Apple Pro Training Series: Optimizing Your Final Cut Pro System: A Technical Guide to RealWorld PostProduction [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Administrating Project Files, Preferences, and User Data

Organizing your workspace is fundamentally important. Effective file management not only enables you to use FCP more efficiently, but because you know what your assets are and where to locate them, it also fosters greater creativity.

Establishing a New Project

Although there may be as many ways to structure and organize an FCP project as there are people working with the application, you can follow some general guidelines to make things easier and more efficient. Generally speaking, you need to keep each project self-contained and separate media assets from other files. Most importantly, your system needs to make sense to everyone who uses itthe best way to do that is to keep it simple.

Note

Maintaining a defined structure in which you keep individual projects separate will not only help while you are working, as you will learn later in this lesson, it will also make archiving your project easier.

Manual Administration

Manually organizing your files is a matter of creating a centralized, or master, directory on your system and collecting files there. If you spend some time creating a defined set of directories at the beginning of each project, you'll effectively streamline file management tasks.

Virtual Organization

If you're used to sorting clips in the Browser in a variety of ways, Spotlight in Mac OS X 10.4 creates similar opportunities for you to organize project files.

One method is to apply a folder action to your project directory and use Spotlight Comments to tag any files you save there. If the files are ever moved or misplaced, you can use a Spotlight search or create a Smart Folder to locate them.

You can now use the Spotlight Comment in conjunction with other search criteria and metadata to create customized Smart Folders. For example, you could search by Spotlight Comment and Date Modified to maintain a list of your most current project files. (Refer to Lesson 10 for details on how to work with Smart Folders.)

Protecting and Archiving Projects

Project files embody every aspect of your work in Final Cut Pro. They represent all the time you've invested and the creative decisions you've made. Preserving the integrity of your project files should be one of your prioritiesmake it part of your daily workflow. Think of project files as precious objects, and be proactive about protecting them. Creating regular, incremental backups of current projects will dramatically reduce your losses in the event of something like a hard drive failure, which could otherwise be catastrophic. Returning to an old project is also quite common, especially with the advent of DVD and other digital distribution technologies. A well-organized archive will be invaluable if you should need to reestablish a project.

Safeguarding your files requires creating backups and secure, permanent archives. There are a number of ways to do this, including using optical media, secondary or portable hard drives, and remote storage. Whichever option you choose, you should make sure that it is a

failover system with built-in

redundancy .

The first way to protect your project is to make sure you save it at regular intervals. Whenever you create a new project file, you should immediately save it into your designated project folder. Even though Autosave will begin to function after the first save, you should continue with manual saves and create incremental versions to preserve different stages of your project as it progresses.

The next step in preserving your data is to use co-location, which means you store files in more than one place so that you're not relying on a single device. It could simply mean that you burn your projects to CD or DVD at the end of each session, or you copy files onto a removable drive to take away with you at the end of the day. If you make two copies, you can leave one in a safe or security box at your facility and take the other home with you. A more sophisticated method would be to upload your files to a server in an enterprise class datacenter. Such facilities usually include secure data backup, power regulation, and fire suppression as part of their service.

Deciding which strategy is right for you will depend on your particular circumstances and what you can afford to invest in a backup solution. Ultimately, you may use a combination of strategiessaving to an offsite server and a removable drive, for instance.

Once you have a plan in place, you need to follow through and be consistent in your implementation. If you've organized your project, Mac OS X has tools that can streamline the process of creating and securing your daily archive.

Locking Files

Locking project files will prevent accidental modification or deletion of work you want to preserve. Having locked a file, you'll be unable to make any changes or move it to a different directory, including the Trash.

Back Up to Optical Disc

You can store several hundred megabytes (MB) of data using current CD technology, and several gigabytes (GB) with DVD. The latest version of the Apple SuperDrive supports dual-layer DVD+R discs, which have a capacity of 8.5 GB. With the advent of new high-capacity optical discs, you'll be able to store many times that amount of information on a single disc.

More Info

For further details on new DVD technologies, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_ray and www.blu-ray.com.

Burn Folders are a new feature in Mac OS X 10.4they help streamline the process of creating archives on CD or DVD.

