Final Cut Pro X - Adjusting Date Question

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Final Cut Pro X - Adjusting Date Question

I have some clips that I transcoded from AVCHD to MOV (Apple ProRes 422). The creation date of the MOV file was, of course, the date I did the transcode, so I am trying to adjust the date to the orginal create times. I used the Modify -> Adjust Content Created Date and Time. The correct date is 2009-10-31 (October 31, 2009).

The operation seemed to work and the Event List, Inspector, and Finder all have the right dates - but the Event Library has the wrong date (and thus the Group by Date is incorrect).

In the Event List it has the right date:

In the Inspector it has the right date:

In the Finder is has the right date:

But in the Event Library it has the wrong date and sorts by the wrong date. It thinks it is Jun 17, 2012 which is the date I did the transcoding.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Robert

Posted on Sep 1, 2012 1:12 PM

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Answer 1

fox_m

Level 6

12,220 points

Sep 1, 2012 11:09 PM in response to imua

You should try to import your *original* AVCHD footage into an event and allow FCPX to transcode the media within the application. Your original creation dates should be preserved. If it doesn't import, there are converter apps that will convert your AVCHD to MOV (H.264) and retain the original creation date e.g.: Smart Converter (free) or Smart Converter Pro [Apple App store]. These "re-wrapping" apps (there are several) will endeaver to only alter the media container data and not the original video. Import that video into FCPX as H.264 and allow FCPX to transcode the video (you may only need to have FCPX create Proxy media, if you're comfortable working with it.) At any time in FCPX, you can opt to have FCPX transcode the media (for instance, you may wish to import many clips, but only use a few of the ones imported -- choosing which clips to transcode can save you a lot of disk space.)

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Answer 2

imua Author

Level 1

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Sep 1, 2012 11:25 PM in response to fox_m

Unfortunately, I don't have the original AVCHD camera images, only the resulting M2TS files. And FCPX does not support importing M2TS files.

The best quality converter from AVCHD to ProRes I found was Aunsoft Video Converter. But the file creation and modification times are the time of the conversion. Hence my problem.

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Answer 3

fox_m

Level 6

12,220 points

Sep 2, 2012 12:38 AM in response to imua

Apps like ClipWrap and Smart Converter will rewrap the m2ts files as H.264 (like I said, only the *container* for the video is altered [usually] and not the video data itself.) These rewrapped files can be imported into FCPX directly. I know that Smart Converter has an option in preferences to preserve the original file creation timestamp. Your m2ts files should have the creation dates of the original video files (as stamped by the camera) and you should be able to import them with creation dates intact in FCPX.

A lot of people on this board swear by Clipwrap and it can be used to convert AVCHD/m2ts directly to ProRes. However, I have no personal knowledge whether it will preserve the original creation dates of files.

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Answer 4

Sep 5, 2012 11:13 AM in response to imua

(Opps, answering wrong question)

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Answer 5

imua Author

Level 1

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Sep 9, 2012 12:14 PM in response to HerrDrKarl

I wanted to let folks know the work around I am using for this issue. I believe the problem is simply a bug in FCP, where the Event date is cached and not updated unless clips are added or deleted from an Event. In particular, the Event date is not correctly updated if the clip's dates are modified.

For those interested, here is how I tracked down the bug and the work around for the bug.

I tried the suggestion I got via email to change the creation times of the enclosing folder using the touch command from the terminal. In fact, I eventually changed every file in the problem Event directory to the correct date using touch. Unfortunately this did not change the date of the event. But this did give me the evidence to realize that either the date was being grabed from metadata inside a file or there was a bug in how FCP was calcualting the event date.

To test the bug hypothesis, I did the following. I copied a clip with a different date to the problem Event. Lo and behold the Event date updated with a new range, in this case, the date of the new clip to the still incorrect event date. I then deleted the new clip. The Event then updated to the *correct* date.

I tried this technique on a number of other Events and this consistently worked.

So I think we have a simple bug where the Event date is being cached and not updated unless clips are added or deleted from the Event. The Event date should be updated when a clip's date is adjusted using FCP. Even more robustly the Event's date should be adjusted whever the clip's date is adjusted, including when an external command like touch is used.

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Answer 6

imua Author

Level 1

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Sep 28, 2012 8:37 AM in response to imua

Closing on this, I submitted the bug to Apple and this is a known bug that they are working on.

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