FCPX "Reconnect Media"?

[Albert C Martin]

Trying to work with Red files in FCPX that I have rendered to ProRes. However, I am having trouble finding a "Reconnect Media" function in the program. If I make some tweaks to the grade in RedCine after using the file in FCPX and render a new ProRes file, FCPX reports the file as "missing" even when it is overwritten with the same name. No ability to "Refresh" or "Reconnect" source media from what I can find.

Anyone have any suggestions?

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

I think that is one of the features that is sort of missing.

You have to render a new version and replace it with the versioning support, I think.

I read about this, but have not tried it myself yet.

 

[Jonathan Stevenson]

Wow... FCPX sounds worse every day.

 

[Ivan G]

Complaint: No Reconnect command when media is offline. When media is offline, you get a red screen with an exclamation point. There is no Reconnect Media command, as there used to be.

Answer: True. Then again, the old Reconnect dialog box got people into a lot of trouble; they often reconnected a project to the wrong files, or the wrong versions of files.

FCP X assigns a unique behind-the-scenes identifier to every single video clip. When you reconnect the missing hard drive, your project reconnects to its original files automatically, even if you have moved them around or renamed the hard drive. You can’t reconnect to the wrong thing.

Yes this is dumb friendly :arf:

 

[Jake Bastian]

They took it away because sometimes people reconnect to the wrong files? What a joke! The few times you did happen to connect to the wrong file there was a VERY easy solution: "Reconnect Media"!!!

 

[Graeme Nattress]

This one even caught me out the other day! Sure you can screw up with reconnect media, but the possibility of screw-up is better than having no reconnect option at all!!!!!

Graeme

 

[Albert C Martin]

This one even caught me out the other day! Sure you can screw up with reconnect media, but the possibility of screw-up is better than having no reconnect option at all!!!!!

Graeme

Agreed. I edited an entire video this week using ungraded Quicktime proxies from the Epic. Only after the project was finished and I graded everything did I find out that FCPX recognizes it's a different file (even with the same codec, length and resolution) and refuses to let me reconnect. I appreciate FCPX trying to be helpful and automating the reconnect process ... but at least give me a way to go around it if I need to.

I usually make quite a few round trips between FCP and RedCine during the course of editing. This is kind of a workflow killer for me unless I can figure a way around it.

Now I did find out that you can replace media in the timeline with the new version of the footage by just dragging the new file from an event directly on top of the clip on the timeline and choosing the "Replace at Start" or "Replace at End" Many downsides to this however. First off, if you've trimmed your media on the timeline at all you'll have to extend the beginning or end of the clip temporarily to keep sync. Second, you have to do this for each and every clip on the timeline. Use the same footage twenty times on your timeline and you'll be going through each clip one by one. Lastly, if you've applied any keyframes, filters, or changed settings on scale/rotation/etc. this will be reset.

Obviously not a solve, but it did save me from a recut at 5AM with the graded footage. Hoping to find a good solve because so far I've really enjoyed learning and working with FCPX. Without some kind of basic reconnect function I may have to go back to FCP7 when working with any Red footage.

 

[Brad Webb]

You have got to be kidding me.

 

[Chris Kenny]

You can't manually reconnect individual clips, but you can use 'Modify Event References' in the project properties to point reconnect a whole sequence to a different set of media.

Note that FCP X has entirely automated built-in support for proxies, so you don't need to do any explicit reconnection of anything for simple offline/online cases. Just tell it to generate proxies on import (or later, with the 'Transcode Media' command), and then from Preferences you can choose whether you're editing the original media or the proxy files. You can flip back and forth seamlessly.

 

[Albert C Martin]

You can't manually reconnect individual clips, but you can use 'Modify Event References' in the project properties to point reconnect a whole sequence to a different set of media.

Sounds great in theory, but just tried to do this and was unsuccessful. I may be doing it wrong, but when I click "Modify Event Resources" I am unable to select any other Event even when I have another event with all the new colour corrected footage from the project. It seems to recognize that these are different files even though they are the same file name/codec/length/etc.

Note that FCP X has entirely automated built-in support for proxies, so you don't need to do any explicit reconnection of anything for simple offline/online cases. Just tell it to generate proxies on import (or later, with the 'Transcode Media' command), and then from Preferences you can choose whether you're editing the original media or the proxy files. You can flip back and forth seamlessly.

Works great on 5D footage since it ingests the raw files. Right now, this isn't too helpful for Red files since native R3D support isn't included yet.

 

[shashbugu]

You guys are die hard FCPX fans. Dedicated to make the impossible, possible.

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

You guys are die hard FCPX fans. Dedicated to make the impossible, possible.

To be fair ... that's how every bit of software advances.

