FCP Workflow? Any suggestions?

F

Fly Reeves

Member
Hey everyone, apologies in advance for a long post but I'm having a serious workflow problem.

I started shooting a feature doc on the AF100 and I'm having trouble with file management and Log and Capture in FCP 7.0.3

In my initial 10 days of shooting overseas it was extremely fast run and gun. Every night I had the opportunity to back the days shoot up on two separate drives and look at footage through mounting the cards in Log and Capture but I didn't ingest on site.

I'm now back at the office and beginning to slog through the Log and Capture footage. I initially tried to bring multiple cards worth into one "Shoot Day" bin - I soon discovered that the clip nomenclature wouldn't allow this as for each card the clip names start again at Clip 1 - thus media is overwritten when multiple cards come in on the same Log and Capture. I found that a bit odd - but proceeded a different way.

So, I've since broken each days bin further down into a bin for each card and I'm bringing cards in one at a time. BUT for some reason - some clips don't want to come in to the project, even though they appear and play fine in the Log and Capture window. Sometimes a second or third attempt will bring them in, but a few clips show in the lower window with the red exclamation mark next to them. Does anyone know what is going on here?

And just recently, and even more frustrating is that newer clips (which do continue to come in with sequential numbers in ascending order) have begun to overwrite the media to older clips even though they have entirely different clip names. For instance a clip on shoot day two which should be numbered 169 shows up in the capture scratch as 122. My original clip 122 is then offline or becomes associated with the wrong media.

HELP! Does anyone have any workflow suggestions for such a big, long form project? Do I need to reset the capture scratch in a new folder for each card? I've been working with P2 for many years now and have never had this issue. I've been working with Canon DSLR footage for almost two years now as well and haven't seen anything like this either.

Is my system flawed? Is Log and Capture w/ AF100 footage not ready for prime time?

Thanks,

David
 
Upon further review - MANY, MANY of the day 1 clips that have come in have been overwritten by day two footage, even though they have a higher number clip name on log and capture. Either I need to reset the capture scratch for each new card or I need to come up with an entirely new system. I've heard people suggest Clip Wrap on here - would this be useful to me?

Thanks,

David
 
I had a similar problem with the clips conflicting due to the same clip #'s. My band aid fix was to custom name/number them in the L&T window. Seems to be working but I wonder if some clips have been over written or not, cant say for sure. I've racked my brain, the manual, Barry's book, this forum, etc. trying to figure out why the camera will not produce a global(usable) sequential clip # like every other camera including DSLR's that I've used. Apparently it does produce some insanely long clip ID but is not viewable in L&T.

In the three months I've had the camera, I have also had two instances where no matter how many times I've tried a clip will just not L&T in to a project. Fortunately they were just test clips and I wound up giving up on them. No, I didnt try Clipwraping them but I should of. I was wary of Clip Wrap in the begining because of reports it produced noisier files or something like that, not sure if thats been corrected or not.
 
Thanks Fotoj. It's vaguely comforting to know I'm not alone, but mostly disconcerting. I'll start from scratch w/ L&T and using my own unique clip names. Kind of a pain, but worth it if it works. I have a sneaking suspicion that the two issues I mention above are related. It turns out that one of the clips that I thought wouldn't come in actually replaced one of the earlier clips - but of course it was in an entirely different bin with an entirely different clip name/number. Ouch.

I may experiment some w/ the ClipWrap free trial. Will report back.
 
RJS, For For Fake is one of my favorites, great quote.

I too realized the same thing very quickly, thus I made a bin for each shoot day and then a unique bin within for each card w/ the date, camera letter and card number. For instance, within bin, "Shoot Day 1" I have bin "032311A1" for the Date, the camera body letter and the card number. This corresponds to the "reel" identification I input in L&T. However, when old footage (for instance Clip 23 from day one, card one) would is overwritten by newer footage (say Clip 135 from day two card two) it would then lose the reel ID. The old clip would keep the same name, but it would open as media that should be the new clip.

No matter what mis-steps I may be taking with this new format, what I mention above can't be user error.

Oy.

Thanks,

David
 
The mac does not overwrite files without asking. Log and Transfer will append a number to a clip with the same name, eg clip 01, clip 01 1.

