FCPX Organizatioin

I'm new to FCPX and am trying to understand how it is organized. I see there are Libraries, Events, Projects, and Media. How do they relate to each other and how should I best use them?

For instance I take videos at a two week music workshop. I'ld like to have a heirarchy something like: Workshop, Week, Concert, Individual Performance, and video clips for that performance.

I'ld appreciate any help with this.

---Paul

Paul R. Johnson wrote: … Libraries, Events, Projects, and Media. How do they relate to each other and how should I best use them?…

with all humble respect, but that is something so fundamental, nothing to fetch in a thread in a forum (allthough we do have superb ACTs, teachers, book authors here) … dozens of tutorials, sites, videos demoing that (be sure, it's actual advice) ... read the Manual, watch rippletraining/izzy videos, read advice from Tom Wolsky, Larry Jordan .....

Plus, be aware: FCPX allows something much better than rigid 'drawers' - keywords .....

What I like to recommend (bought it myself...) is 'Lessons for Finl Cut Pro' from rippletraining at AppStore, first 10 lectures are free and touch exactly that Lib/Event thingie .....

Hi Paul!

FCPX isn't like other NLE's when it comes to organization, but that's why many of us choose it over anything else. Apple has a few white papers that are worth reading/looking through. They are located in the resources section of the webpages for FCPX.

Managing Media Libraries:
images.apple.com/final-cut-pro/docs/Media_Management.pdf

Transitioning from FCP 7 to FCPX:
images.apple.com/final-cut-pro/docs/Fina...ut_Pro_7_Editors.pdf

I'd need to know a little more about the format of the workshop and your end goal to give some suggestions for naming. I can tell you what I do. Apple has some different workflows listed in the white paper too. Everyone has their own process, but it's flexible. Either make up your own or follow someone else's.

Background:
I will shoot an event that's either a full day or lasts a few days. The end product will be a promotional video or two (short) to show what the event was about, but I will also need to revisit the footage down the road to integrate clips into something else.

For example, Match.com did a "hackweek" within their company that consisted of a launch event and a presentation event to show all the new ideas. In between the two events, I needed to shoot people/teams working on ideas—leading up to the final event. The final day also had a few spontaneous interviews where a few of the teams talked about the week as a whole or how much fun they had.

I created an Event and called it Hackweek 2015. This could have been Match-Hackweek-2015, Match-2015-Hackweek, etc. You see the library in the Finder too so I wanted to make it clear what it was.

I usually start with an Event and name it Footage. This is where I import all of the media for the project (in this case Hackweek) and organize it into keyword collections, reject portions of clips, make selects with Favorites, etc. Also, I have my media organized into folders that come in as keyword collections so I can easily see all the media from my BMCC vs BMPK4K or a specific day.

Example Finder Folder Structure:
Day 1 / BMCC / ...
Day 1 / BMPC / ...
Day 1 / Zoom / ...

Day 1, BMCC, BMPC and Zoom I have selected to come in as keyword collections. I'll then make a folder in the browser called "Media" and drag those keyword collections in. It lets me close the folder and hide those—until I need them later.

From there, I will create an Event and call it Projects. This event will include all of the projects/timelines I make for this Hackweek project as a whole. Having Projects in a separate Event from the footage helps me for visual cleanup.

I will sometimes create Events for VFX or for Music that I can organize and work with easily. Even though there are a ton of ways to keep all of this in a single Event, I like the ability to click on an event and see something more specific

Here's the Hackweek promo:
vimeo.com/156426605

Paul R. Johnson wrote: I'm new to FCPX and am trying to understand how it is organized. I see there are Libraries, Events, Projects, and Media. How do they relate to each other and how should I best use them?...For instance I take videos at a two week music workshop. I'ld like to have a heirarchy something like: Workshop, Week, Concert, Individual Performance, and video clips for that performance...

This is a good question because most of the tutorial material does not specifically tell you how "best to use them". At most they say "you might do this, or you might do that..." I rarely see any tutorial or explanatory content which concisely and specifically covers search scope behavior of events, libraries, keyword collections and under what circumstances these vary. Tom Wolsky's book "Final Cut Pro X: Beyond the Basics" is the most detailed I've seen.

