Media Manager: What features do work? What doesn't?

Question

Hi,
For those people for whom the media manager works, what works? What doesn't? What version of FCP and MacOS are you using?
I've just spent the last several hours trying to reconnect clips by hand after FCP 5.0.4 crashed while using the Media Manager to consolidate Media Files into one folder (from the manual volume 4 pg 104-105) for archiving. I am beginning to despair. Luckily I've done this after writing out what should be the final version of my project to DVD, so if I can't succeed, as long as I don't need to edit anything I should be ok.
I can tell you what's not working for me: the workflow of capture-now an entire miniDV tape to disk. I've tried many different approaches, and everything seems broken. I am using Mac OS X 10.3.9 and FCP 5.0.4.
Specifically the aspects of Media Manager which are broken for me:
1) (page 103) Removing Portions of Media Files after creating subclips. "A common logging and capturing workflow involves capturing each tape to a single media file, breaking the master clip into subclips, and then using the Media Manager to create individual media files for each subclip."
That is just plain broken. Even when I delete the master file as recommended, it does not break up the media file into individual files for the subclips. I've seen that problem referenced here before. Creating subclips from the subclips and removing subclip limits gives me the entire 1 hr tape again, when all I want is the smaller portion which does not cross DV start/stop boundaries.
Talking with a creative helper at the Palo Alto Apple store I learned that if you don't delete any media between clips, it doesn't make a file break. I have not tested that, instead I used the alternate workflow he proposed of selecting my subclips (created from the markers made with DV start/stop detect) ctrl-click -> batch export, item settings: make movie self contained. Unfortunately, I discovered the hard way that that workflow introduces errors in the time code, making recapturing the project to reconstruct it impossible.
2) Consolidating Media Files into one folder (pg 104-105) - This is also broken and caused FCP to quit unexpectedly. Both the source and destination disk had enough disk space to hold two or more copies of the entire project. What's worse, although I've been able to reconnect most of the clips created using the batch export process menioned above, some of them complain that they need the complete 1-hr clip to play properly. Those clips were deleted weeks ago, and I was able to edit and work on the project successfully without them. Why are they needed now? The small clips do appear on disk, I can see them but they won't play without the long file.
Nothing I've tried with the media manager has worked. Has anything worked for you? I'm especially interested if you use the "capture now" feature to capture 1-hr tapes and log later.
Thanks,
--Beth
Dual 1.42 GHz PowerPC G4 2 MB L3 cache per processor   Mac OS X (10.3.9)   2 GB DDR SDRAM

Answer 1

I use MM all the time, but only for certain things. I can share some observations:
If you are using MM to "Create Offline - Remove Unused", the original media all needs to be present in order for the unused media to be removed from the offline clips MM creates. This is they way I use MM all the time - capturing long clips at RT or DV quality, and then removing unused media with MM, recapturing at high quality.
I might try to use MM to copy media used in a certain sequence, but I would never try to move the media in a way that would automatically remove or alter any of my already captured media. If FCP crashed in the middle of the operation (perhaps it hits a file with incorrect permissions) your media will be half-moved, and some of the media might get corrupted. I have reassembled a few projects like this for friends and it was not easy.
Speed adjusted clips - I still see TC issues every now and then when using MM on speed-adjusted clips - here is my workaround: I go through my edited sequence and pick out as many of the speed-adjusted clips as I can find, copying and pasting them into a new sequence, where I remove the speed adjustments. I include this new sequence in my selection when I initiate MM, this creates new master clips for the speed-adjusted material that are guaranteed to come up with the correct in and out points. If during my re-assembly I find that and of these clips have a problem, I know there will be enough media in the master clip to replace the speed-adjusted media without having to log and capture a new clip.
One major bug in MM I have found with FCP5 is that when using MM to convert a DV sequence to an Uncompressed offline sequence, any graphics or animation movie files (animation codec) can no longer be rendered at full quality without replacing them one by one. My last project had 70 of these files in a 1-hour program.