The Media Manager
Final Cut Pro is a huge application. It has loads of options, oodles of customizable features, and even a talking yak.
For real.
It also has something called Media Manager.
What does it do? Lots. Why should you care? Because if you’re like me and you do all of your video work on a laptop with limited hard drive space, this can be a life-saver. Media Manager allows you to capture all of your footage to an external drive, do your editing at home, then apply the polish when you’re out of the dungeon.
Here’s an example. Say you’re working on a project that you’ve just finished editing. There’s still a bunch of work left to do (color grading, motion graphics, and some audio work), but you’re leaving the apartment for a bit since the place needs to be fumigated because your idiot roommate dog-napped a flea-ridden mutt from one of the hobos under the overpass. The client doesn’t give two flips about it and still wants the video done NOW. Time to take it to the coffee shop where you can suffocate your pain with some caffeine.
Oh wait. The source files take up something like 24GB on your external, but you’ve only got 2GB left on your MacBook Pro. Your mind turns from caffeine dreams to blood-red visions of the apocalypse. But alas, unlike your roommate (or your client), Final Cut Studio is ready and willing to help you in your time of need.
From within the Browser in Final Cut Pro, right-click on the sequence you’re working on. Select “Media Manager…”. A dialog box pops up that gives you a couple of neat bar graphs and a handful of options. You’ll mostly want to leave those alone for now. Just take a look at the graphs near the top. This shows you just how much unused crap you’re about to leave out of your soon-to-be modified project file.
Once you select a destination for your files (I chose Desktop because this junk needs to get done NOW), go ahead and hit ok.
Media Manager copies only the parts of the source files that you’re currently using, then places them in the destination folder, creates a new project file for you, and automatically links the referenced clips in the timeline to the new source files. Pretty slick, no?
If you’re thinking ahead you may have realized that this isn’t entirely foolproof. If you need to change an edit by making it slightly longer you’re out of luck. It is what it is at this point. That’s why getting a lock on your picture edit is so important. But you’re completely free to play around in Color, add in your Motion content, or send it onto Soundtrack Pro for a little audio massaging.
Media Manager has some other helpful abilities, but this is the one I find the most useful. Especially when the client won’t stop calling and the exterminator is screaming at you to stop what you’re doing and get out so he can do his job, which he so very clearly despises.
What a sack.
$10 bucks says he steals something from my room.