optimised media--what about the original files?

If you did not use your original media to edit with, there is no relink to those files ever. If you imported your media and optimized to prores 422, those are the files that would be relinked if ever needed.

If you want to create proxy media, you can do that with your imported prores 422 files. You do not need your original media to create proxy media.

One thing folks seem confused about is what proxies are for. For me, they serve two purposes:

1) I'm on the road and I have limited drive space and want to cut with my laptop. Create proxies on ingest and create full size ProRes when I get back to the office and I've got my more capacious RAID at my disposal.

2) I'm working with really big native files (2k to 4k) and eventually I will want to reconform with full res, but for now, I just want to cut.

What I'm waiting for is an easy way to cut with proxies and redigitze only the material that is in my cut, (like you could in FCP 7 with log and transfer), but that functionality is out for now, it seems.

@PaulG Correct, you would not be able to redigitize just the material (clips) in your timeline, unfortunately. The closest you could probably get to this would be to import from camera archive and mark your in and out points there upon ingest. Obviously your timeline cuts would be a bit different, but at least then those imported events when transcoded, moved or duplicated would be the rough edited versions of the clips and not the entire clips.

It would be fantastic if FCPX would allow complete media management of the timeline and save your project with strictly the used (in and out marked) portions of the clips. I have requested this on the feedback page.

I agree. Perhaps Apple has left this out because drive space is getting cheaper and cheaper, so the "offline/online" paradigm is less necessary ( at least for HD). But for 4k ( which will become prevalent more and more shortly) it still seems sensible to only digitze what you need for render and leave the rest in native format. It drives me nuts because FCP X has really made working with proxies the easiest it has ever been.

A replace original media with optimized media button would be cool. :woohoo:

There is, sort of... Once you have a folder of optimized media, the choice is between Proxy Media and Optimized Media, with the assumption that you don't need to work with Original (non-optimized) Media. This is in the case where the Original Media is not considered optimal for editing (H264 for example). In cases where you can work optimally with Original media like MXF files from a Canon C300, there is no requirement to work with "optimized" media and you can switch between Proxy and Original. The switch is found in preferences where you choose Proxy or Optimized.

I meant more a replace like remove the original media with the optimized.
Thanks but I was aware of the Playback option is not what I had in mind.

I meant more a replace like remove the original media with the optimized.

I'm not sure I'm reading you correct, but if I am you can do that. It's not quite a button, but selecting a clip, or bunch of clips, right clicking and selecting "Transcode Media" does this.

Unless I'm not getting you right.

Or do you mean just what's used on the edit? that would be good.

remove is here the keyword...

What I mean is like, transcoding the h.264 madness into ProRes, when it's done deleteing the h.264 files from the Event folder "hard drive" to save space.

I get you, something was telling me I was missing something.

Scrubelicious wrote: remove is here the keyword...

What I mean is like, transcoding the h.264 madness into ProRes, when it's done deleteing the h.264 files from the Event folder "hard drive" to save space.

Well if you don't want to keep the originals then I guess don't select "Copy files to Final Cut Events Folder" when you first import them.

This is how I work.

No sweet it happens

Yeah I have start doing this with the clips that I receive from external drives. I think it would be cool have this option after the import process.

Seanus wrote:
Well if you don't want to keep the originals then I guess don't select "Copy files to Final Cut Events Folder" when you first import them.

This is how I work.

But if you do that and since you are creating aliases, won't you need to keep the drive containing the original media files mounted when editing, or again, will those original files not be needed if you choose to create ProRes files?

If your creating optimised media it isn't alias that are created, so right enough, you don't need the originals.

The way I work is also to only keep transcoded media of any kind in the Event.

I just remembered I wrote a post a while back that relates and might be of use to some who read this one.

fcp.co/forum/4-final-cut-pro-x-fcpx/6358...dia-upon-export#6448

It's post #6411

dgwvideo wrote:
If you want to create proxy media, you can do that with your imported prores 422 files. You do not need your original media to create proxy media.

Unless Im missing something, I don't think this is correct. I just dragged 4 of my original files to the trash, after I had already transcoded ProRes files but not proxy files. After starting FCPX back up, I could transcode any of those 4 files to proxy files, the option was grayed out.

EDIT: I could NOT transcode any of those 4 files to proxy files. (Sorry about that)

Generally, when I'm in the studio, I just leave the Originals where they are and transcode to ProRes and dispense with Proxies.

If I'm on the road, I transcode to Proxies and then create High Quality once I'm back.

I just did an experiment, which is to import and link to Originals, then create Optimized manually. Then I threw out the Originals and was unable to create Proxies (greyed out option) after that. FCP X must want the Originals around when you're making Proxies (or High Quality, obviously)

RonPriest wrote:
EDIT: I could NOT transcode any of those 4 files to proxy files. (Sorry about that)

Yeah, Ron...my mistake. I thought for sure you could create proxies from your imported optimized prores 422 or 422HQ files thru the inspector. But I, just like you and PaulG, re-tested this again with several various preference options and it certainly appears that the original media must be available for FCPX to do any transcoding.

So you could import both optimized (any flavor) and proxy to begin with and once you have them your originals could be deleted. Then you simply toggle your prefs to choose what you want to use.

I generally shoot DVCPRO HD with Panny P2 so FCPX doesn't need to optimize that anyway. I reference those files instead of copying them to the events folder, but I always have (3) untouched copies of my original footage on offline storage drives.

That's strange I wasn't aware of that either.

It has made me think, you can create proxies if the original media is ProRes 422 and is imported without selecting "Copy files to Final Cut Events Folder".

So I'm assuming when creating proxies FCPX only looks to the "Original Media" folder where either the files have been copied to or aliases have been created, and never looks to the "Transcoded Media" folder.

I'm wondering if anything can be done by manually creating aliases in the "Original Media" folder that connect to the ProRes files in the "Transcoded Media" folder to re-enable this, just as a fix for if anyone finds themselves wanting to create proxies after having deleted the original media.

I'll test it later on when I get a chance and report back.