Rescuing a large film project: advice?

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Rescuing a large film project: advice?

I rescued an older FCP 7 project ... it took two computers, three operating systems, help from members of this forum, and much juggling, but somehow I managed to rescue most of the media and work done on a 90 minute film shot 14 years ago. Today I'm starting to complete the film, finally. I notice that in the rescue process I had to make each key scene a separate Library. So I have 37 Libraries.

Advice? I'm thinking I should make a single Library for the film, and then consolidate the 37 Libraries as each an 'Event' in that one Library. ???

Or, simply have one Library and consolidate the 37 Libraries over into ONE Event, with a Folder for each of the Libraries (each actually just a scene).

Would anyone have an idea on this, a suggestion? And what might be the advantage (or not) of making each Library a separate Event?

I'm all ears. Ben.

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 15.0

Posted on Nov 19, 2024 6:45 AM

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Answer 1

Nov 19, 2024 7:09 AM in response to Ben Low

Where is the media for those libraries? Hopefully, it is all external, and you should keep it that way.

I'd create a "master" library for the film, and take the contents of each "partial" library as a separate event in the master library. If all the media is external, then when copying the events to the master library, you could just NOT copy the media. That would make it fairly simple. You'd need to relink, but with the files all under a common folder this isn(usually) a simple matter.

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Answer 2

Ben Low Author

Level 1

110 points

Nov 19, 2024 8:11 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Aha! Sounds smart Luis.

I'm going through each Library separately. Most have the media in an external Media/Capture Scratch (FCP7) folder. When I find that the media for a Library is IN the Library, I've consolidated it over into the external Media folder (as I go).

I'm also bumping all the Projects I find to 4K. You once mentioned to me, a long time ago, that FCPX handled the bump-up in resolution with an unadvertised algorith. I could never find out about the 'algorith' but I do find a marked improvement when I bump the HD to 4K. The original footage was either HDV, or HD. I'm crossing my fingers I won't have serious issues with the HDV (it seems to playing smoothly for the most part, with a few clips doing weird stuff - I'm hoping it's only a few).

So I will take your advice, and consolidate the separate Libraries into ONE Library, using Events to delineate the specific Libraries.

Thank you most kindly Luis, as always ...

Ben

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