What is the best structure for organizing a feature film?

Friends,

I've just wrapped all post-production on a feature film, and I'd like to now get my Library, Events, and Projects cleaned up for the next phase of the film. This will include cutting trailers, clips, supplemental material, etc. I'm still getting used to the new Library structure though of 10.1, so I have some questions about what is the most ideal structure for keeping this all organized.

First, here is how I currently have things organized:

- Pre 10.1, my actual film comprised about 40-50 projects. This was essentially rough cuts of the movie, broken down into 5 reels each. It also included misc. projects for comparing versions of scene edits, etc.
- Pre 10.1, all 40-50 of these projects belonged to one event.

Upon preparing to upgrade FCX to 10.1, I wisely decided I didn't need to bring all 40-50 of these projects into my new library at once. Not until I first had the lay of the land. So Instead, I only moved in about 12 projects needed for 'finishing' the film. So this was my projects that had the final mix stems, as well as the conform for our colorist.

So fast forward to January and I'm now running FCX at 10.1. New structure goes like this:

- 1 Library
- 4 Events (1 of the 4 events is called 'Media' and has all my video clips, audio clips, sound effects, music, etc in it. The other 3 events contain projects for different categories (Conform, Final Mix, etc).

I'm now at the point where I want to start updating some of those older projects from before the 10.1 upgrade. Specifically because I want to pull some clips from them that were cut from the final version of the film. And also because I just want everything upgraded so that I may want access to. So here are my questions:

1. How do I get FCX to specifically upgrade some old projects? When I use the Locate feature upon Updating, the old 'Hidden' Final Cut Projects folders that said projects reside in are dithered out, and it tells me this is not a valid location.

2. Does it make sense to bring all these older projects into a new Library? Mind you, they are all part of the same actual movie, but they're a different category of projects, and there's quite a lot of them. So since there's no way yet to Close or Hide events, putting them into their own Library will at least give me more control over them, and allow me to close the Library if I don't need them. (which will cut down on load times of FCX)

3. But if I do indeed start breaking up one movie into multiple libraries, how does that affect my media? Remember when I told you that all my media was in the one library, in its own event? Well, when I'm able to upgrade these older projects, will it try to consolidate the media of those projects into this new library? Or can projects exist in a new library, and yet refer to media in another library?

What I'm basically trying to avoid is redundancies. I don't want the same RED proxies, music files, sound effects, and raw audio clips becoming duplicated between libraries.

Thank you for any help / advice you can provide.

Went through a similar thought process on our current doc.

Here is what I did come up with:
For the following I call 'managed media' when the actual media files are inside the library bundle folder (in the original media folder of a given event) I call 'unmanaged media' if the media is external of the library bundle and the library only links to this media.

To avoid duplicating media across several libraries the only way is to have all media 'unmanaged'!
e.g. you have already created a library containing all your original media and this media is managed.
If you now import another project FCP will create a new library and create all necessary clips as offline versions. When you try to relink those to the media in your existing library you're out of luck because you can't access media inside a library bundle.
So the only way is if that media is in an external folder that both libraries reference too.
You can convert a managed library to an unmanaged library and vice versa at any time by using the 'consolidate media' command. To move all your media out of the library bundle and make it therefor unmanaged just consolidate and specify a new folder on a drive and FCP will move the media and now reference to this new location.

What might work though is that after you imported your additional project into a new library you could try to move it into your existing library (only the project) and see if FCP recognises that the media exists in this library. I haven't tried this because I basically think the only way to work with FCP new library system is to use unmanaged media (at least for long form projects).

To only import the projects you want put those into a folder called 'FCP projects' and use the locate projects from within FCP pointing at the drive containing this folder. Or import them all at once and then create new libraries if needed and move projects selectively into those.

Hope this gives you some ideas.

Happy editing
Carsten

Hey Cofe,

Thank you for the thorough response. It helps a lot. I think for the most part, I am using Unmanaged Media. And in fact, before I even typed this post, I went in and moved all 'Original Media' out of tis folder and into separated, Unmanaged Media folders on the same drive. One for all Special Effects, Music, etc.

But what about Proxies that reside in the Transcoded Media folder? I work off proxies when I edit. And doesn't that Transcoded Media folder have to reside in the actual event, bundled within the library?

So if I create a new Library, say, for my older projects, will I then have to create the same proxies again?

Thank you.

Very good question about proxies. Its actually something I'm still struggling with.

Yes proxy can only be inside library same as transcoded media. If you having a clip in 2 libraries that reference the same media you still would need to create 2 proxies and/or transcoded versions.

My project is 100 hours of video and many more hours of audio. Because the library can only live on 1 drive all proxies would need to be on the one drive. I still have an old system running 3 eSata raids which are not the fastest. Before I could spread events over the diff raids to increase responsiveness of the system. Now when using proxies it would need to come from one raid. Of course I could spread the events to diff libraries but than FCP would need to copy stuff between them creating redundancies.

If you have one huge thunderbolt raid that has 600 MB write and read it probably isn't an issue as much.

But my thoughts go actually further than just the edit. For archiving it would be great to keep the proxies on cheap USB drives for easy access. If I would need to re-use stuff in a new film I could open the archive library BUT if the current film is edited at full res FCP wouldn't show me the proxies from the archive. I can switch to proxies but than wouldn't see the full res of the current full res media. I'm still working on a solution for best workflow on that one...

I think I will actually put in a feature request for better proxy management. If you only doing stills or small AAC files like in Aperture or iTunes the library idea is great. But if you are dealing with large file sizes for video things get a bit more complicated

Happy editing
Carsten

Just a note.

You can create sym links for the proxies as well.

-Andreas

Can you? But how? Would be fantastic!

You need some knowledge of AppleScript and Terminal (bash commands).

I made some comments about the proxy theme here:
www.fcp.co/forum/4-final-cut-pro-x-fcpx/...annel?start=20#38978

The app I mentioned will be modified in a few weeks to make it easier to work with symbolic links for proxies.

-Andreas

Yeah, figured there wasn't an easy way to do this. Seems like FCX is still treating Libraries like a work in progress though. So I suspect we'll see a way to soon share the same Proxy files among different libraries, without having to re-create them again.

An easier solution would just be giving the option to Hide or Close events. Because then I'd just bring all the projects from the one movie into one library (all reading one proxy folder in said library). But I'd spread them out among events, and just close/hide the ones I didn't want to always load.