The simple answer is there's no single right way. FCPX provides the tools so you can implement various different organizational systems.

A lot of the tutorial content is still biased around FCPX versions prior to 10.2 before it had library-wide search capability. Considering the library-wide database searching that now exists, I have never seen a good discussion why you would segregate material in events, or the pros/cons of doing that vs using library-wide smart collections and searching.

There is a lingering mentality that extensive hierarchical folder or bin-oriented organizing is somehow preferable or even mandatory. Your question said: "I'd like to have a hierarchy...", which could imply a hierarchy manifested as a structured tree of libraries, events, folders, etc.

You can do that and there may be certain advantages, say if you're working collaboratively with other FCPX editors. However you can also put everything you shoot into one event in one library and manage it by tagging the content like a database.

Unlike other editing software, FCPX supports range-based keywording and range-based rating so you ideally will be going through all your content and keywording it. Those keywords themselves could designate workshop, week, performance, etc. There is a good issue about how to meld this capability with events, when to use single vs multiple libraries, etc. However I don't recollect seeing good coverage of this in any tutorial -- coverage which acknowledges the 10.2 capability and how this might change organizational approaches.

One of FCPX's strengths is metadata and content management. It is a good idea to study this before plowing ahead or implementing some rigid bin-like system. There are various training materials on this. I personally like Tom's book (mentioned above) and the Focal Easy Guide to Final Cut Pro X by Rick Young, also Ripple Training: www.rippletraining.com/ . Excerpts of Ripple Training materials are online in "MacBreak Studio": www.pixelcorps.tv/macbreak_studio

One of the reasons I find FCPX organization confusing is that you can't just click on a folder and see what is inside without opening it in the program. Some of us like myself are causal users and make videos as a hobby and don't work with it every day or even every week. I just installed a 1TB SSD on my 2010 Mac Pro and finally figured out many things. Ran everything on the SSD including startups and everything is so much faster, but when I wanted to copy this project onto another HD for storage I copied both the project and events. After some tinkering I find that the system has already copied all the events with the project. Yet because the event folder is sill on the SSD this is not obvious. Then it also says it made some kind of "backup" and I have no idea what that is, but now I have plenty of storage so I guess it doesn't matter.

One final note is the SSD makes going back and forth between transitions and titles so much faster. Loading clips from the camera chip is much faster too.

Thank you all for your advice. I've purchased the Ripple Training FCPX Core Training course and am in the middle of it. It helps a lot.

The bigh factor I was overlooking is the use of keywords. They will help a lot!

---Paul

Tony,

Just curious about a few things. First, it sounds like you import your footage into FCPX as managed assets, copying everything into the library. As opposed to linking assets that reside outside the library. I normally have assets in a navigatable folder structure and just import those assets and leave in place.

You also mentioned Events and Projects as separate folders. Are you on an older version of FCPX? As of 10.1, projects and events are inside of libraries and are much more manageable than the earlier method of storing.

I copy everything on the camera chip into FCPX. I have the latest version and El Capitan 10.11.6. Part of the problem is that the system puts things were it wants and then you have to try to figure out where it is. As I said above, when I moved the Project to another HD, it moved all the events and unused events too, but they still appeared to be in a separate folder, but when I moved that too then it was a duplicate. Again the confusion comes from the fact that these folders or libraries can't be clicked on to see what is where. Just a strange system where they expect you to understand where they put everything without you being able to just click on it and see the contents which is possible in every other program.

Hey Tony,

Let me see if I can help the first issue I think you're having. And that's understanding where your footage is going.

You only have 2 options of how to store your media: Outside of the library or inside the library. If your media is inside the library, you are intended to manage that inside FCPX. If your media is outside of the library, you are free to organize it any way you want (before importing into FCPX) and you can preview media, back it up and more in the Finder.

It sounds like you are importing your media from your camera directly into the FCPX library. So it gets copied into that purple library disk bundle and is sorted how FCPX handles original media. You are not intended to open that bundle up and move things as you want.

Perhaps you would rather copy the files into a folder structure that you control, and not one that's not meant for you to manage in the finder. This would require you to create a folder for the client or project name and copy media yourself.

Help me understand this...