The best way to manage the clips is to use a custom name and counter inside L&T. This way all clips can be managed any way you like.
L-T-SS.png
 
Art, I'd always seen the appended file number added as well. If memory serves it was a dash and then the number, like clip 01, clip 01-1. However, that's not what is happening here. Straight up overwriting. On two of the old clips they went offline as the new clip was coming in, that was what tipped me off. But for most the overwriting happened with no warning whatsoever.

How do you bring up the window you show above?

Thanks,

David
 
ArtAldrich said:
The mac does not overwrite files without asking. Log and Transfer will append a number to a clip with the same name, eg clip 01, clip 01 1.

The best way to manage the clips is to use a custom name and counter inside L&T. This way all clips can be managed any way you like.
L-T-SS.png
Click to expand...

It actually changed the clip name...it incremented the number but did not append any info...for example when I L&T "Clip #2"....what ended up in a bin that already had a "Clip #2" was a file called "Clip #3"...I guess I had expected it to be something like "Clip #2 copy" or similar. Although I've never had an actual file overwritten...all the footage is there in the capture scratch but just with the names changed.

But I think I'll give your advice a shot and use the L&T to its full usefulness!
 
Creating a new bin doesn't really solve the problem of where the new file is physically being written, which is in your scratch disk. So if you're NOT using a "name preset" in L&T when importing multiple cards, and you have a repeat name say Clip#21, the second time you use the name, fcp will write the file as Clip#21-1 (regardless of which bin it's in). Plus in FCP it'll just say Clip#21, which is a a frustrating disconnect.
Since I don't like to be bothered with entering custom names for each card I import, my solution has been to use the name preset "Clip Date/Time" which gives you something like this "2011-04-29 at 10_28_53" as your clip name. It's a quick solution for now, but obviously won't work with multi-cam shoots. I definately miss P2's automatically generated unique names!
 
Mark Smith said:
Use Meta Data?

That would seem to be the answer.
Click to expand...

I would love to do that. But as near as I can tell, all the metadata i painstakingly took time to enter into the camera is completely ignored by final cut.
If you know how to use the metadata in some meaningful workflow, please share. :)
 
For some reason the clip viewer was taking up the entire right hand side of the L&T and I never saw the Logging/Import Settings window you pasted below. Amazing. Crazy that now after a doubleclick the Logging/Import Settings now take up the entire right hand side and I can't figure out how to switch back or have both up at once.

One would think I hadn't been using FCP for the last ten years.

Art, this should help big time retaining clip names while adding date/time information to the clip name as well. I'll find the sweet spot for me after some experimentation.

Much appreciated!

David

ArtAldrich said:
The mac does not overwrite files without asking. Log and Transfer will append a number to a clip with the same name, eg clip 01, clip 01 1.

The best way to manage the clips is to use a custom name and counter inside L&T. This way all clips can be managed any way you like.
L-T-SS.png
Click to expand...
 
Just to put a little capper on this:

Everything has worked out. Thanks to y'all for the input.

I finally was able to restore the Log & Transfer window to it's original lay out. I decided to log as:

Clip Name_Reel Name_ClipTime

Reel Name is the date, camera body letter and card number (031511A1).

I've been through two days worth of footage and all clips are unique, no over-writing, no orphan clips that won't come in to FCP. All is well with the world again.

Thanks,

David
 
2¢

Just as a safety precaution - I ALWAYS copy the entire contents of the card into a folder on my Mac. I give it a name that means something. Then I can L&T from that folder, or from the card. But at least I have a backup of the WHOLE CARD, and not just QT files.

Yada yada yada...hard drives are so cheap these days - if it's footage that you think for any reason you need to go back to, just copy the whole folder, and archive it on an external HDD.
 
joshdstanton said:
Creating a new bin doesn't really solve the problem of where the new file is physically being written, which is in your scratch disk. So if you're NOT using a "name preset" in L&T when importing multiple cards, and you have a repeat name say Clip#21, the second time you use the name, fcp will write the file as Clip#21-1 (regardless of which bin it's in). Plus in FCP it'll just say Clip#21, which is a a frustrating disconnect.
Since I don't like to be bothered with entering custom names for each card I import, my solution has been to use the name preset "Clip Date/Time" which gives you something like this "2011-04-29 at 10_28_53" as your clip name. It's a quick solution for now, but obviously won't work with multi-cam shoots. I definately miss P2's automatically generated unique names!
Click to expand...

When I recreated this what actually happened is that the number was appended...so the clips name was changed from "Clip#2" to "Clip#3" rather than "Clip#2-1"...this happened both in the bin and in the scratch disk.
 
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