I'm sure Apple has been taken aback by the public laughingstock FCP X has become ... but its a good application in truth.

They probably will just get the major points of pain out of the backlash though: XML in/out, 3rd Party broadcast monitoring, R3D, Multicam.

Aside from those points ... a lot of the FCP X discussion has been rather pointless venting.

Discussions like this one are USEFUL to the Apple development team. They can see and understand the problem, plus they get to see and understand how their users try and work through or around them. I mean ... I read here of a workflow I hadn't thought of. Very straightforward, but not how I think.

This kind of USEFUL discussion is what leads development teams to learn and implement new features intelligently, and in a way that makes sense for those of us that have to use their software.

So ... using the software and trying to do work with it is what will lead to better versions in the future.

Here is the great news: this is obviously a development team that is willing to change anything. Yeah, that's right - the exact thing that has upset a lot of FCP users is also FCP's best hope for the future. So, if they hear your complaints ... there is a good chance you'll see possibly radical changes that drive the software forward.

 

[Chris Kenny]

Sounds great in theory, but just tried to do this and was unsuccessful. I may be doing it wrong, but when I click "Modify Event Resources" I am unable to select any other Event even when I have another event with all the new colour corrected footage from the project. It seems to recognize that these are different files even though they are the same file name/codec/length/etc.

Hmm, yeah, this isn't working for me either, now that I actually have a chance to test it.

What I'm really hoping for at this point is a well thought-out API. This could be used to implement a lot of things Apple will probably never implement itself (and never implemented in... can I call it FCP Classic?), like timecode/reel based clip relinking.

 

[andrewhake]

Yeah, see it is looking for the media in one of your FCP Events folders basically, you can relaunch the app after replacing the media in one of these folders, but the fact that you have no real way to do it within the app is just annoying. I have said it and I will say it again. The whole idea of a "Library" is absolutely unnecessary, even for people new to using iMovie it just adds these pointless extra steps. It's not like it is impossible to make things work, but it is infuriating.

Get rid of Library and go back the solid and logical Project workflow that everyone knows and loves and you solve a lot of problems, make it even better by giving the ability to properly consolidate project media into a bundled project folder with plenty of options (see Logic Pro) and you have an easy way to share projects.

KILL LIBRARY. www.apple.com/feedback

 

[Mark Toia]

Wow... FCPX sounds worse every day.

Man! I believe you!

What a bloody mess, I cannot believe people are even persevering with it. They are masochists!
I bought it, played with it, realised quite quickly I completely thrown my money away, Im trying to get a refund now.

FCP 7 will do me for another year or two, or until I start doing 4k outs.

Hopefully by that time, they might have pulled there ignorant heads in and made something worth using professionally.

They are going to loose tens of thousands of FCP purists over this.
They so need to say something, before its too late.

 

[Chris Kenny]

KILL LIBRARY. www.apple.com/feedback

Personally, I think breaking sequences and clips out of their 'project' containers was a great idea. On a typical feature, in FCP 7, we might have a different project created for every day of dailies, a project containing the main sequence edit, a project containing the trailer, etc. These all share the same footage, but in FCP 7 that footage has to be independently imported into and organized within each of these projects. In FCP X it just lives in the library, and any number of projects can use it.

This approach also works really well if you have a bunch of projects that use some of the same stock media elements; just import the whole stock library as an event.

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

Personally, I think breaking sequences and clips out of their 'project' containers was a great idea. On a typical feature, in FCP 7, we might have a different project created for every day of dailies, a project containing the main sequence edit, a project containing the trailer, etc. These all share the same footage, but in FCP 7 that footage has to be independently imported into and organized within each of these projects. In FCP X it just lives in the library, and any number of projects can use it.

This approach also works really well if you have a bunch of projects that use some of the same stock media elements; just import the whole stock library as an event.

I don't like the library approach ... but it has its advantages.

The best solution is a hybrid.

You should be able to import media to your library, or to a "project folder"

The "project folder" becomes a "sub library" if you will.

You should be able to create timelines. All timelines have access to library materials. You can assign timelines access to "project folders"

That arrangement would handle all the cases I have seen.

You can have all your stock footage in the library.

A project, say a feature film, can have all its footage in its own dedicated library, and any timeline that is granted access to a project's media can be represented in that timeline. So, you have dailies, whole picture and trailer edits using the same media.

You can emulate this by putting project media into separate drives, and mounting/dismounting the drives as needed.

You don't need physical drives for this - you can create DMG files.

The downside of DMG is that any damage to the container breaks the entire file system, so backups are more critical

DMG in combination with properly backed storage arrays, and removable storage can go a long way to keeping a small to mid sized post shop organized. I think they break though on large collaborative facilities.

I expect to be testing this approach next week.