Offline-Editing Workflow - How to handle additional Assets and Sounds?

Hello fcp.co community,

how do you setup your Libraries, when offline-editing?

I`m currently working on a project with a lot of clips, that lays as "External Media" on my "Backup-Drive". The Project-Library including the generated Proxys is located on my little "Working-Drive" attached to my MacBook-Air through USB3.

The Problem: Additional Assets and Sounds, that can`t be converted to Proxy, is not available, when the "Backup-Drive" is detached.

Is there any better solution, instead of creating another Library, which holds all other Assets and Sounds as "Managed Media" inside the Library and to keep that Library on my "Working-Drive"?

I apprechiate any help

Greetings from Germany,
Valentin

Hi Valentin, and welcome.

You are raising an interesting question here, but the answer is quite simple: to work on a Project you always need to have the media for this Project available.

So if you only want to work from your Working-Drive using the Proxy media inside your Library on that drive you will have to make sure that any other media you need, and for which you cannot create Proxy media (such as WAV files), are also on that same drive and imported into your Library.

Grüsse aus Belgien,

- Ronny

There should be an option to generate "proxy" files for the other media and just have it duplicate the original media files to the proxy folder as well. Feedback request?

That's why I said the OP has raised an interesting question.

The FCPX Proxy playback feature, as it is now, is NOT an "offline/online" workflow.

In a classic Offline/Online workflow you convert every single high-res asset you need to a lower-res "offline" file and you use these lower-res files as original media on the offline editing system. When the offline editing is done you export an XML (or an EDL in the old days) from the offline workstation and you relink the offline Project XML to the high-res files on the online workstation for finishing.

The Proxy workflow in FCPX is a playback enhancement feature that allows smoother editing on systems that have difficulties to cope with the original media or the number of streams you are working on. In this respect it's a unique feature to FCPX, and it works perfectly as it is: media that could cause smooth playback issues on your system can be converted to lower-res proxy files for playback, and media that won't cause playback issues remain in their original form (such as WAV files). That's why the Proxy playback workflow, as it is now, requires you to have both your Proxy files and your Original/Optimized media available while you edit.

As always, editors are creative. So they try to use a feature in an NLE for a purpose it wasn't originally intended to: to use the FCPX Proxy playback feature (that requires you to have all your media available on your workstation) as an offline/online feature (that only requires you to have the Proxy media available).

I agree this could be a good thing and, as Julian says, it's not really difficult to implement if FCPX would just duplicate any original media that cannot be converted to lower-res media, into the Proxy media folder.

The disadvantage of this would be that your Proxy media folder will get larger, but you can delete the proxies when you don't need them anymore. The advantage would be that you can leave the Original media as external high-res files on a separate drive and you only need to take the much smaller managed Proxy media with you for "offline" work on slower hardware or on the road.

As FCPX creates Proxies inside the app and it seamlessly reconnects them to their high-res versions this would be the easiest and the fastest "offline/online" workflow in any existing NLE.

So yes, feedback time it is

- Ronny