Long form media management in FCP X?

[Grug]

Hi Guys,

I've just migrated over to Final Cut X from Final Cut Pro 6, and love the magnetic timeline and media scrubbing in the new software. However I'm just about to begin an edit on a feature, and have 144 scenes made up of 3,000 clips in ProRes HQ which amounts to 3TB of data. So it's a pretty hefty project.

Due to the scope of the edit, I want to be certain I've got my media properly sorted right from the beginning - to hopefully avoid any issues with the software cracking under the pressure of such a large edit.

My thinking was the best way to go about this would be to break the edit down into roughly 15 minute blocks, and then combine all of the finalised blocks into a single timeline at the end. Does this work well in Final Cut X? Do I use 'projects' to build the individual blocks? Or do I use 'compound clips' for the blocks?

I'm also wondering if people can recommend some clean and simple methods for media management on large-scale projects like this? I already have the clips sorted into folders that are listed by Scene Numbers. How do I import these folders so that navigating the 144 scenes is clean and simple?

Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated.

 

[KyleProhaska]

Keyword Collections can work like Folders for you. I assume you have all files properly labeled on your HD in regards to scene, take, etc. I would create keyword collections for each folder (if I'm not mistaken, FCPX will import a folder as a keyword collection). That'll help keep things pretty well separated from a media management standpoint. I do suggest you use Compound Clips as your sequences. Depending on the length of scenes, I like to edit them individually but you could do 15min reels or something as you've described. I wouldn't do Projects for each reel...

Here's some more info: http://www.larryjordan.biz/fcpx-workaround-creates-multiple-sequences/

 

[TheReverend]

Hi Guys,

I've just migrated over to Final Cut X from Final Cut Pro 6, and love the magnetic timeline and media scrubbing in the new software. However I'm just about to begin an edit on a feature, and have 144 scenes made up of 3,000 clips in ProRes HQ which amounts to 3TB of data. So it's a pretty hefty project.

Due to the scope of the edit, I want to be certain I've got my media properly sorted right from the beginning - to hopefully avoid any issues with the software cracking under the pressure of such a large edit.

My thinking was the best way to go about this would be to break the edit down into roughly 15 minute blocks, and then combine all of the finalised blocks into a single timeline at the end. Does this work well in Final Cut X? Do I use 'projects' to build the individual blocks? Or do I use 'compound clips' for the blocks?

I'm also wondering if people can recommend some clean and simple methods for media management on large-scale projects like this? I already have the clips sorted into folders that are listed by Scene Numbers. How do I import these folders so that navigating the 144 scenes is clean and simple?

Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated.

At the least, yes, I would use separate timelines for each set of scenes that you can, compounding and dropping into a singular timeline at the end. Remember, you can always "break apart clip items" after you've compounded, so don't hesitate to do so if needed. Depending on how your long-form feature goes, I would recommend having the project spread out over multiple drives (assuming you use or know how to use the sparse-disk image instead of just one large connected drive). If you know that scenes 1-40, 41-80, 81-120, and 121-144 can be lumped together and imported together, I'd make a sparse disk-image for each set of scenes. This will help you task the project out better between editors/colorists assuming you aren't a one-man operation.