You said that you copied a project onto another hard drive and all events related to it went with it. When you said "project", did you mean "library"? A project is a "timeline." The "library" is the top level, enclosing folder (purple bundle you see in the Finder) that includes media, events and projects.

You can move a library from one hard drive to another. In order to move a particular project or event to another drive, you'll need to do that inside of FCPX and copy them into another Library. All of these things live in libraries. To move parts of your library, you'll need another library created and loaded into FCPX to receive the items you want to move.

I would check out the white paper I listed above and read through it.

TonyBSyr wrote: … you can't just click on a folder and see what is inside without opening it in the program. ...

yep, because FCPX is a dynamic database, no rigid, stupid file/folder structure.
Tinkering with the elements of that database outside the app isn't ... good.

That simple.

and, Tony, close to threadjacking.
Will confuse Paul (beginner) a 100% ..................... :dry:

Well in my opinion Apple has made it much more difficult to manage your files. I find that the best way to know if things have moved is to check the available disc space and you won't always get an accurate number unless you quit FCPX and then reopen. Fortunately with the SSD, can now do that much faster. It would be helpful if they were transparent with the files. You have so much space being taken up with render or something else you might not need and let the user decide whether to keep this or that. All that information is now hidden. I am not looking for help. I have read their white paper on this, I am just explaining why many seem to find the structure confusing is because it isn't clearly visible.

Tony, Apple has actually made it much easier to see and organize your files then all other NLE's. Not to start a debate, but I feel like you're missing something here that could be a huge advantage to you. If you are saying that you want to look inside the library folder, all you have to do is right-click and select show contents. However, FCPX is a database and the folders and the way it organizes inside that Liebre file needs to stay the same. As far as render files, proxies and other generated media, you can easily remove all of that within FCPX.

I feel like some people make it sound more complicated than it really is. Maybe looking inside that library folder will help you understand what FCPX is doing. Perhaps that's the layer of confusion for you. But just to be clear, you can't move things around in that folder willy-nilly. Everything inside that library needs to be managed inside the application.

The system they have now is not how FCPX started out. They made these changes a few years ago and it is just my view that there is no reason why you should only be able to open a file within the program to see what you have. I also used the old system, think it was called 7 and they didn't have it either. You could just click on any folder and see what is inside. Never have used Avid or anything else, but I understand that with Avid the time line moves as you play though. That irritation with the file structure are my only two complaints. Again, I am just explaining, why in my view, we see these posts about organization because it is not easy to look at folders and see what you have.

I think you'd much rather be using External Media and not Managed Media inside the library. Look into that and try it out. Seems to be what you're wanting.

Good luck!

TonyBSyr wrote: Well in my opinion Apple has made it much more difficult to manage your files...It would be helpful if they were transparent with the files...

You can see wherever media, cache and backup files are and can put them wherever you want. See MacBreak Studio #272:



The inexpensive utility Final Cut Library Manager helps visualize how much space each internal file type is consuming: www.arcticwhiteness.com/finalcutlibrarymanager/

FCPX gives you the option of managed libraries which eliminates one of the biggest problems with other editing software -- files getting scattered and lost. With managed libraries you never have to deal with that or have the dreaded "red box" errors where it can't find the media.

If you don't want to use managed libraries you can keep all the media files wherever you want.

If files go missing, at least FCPX can search the entire disk volume and relink every file, no matter what the location. It can search and relink *thousands* of files comprising a large video project in one pass. The procedure is shown in MacBreak Studio #273, from 04:10 to 08:00:

Paul R. Johnson wrote: … The bigh factor I was overlooking is the use of keywords. They will help a lot!
…

yep, that is - for me - one of the THE key features of FCPX.

A single clip, in the past re-named and put into a single folder, now offers a bunch of keyword-ranges; it's not just "xmas" in folder "2015", but also "grandma", "party", "best of", "outtake", "beautyshot", "our house before the fire" ... all covering diff. ranges of one clip, overlapping, etc etc... you can apply notes, create intelligent folders, ...

The more you tag your material, the better and easier the final edit keeps goin'.

Even simple favoritizing (ffw with J/K/L, I/O, F) saves hours of repetitive scroll 'n search. Makes editing fun!