Using Media Manager to Trim Large Media Files

Few FCP editors have anything nice to say about the Media Manager.  It's bitten me a couple of times when trimming a project to send to another facility.  Having said that it really works well in trimming large media files.  I like to capture whole tapes or large blocks of material.  Captured media is easier to deal with and it's kinder to the tape machine and tapes. 

Basically I take a large clip and subclip (CMD+U) just the portions I want to keep.  Then I rename the subclips to match the clip content.  This eliminates false starts, bad takes, and that rare instance when the camera is left running between setups. I use Media Manager to trim the subclips into individual files.  The resulting files can be significantly smaller than the original capture.  I often reclaim a great deal of storage using this method.



Once I have completed the subclipping process I select all the subclips.  Then I  right click on the selected clips to bring up the contextual menu.  I select Media Manager which brings up the Media Manager window.

 

At the top in the Summary section you will see the Original and Modified Media represented by two green bars indicating the file size after trimming.

In the Media section I select Copy media referenced by selected clips.  This makes a trimmed copy of the media, but leaves the original media intact in case something goes wrong.  The copied media has no additional compression added and will retain the original source timecode and reel #.  

I check Delete unused media from selected clips and uncheck Include Rendered Files and Use Handles.  I select Base media file names on Clip Names.  Later when I import the trimmed clips into my project they will be good to go.

In the Project section I uncheck Duplicate selected clips and place into a new project because I will to import them into the current project.

Finally in the Media Destination section I select the root directory of my RAID as the destination.  Media Manager will create a directory called Media with a sub directory named after the current project.  This makes it easy for me to find the trimmed clips after Media Management is complete.

Now it's time to click OK.  Once the files have been trimmed and copied I move them from the Media Folder to the project's Capture Scratch folder.  That way all of the project's media is in one place.  Then I import them into the project.   

Once I verify all the trimmed clips to be sure there are no errors I go to the original captured media and delete it from the drive.  I save the original offline clip and subclips in case I need to capture  again, but I've never had to.  As I mentioned earlier the trimmed clips are clones of the subclipped portions of the original media.  That means they reference original tape's timecode, and can be recaptured using the batch capture in case of a hard drive failure or accidental deletion. 

Unlike recapturing subclips, recapture the trimmed clips only references the trimmed media and not the whole original clip.

This process works with any codec including HDV. However as I mentioned in my previous Blog, HDV recapture is unreliable so back up those trimmed clips if possible.

Okay I understand now - happy days. Will try to lay my hands on an extra external drive for sure now.

Thanks for bearing with me Lee - am really amazed actually by how useful Media Manager is! I had been afraid to go near it until I read your tutorial - now I'm a convert! I've ordered the new FCS as an upgrade. Once I'm all done with this project and eventually installed Snow Leopard, I'll give the new FCS a whirl - perhaps the Media Manager is even better?!

Hi Lee

Just one last question if you would be so kind as to help out a confused buffoon!

If I get an additional external 1TB drive, should I have it doing 'timed backups' of all of my clips (both normal clips and subclips) on my Capture Scratch folder on the Raid (the total captured &trimmed video I'm ingesting might exceed 1TB)?

Or, should I manually select only the new subclips I've created and literally drag them onto my new external 1TB each time I've created some?

Peter

You should definitely back them up to a separate drive. I'm using the Voyager Q drive dock.
http://blogs.creativecow.net/blog/835/how-the-newer-technologies-voyager-q-saved-a-problematic-mybook-drive

But you can use any FireWire or USB 2.0 Drive

The good news about your RAID 5 is that in the event of a single drive failure, you can replace the bad drive and rebuild the RAID. But I would backup to a less expensive drive as it could take a long time to rebuild the RAID.

Peter,
I assume you captured FireWire to ProRes422. My blog was really intended for batch capture and not so much for ProRes422 captured via FireWire. Having said that you haven't really messed up in deleting the original media. If you ever need the material you deleted (between the subclips) you can always capture it again. Presumably since those portions are not part of your project there's nothing to reconnect. A word of caution, since you can't batch recaputre your ProRes subclips I recommend that you back them up to another drive.

Brilliant idea by the way - will be really helpful to me.

Thanks Wayne.  I'm having fun with it.