space in my Mac Pro.

What's the best way to work with these files? Generally a 1-hour show will break down to seven or eight 5-minute to 8-minute segments. It's these that I want to edit. (Not for commercial purposes, of course.) What do you recommend to break up the 1-hour clip into half-a-dozen segments, to delete the commercials, and to have the separate clips in the Event ready to add keywords and to move to the Project for editing?

(I posted this at Apple Forum and received a suggestion of using MPEG Streamclip. That's one option, but I was hoping that there's one that can be done in FCPX, like a Log and Transfer.)

Thanks.
 
Compressor or MPEG Streamclip to ProRes LT. Do you have permission to use these TV shows? You can Import into FCP X and select the Optimize option.
 
BenB, thanks. I guess MPEG Streamclip it is. Regarding permission: These are for no one else's use. In fact, they are only going as far as my own computer. They are things I'd like to keep for review of the techniques used (lighting, camera movement, blocking, editing, and the like). It's easier to cut them into pieces I'd like to refer to than to save the entire episode or show.
 
Why not load the large segments into your Event, then setup Keywords with each segment portion you want, and then select the portion to the frame that you want in the large clips...adding that selection to the corresponding keyword. That's your way to cut it up into segments without doing it inside a Project. Then make each new Project to do any formal editing you want after you drag your already "cut" portion into it. Or...am I misunderstanding?
 
I appreciate your suggestion, but I think I'm not explaining the question well.


My goal is two-fold: (1) Cut down on disk storage space and (2) save small pieces of shows and films for review as/when needed. In FCP7, Log and Transfer did this with files.


I have a Tivo. I use a program that copies shows from the Tivo to a computer on my network for long-term storage. The way Tivo stores its files (MPEG-4) produces a 1-hour show that's 4.7 GB and a 2-hour film that's 9.1 GB. I simply want to save small pieces of a show into chunks and use FCPX's keywords to be able to find things like, for example, "noir lighting" or "dramatic zoom out." So, these chunks will probably be a few MB each. It's almost like highlighting select sentences in a textbook, saving only the highlighted portions, creating an index for those portions, and then tossing the textbook so it doesn't take up space on your bookshelf.


MPEG Streamclip will do the cutting just fine. Then I can bring them into FCPX and go nuts with keywords.
 
Log & Transfer only worked with non-QT camera cards, not with generic files like you're working with.
MPEGStreamclip is your answer, then create Events, keyword, fav/rej, smart collections.
Not sure what else there is to do.
 
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