Best workflow for Remote collaboration?

Hi friends, I need to edit a documentary but the director lives in Spain and I live in Argentina. We want to work together in the film (but not at the same time since it doesn't seem possible yet). We both have the original media in disks that are identical.
We did a similar project in the past and we have used dropbox for sharing the fcpx library, relinking all the media each time one of us was working in it. 
It worked out fine but it was not very efficient.
I have been searching for new workflows to do this but the only different approach I could find was exporting xmls rather than the library:

Which would be the benefit of sharing the xml instead of the library itself?

Then I'm also considering postlab, but I don't see many benefits rather than locking the library to avoid two people working at the same time. Something that in my case would be easy to coordinate.

Any help appreciated.

Pablo

Betancourt wrote:

... I'm also considering postlab, but I don't see many benefits rather than locking the library to avoid two people working at the same time. Something that in my case would be easy to coordinate....

Sharing XMLs should work, at least for a timeline. I've done that many times on a NAS and sometimes remotely. Re pros/cons of sharing a compressed "lean library", they two approaches are similar. There might be a risk some nuance is not supported by XML but if the library is not handled right there is also risk there; see below.

PostLab now has Merge built in, but I've only used the older stand-alone version of MergeX:  docs.hedge.video/postlab/merge

Unlike other NLEs, with FCP lots of the work takes place in the Event Browser before touching a timeline. Preserving and merging that work while reconciling conflicts was a feature of MergeX. 

An issue is partitioning of work across editors and using consistent keywords and ratings. E.g, if one editor uses the keyword "children" and the other uses "kids", it becomes confusing. On some previous projects I had meetings with all the asst. editors to decide on a "keyword dictionary" that everyone would use. 

Do not split related data across libraries. There is no provision to query across libraries so it creates "data islands" which can be difficult to manage. 

Do not use an excessive number of events within a library. You could theoretically do a huge documentary using one event, because the keyword system is so powerful. Each camera ingest can be automatically keyworded by FCP if Preferences>Import>Keywords: From folders and from Finder tags are selected. My past system was each production day would have a folder by camera+shooter, e.g, KevinFX6. That way after import all files from that camera and shooter could easily be located and labeled in the Inspector for multicam creation. 

That said, using multiple events is OK and FCP can query across events using a library-wide keyword collection, but people have a tendency to over-partition data.

Create multicams first, and mark keywords/favorites/rejects on the multicam not on the parent clips. Ideally after multicam creation, mark all parent clips as rejected and run Browser with "Hide Rejected". This can prevent accidentally editing a single-cam angle into a timeline then later having to match frames and replace that with the multicam.

If any files have the wrong date/time, try to fix that first. FCP can bulk update the date/time of groups of files using Modify>Adjust Content Created Date and Time. This ensures all material shot at the same time will sort adjacent to each other in the Event Browser.

Another way to avoid problems is ensure all filenames are globally unique before starting any editing or curation. If duplicate filenames exist anywhere in the data set (e.g, two files named C0001.mp4) it can cause problems or confusion later on. This can be magnified if exchanging XMLs.

You will apparently be using a "lean library" where all media, proxies, render files, analysis files, etc are external. That is good. As an additional manual safeguard, periodically shut down FCP and duplicate the library in Finder. That provides an additional backup.

Like most UNIX-heritage filesystems, MacOS does not have mandatory file locking. I've seen various collaborative tools like PostLab copy the library while FCP is still up, and normally there is no problem. However if a SQLite database update is underway it could cause data corruption or even crash FCP (rarely). Maybe they have a solution for that.

Please post any updates as you proceed on this project. Lots of us in the doc world are interested in the workflow issues.

Pablo, I would second joema's request for an update as you proceed with the project. The more detail the better. Anything would be much appreciated. Thanks.

I recall watching a video where the exact management of updated shared Libraries is discussed (Finder-level file management, likely with various Dropbox folders), in order to prevent using an "active" Library and to maintain sort of a file-locking or version control system. I'll post more info if I can find it. Perhaps, someone else recalls having seen this and can chime in, too.

This discussion could prove to be quite valuable, as any advice in improving workflow robustness and efficiency would be greetly warmly by all of us, I'm sure...

Many thanks Joema for the tips and I'll keep you and DaveM informed as I progress on this. The only issue I found last time working with library sharing instead of xml is that the library went bigger (like 1 or 2 gb) at the end of the project, but as internet bandwith has improved since I don's see that as a big concern. I do remeber that relinking 3000 files was slow and painfull, though.
And instead of having a "keyword dictionary" I'll try to do all of that keywording from my side so we are always in the same page. Interesting what you recommended about having just a few events. I guess I'll try to get one for all the footage and just another for sound, music, and effects. Everything inside them ordered by keywords.

Another thing to decide is if I want to rewarp all the sony mp4s I have from a Sony 7sIII to mov with editready. We haven´t worked with timecode but we have tried to sync date and time as much as we could on both cameras (the other one was a Canon R6). But that seems to be well recognized by fcpx without the need of rewarping at all. I've experienced performance issues with Sony MXF (FX9) files if they weren´t imported with the card structure, but I haven't seen issues in that sense with the mp4s of tmy sony 7siii