Backup to Remote Storage

The general principle of remote storage is that you back up your files to a secondary hard drive, which resides at a separate geographic location. There are many solutions you can work with, ranging from portable hard drives (including iPods) that you carry with you, to dedicated datacenters that you access via the Internet.

If you have a .Mac account (Lesson 15 for more information on file transfer solutions.)

Recovering Projects

The Revert and Restore features in Final Cut Pro provide additional means to recover project files that effectively complement your manual backup routine. Both options can be accessed directly within FCP and can help you manage your work.

Revert

The option to revert projects is especially useful if you want to quickly undo a series of steps and return the project to the state it was in the last time you performed a manual save. If you're mindful of when you save your project, you can use Revert to confidently experiment and explore different tangents in your work. If you use Revert as an alternative to multiple undo actions, you need to be aware that it is a

destructive stepthere's no equivalent to

redo , and all of your changes will be lost.

Note

You can also save test versions of your file to facilitate experimentation. Working with incremental files enables you to preserve each deviation and maintain a record of your process.

Restore

Lesson 11 for instructions on how to properly set your Autosave Vault.)

Sharing

With Final Cut Pro, you can share a wide range of resources, including media, clip information, third-party plug-ins, entire projects, and individual user settings. This kind of functionality means that FCP can support a variety of workflows and enable

round-trip migration between users, applications, and platforms.

Media

Lesson 7 for more information.)

Clips

Final Cut Pro 5 includes increased support for sharing clips between other applications. You can now

send clips directly to Soundtrack Pro, Motion, or Shake.

When you share media files, you're sharing the raw material of your project. When you share clips, you're sharing information about how you're using your files. It is this data that you can share between the other Pro applications, and any changes you make in those applications will be immediately reflected in Final Cut Pro. FCP continues to support files created in other applications such as Maya, After Effects, and Photoshop.

Note

If you exchange files between other applications, make sure you keep settings, such as pixel aspect ratio and color space, consistent or that the application is able to perform adequate conversions to properly support round-trip workflow.

Third-Party Plug-ins

FCP also continues to support third-party plug-ins (including After Effects plug-ins). Compatibility can be an issue, and you need to make sure you're using the appropriate plug-ins for your version of FCP. If you're working with third-party plug-ins, and the license permits, you can also transport them between different Final Cut Pro installations.

Projects

Sharing projects between Final Cut Pro users is remarkably easy. When you're moving projects between different systems using identical versions of FCP, you only need to reconnect media before you're ready to work. (See Lesson 5 for more information on reconnecting media files.) If you're transferring projects between different versions of Final Cut Pro, you do need to be a little careful. Although you are able to open a project created in FCP 4 in FCP 5, advances in the technology driving the application mean that project files are not immediately compatible with earlier versions, and a FCP 5 project will not open directly in FCP 4.

On the occasions you need to transport a FCP5 project to an earlier version, you'll need to use one of the interchange formats such as XML or EDL. (Refer to Lesson 5 for specific details on how to work with these formats.) XML interchange was introduced in FCP 4.1 and is the recommended solution if your systems are able to support it. For earlier versions, you'll need to generate an EDL to open your project in the earlier version.

Note

Not all video formats will be supported in earlier versions of Final Cut Pro.

User Settings

With Final Cut Pro 5, it's possible to share custom user settings, including button bars, keyboard layouts, hardware settings, and window arrangements. You can manually copy settings files to other systems or set up a shared directory to make them available to other users on your network.

Streamlining Project Configuration

If your particular worflow involves repetitive tasks, you might consider using Mac OS X to streamline certain jobs.

Creating Stationery

A stationery file is the Mac OS X equivalent of a template; once you've activated a file's stationery setting, you'll create a copy of the file every time you attempt to open it. Rather than set up each file you make from scratch, you can use stationery to create a default template.

Automating Tasks

As you learned earlier in this lesson, in Mac OS X 10.4, Automator can now be used to manage repetitive and time-consuming jobs. At this time, Final Cut Pro is not an AppleScript-able application, but there are a number of tasks, such as resizing and renaming image files, you can perform outside of FCP to streamline your workflow. Converting the frame size of multiple image files is the kind of process that's perfectly suited for Automator. Before you import images into FCP, you need to make sure that the dimensions and pixel aspect ratio are compatible with your sequence settings. There are actions in Automator that perform both of these operations; you just need to create a workflow around them.