How do I reconnect media in FCP-X?

Hi Tom

Interesting question!

It is still transcoding and analysing - will let you know later

BTW I found that the best way to import the Q/T files that I was having problems with (in the other thread) was to import them from my Sony DV tape player (via Firewire) This is working fine now so I am busy importing all tapes!Transcoding and analysing takes for ever!

I have an iMac 3.06 GH, Intel core duo and 4 MB Ram - guess I am due for an update!

What transcoding and analysis are you doing? What's to transcode from DV?

in my import prefs I checked 'Create Optimised media'. I had read that this was the best thing to do - no matter what the original file format. Is this not so?

Because it takes so long - with each one hour tape - you will recall that I asked in another post if it is possible just to transcode the final projects - and thus save time. You said 'Theoretically yes" I have not yet had time (due to these imports) to test this in practice - so I left the last import with transcode box checked.

forgive me - I am new to FCPX and have yet to work out my best workflow! I have used earlier versions of FCP itself, and, of course iMovie versions. So, I am trying to sort out the fastest and best import method for FCPX - so I can get on and do the exciting bits of editing!

Personally I don't see the benefit of it in most cases. Everything is re-rendered to ProRes on output for high quality. For heavy compositing it might be a benefit.

You can edit while the media is being transcoded and analyzed. You just can't delete some things and close the application during the process.

OK - thank you Tom! I thought that it was 'Transcoded' into the ProRes on Import.

What about the Video Analyse checkbox? I think Stabilisation and shutter will be a waste of time (as I know there will be dropped frames etc!) But, what s your advice re Analyze for balance colour? There is no doubt that some of the animal subjects in my reserach tapes show slightly different colours form tape to tape and in shade/sun etc.

Is it best to check this box for imprt or can I leave this to later also?

I realise this is out of the original post - sorry! My import is still transcoding so I still cannot answer your question whether the media is still connected.

BTW Find people doea not work - even for our close relatives in the animal kingdom!

I 'm not sure to understand the problem properly but it looks like the mine (no connection in timeline with events)

The solution was simple: i checked (in preferences) for an other project "proxy", i did 't know that ruled the whole system... when i checked it back the problem was over and all the clips appear inmediatly.

May be it helps. a warning plus suggestion by the "red + !" is welcome.

Color balance is worth doing, but it can be done at any point and can be done selectively for clips you want to balance. I don't find people works properly.

Hi Tom

After too many hours (5) the import has finally just finished transcoding and analysing.

And, I am VERY happy to report that after quitting and re-opening FCPX all the media files are still connected!

I will now import soem more after unchecking Transcode. Thanks for your tip re colour balance. Will use that also. What about the audio - can that be left and done selectively later?

In reply to Bruce27 I think my problem was different to yours in that mine was not with no connection in timeline with events - mine was that there was nothing shown in the clips window for the event after the crash. As I explained above I have now been able to fix this

the icons indicate that the media files have been modified, but applying keywords shouldn't alter the media.

http://help.apple.com/finalcutpro/mac/10.0/#verd1f977a7

is there anything else happening on the computer that could be touching the files?

I know this is a fairly old thread, but I thought I'd just say did anybody try placing the edited clip inside a compound clip?

Meaning, instead of editing the clip directly, place it inside a compound clip and edit that. That way, when you step into the compound clip, the original footage is unedited (making it easy to simply replace it with the new version) and when you step back out of the compound clip into the main timeline, your edits are still there.

I haven't actually tested this, but if a compound clip is anything like a nest, I think it could be a good workaround for reconnecting clips without having to worry about redoing edits until a reconnect media feature is added.

Here's what the manual says about reconnecting on page 11 and 12 ... this, of course, does not cover every scenario of disconnects.

stephen

After having moved several TeraBytes of footage from older drives to newer larger ones, we were horrified to open FCPX to find weeks of work replaced by the RED with the ! sign...

Panic set in when the Modify Event references did not work...

After studying this post and playing around a little further this seems to have worked for us, but not flawlessly. never-the-less weeks of work became only an hour or so...

I'll preface by stating that we have chosen as our work methodology to NOT copy events to the FCPX events folder when importing the media (leaving them on a seperate data disc from the working disk, so I do not know if this method will work under a scenario where event media is copied to the event folder.

We noticed that when importing media that FCPX creates an Original Media folder within the Event folder, and places in that folder special Symbolic Links to the original media. These are unique symbolic links to FCPX somehow as manually creating them thru the OS does nothing to aid FCPX in referencing the original media files.

If these corrupt, and or the paths change to the original media, these links must be recreated in order to point to FCPX back to the event footage... We learned this by deleteing them on purpose as a test to try and figure out what FCPX is doing.

When we found our project seeminlgy lost, after reading this post and playing around we proceeded as follows several times to successfuly recreate an event associated with a project:

1. In finder Trash the Original Media Symbolic Links for the affected/missing media.
2. Open FCPX, find your now RED EVENT!, hopefully the favorites and Keyword collections will still be in tact as we think they are saved in the CurrentVersion.fcpevent file; however not sure as sometimes they were in tact while others they disappeared. I'm still trying to gather clarity on this...
3. Import event footage from the original media (just as we did when we began the project). (As long as it has not been changed, sized or and/or renamed... Things should come back as they were as they did for us. (Because of this I recommend keeping a backup of the imported event media elsewhere, as in our testing we managed to somehow obliterate a media file when FCPX just shut down so to speak.... 😕 We never found that .mov file, it was simply gone...)

This method of course does not lend to flexibility in changing media in any way outside of FCPX, which when we did that it became almost impossible to relink for us; but we're still trying to figure things out here B4 we try and spend a lot more time editing.

Incidently, our Reimport from Camera/Archive is greyed out and under no circumstance have I been able to manipulate the files to enable this as an option for us... I'd welcome some thoughts here if someone has successfully used that feature...

Regards.

Reconnect in FCP X is actually very simple. The reconnect is the same as the import files.

1. go to event that is missing the connection (I moved my videos file from my HD to external and had this problem)

2. Right click and select import files

3. in the top box make sure the event missing the files is selected

4. select add to existing event

5. select the location (or new location) of the files

6. under Organization DONT select "copy files to final cut event folder" or "import folders as keyword collections"

7 then select import

This should solve your problem.

NOTE: for some reason FCP X keeps trying to import the entire file instead of just making an alias pointing to its location even though I didnt not select the "copy files to final cut event folder" so I had to keep opening the status bar and cancel import files each time I reopened the program. I think this is a glitch. If you let it keep importing the files it will disconnect each alias file as the new file is imported giving you the red frames again. If this happens go into the final cut event folder where the optimized media floder is and delete the all the files that arent alias and reconnect those files as needed.

This does not work. For example, with audio media with fades, shortening, cuts, crossfades, etc. I can only replace the media and it will not save. I've even re-imported the files back into the project, and FCPX is too stupid to see them.

Wow..... there's a couple hours of work down the toilet.

I'm not sure what you did, but with audio files, deleting the old links just doesn't work. The files are right there in the Event folder, but FCP X can't see it. The file is right there in the iTunes folder, but FCP X cannot see it.

Harumph.