Seeing colour tags when importing into fcpx

There's a Preference in the Import section:

Keywords: From Finder Tags

Check that.

In an Event (create a new one just for your "stock").

Create Keyword Collections for each "Finder Tag". In the case of (the "basic", unedited) Color Tags, that would be:

Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue and Purple (but you can have others). The color tags you use are imported into FCPX by their Text.

After you set this up, import (or re-import) your footage into the Event. It will automatically be sorted by the imported Finder tags.

It would certainly be useful to see that in the Import window. You should probably submit feedback to request this:

Final Cut Pro->Provide Final Cut Pro Feedback…

In the meantime you can import by dragging directly from the Finder to an Event or even a Keyword Collection. (Incidentally, as you probably know, FCP does recognize Finder tags and even assigns keywords from them).

Of course that is true, Fox, but the problem the OP has is that the tags are not visible in the Import window. So he has no idea what tags were assigned before importing. As Meg and I said, this can be worked around by dragging from the Finder, but ideally it should not be necessary.

One simple solution would be to add a column "Tags". A completely different one (which I think would draw many hateful responses) would be to do the same they did with Motion, and get rid of the FCP file browser entirely...

Sort the clips by the tags in the Finder window and select the clips you want to import. Drag the group of selected clips into the FCP Browser to import them. The preferences you have set in Preferences > Import will be honored.

MtD

Not sure what you mean by import by tags. Tags clips go into keyword collections. What is it you want FCP to do with your tags?

Yes, you can only see multiple thumbnails when importing from a camera or card. You should use feedback if you haven’t already.

I just thought of something, not being at my mac I can’t confirm but are you sure that the functionality is not there already? Control-click on a column heading in the import window and see if Tags is an available option.

Sorry - I don't get it.

I don't see where it's necessary to see any tags while importing into FCPX. You set up your keywords in FCPX to begin with, then you spend time tagging videos in the finder (with colors or even multiple custom tags) and import. If you have the keyword collections already set up — just import *everything at once*, FCPX places them automatically with their keyword collection (if it already exists!) That includes multiple keywords if you use them. You don't NEED to see what the keywords are - just make sure you spell everything correctly (or at least so that keywords match the Finder Tags).

Keyword collections for Finder Color tags should be named: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple and/or ANY other custom tags you create in the finder. (Keywords are NOT case sensitive).

There should be a drop down menu at the top of the Finder winder that allows you to Group all your files by various criteria. One of them is Tags. Color tags will separate out the clips you assign per color and you can easily select all the clips from a particular keyword and drag them into FCPX (icon or list view). When you drag your clips into FCPX, it appears that the applied Tags will be automatically created as a Keyword Collection in the Event the clips are dragged into. Turns out you don't need to create them in FCPX in advance! However, if you can actually separate out the tagged clips from the Finder before importing, you don't really need the keywords in FCPX — so you can delete all the keyword collections that aren't needed (and this will not delete the imported clips - they'll still all be in the Event they are imported to.) Useful if you don't care for the extra "clutter".

Once all your clips are imported into FCPX, in any Event (pun intended) the sort order can be set to Content Created. You can also simply Group clips by Content Created and FCPX will organize them by labelled Dates. [I don't care for this feature and usually have it turned off.]

I've never been able to see any advantage of using the FCPX import "function" over direct interaction with the Finder. For me, it actually takes considerably less time than going through Import. I will grant you that the option to sort clips by Tag in the Import dialog might be something to consider. It would also be convenient to be able to use that metadata in the Inspector. Tags ARE automatically applied upon Sharing a video (and can be viewed in the Info pane of the export dialog). Tags are available in the Timeline Index. It is "unusual" for Apple to leave this metadata kind of separated from the rest of the really huge amount of metadata that's available. I can create an Effect that will automatically create a Title with a Clip's Notes. It would be useful to be able to do the same with the Tags.

As for importing 300 clips — it would only amount to about a few MB of text (xml) data regardless of how long the actual video is (no clips are actually, literally imported into FCPX). I have always recommended that you set up FCPX to leave all original files "In Place" (and on a separate disk) unless you have to share the library with other editors. With this setup, it wouldn't slow you down to import all your clips at once. Once tagged (color coded) in Finder, select all and drag/drop them all in an Event (not the storyline — that's a whole other thing), FCPX can take care of the rest... except for setting the sort order, if needed.