Steps to Backing Up or Consolidating Media

Creating an Archive of a Finished Project
For long-term archiving, you should save both the project file and the original media (such as the actual videotapes). As long as there is an accurate timecode relationship between the clips in your project and the timecode on your videotapes (or film), you can open your project and recapture your media at any time.
Depending on the duration of your original footage, the captured media files that you used for your project are not necessarily worth archiving long-term, simply because they are extraneous copies of your original videotapes. Also, backing up to inexpensive formats, such as DVD-R, can be fairly time consuming. As long as you archive your project file and you have the original videotapes available to recapture clips from, your project is sufficiently archived.

Project files:
These are typically quite small, and many versions of a project file can be archived on a Zip disk, CD-ROM, or similar storage media.

Media files captured from tape or other timecoded sources:
These require a lot of disk space, so it can be impractical to back up these files. As long as your tapes have timecode, you can simply store the original tapes along with the backed-up project file. If you need to revisit your project later, you can use the timecode information in the clips of your project file to recapture media from tape.

Media files without timecode and files created on a computer:
Graphics files, such as still images, and motion graphics that originated on a computer should be permanently archived on a hard disk, DVD-ROM, or similar storage media. You should also save the original project files from the applications that you used to create these media files. For example, if you created a motion graphics logo in Motion, you should back up the Motion project file, as well as any non-timecoded media files associated with that project. Non-timecoded video sources, such as video from VHS tape or audio from an Audio CD, should also be backed up, because you can’t accurately recapture this media later.

Understanding Master Clips Vs. Affiliate Clips
Master Clips are the main clips that were digitized from the camera masters (whole tapes that were captured) Affiliate Clips are clips that were made from master clips (subclips, merged clips, etc) Sequences contain “Affiliate Clips” that are linked to master clips.
Identifying Master Clips Master clips can exist only in the Browser; a sequence cannot contain a master clip. The only way to identify a master clip is to view its Master Clip property, either in the Browser or in the Item Properties window.
To view a clip’s Master Clip property:
1 Select the item.
2 Choose Edit > Item Properties > Logging Info. If the Master Clip property is checked, the clip is a master clip.

Finding a Clip’s Master Clip
Using the Reveal Master Clip command, you can identify the master clip of any clip in the Browser.
To find a clip’s master clip:
1 In the Browser or Timeline, select an affiliate clip. If the Timeline is active but no clip is selected, the clip at the position of the playhead acts as the selected clip.
2 Choose View > Reveal Master Clip. The master clip is automatically selected in the Browser.

Steps to backing up or consolidating media:
1. Buy a firewire drive and enclosure: Make sure to buy an enclousure with an OXFORD chip. Such as these examples:
http://www.altex.com/product_info.php?cPath=1_61&products_id=273San
Make sure the enclosure has the: an IEEE1394 (FireWire) to ATA / ATAPI (IDE) bridge chip from Oxford Semiconductor
Examples of IDE drives: http://www.altex.com/index.php?cPath=1_51_209_265
2. Media manage the project to the storage drive:
Here's what Media Manager does.
You select a clip, clips, sequence, or group of sequences to media manage. Using Media Manager to delete unused media will create a new project containing all the clips and/or sequences trimmed to only include the media you are actually using. Then, Media Manager goes into your capture files and permanently deletes media from the media clips stored on your hard disk that is not used in the newly created project.
In other words, if you use the same media in different projects, Final Cut only pays attention to how you are using the media in the sequences you selected. Or, if you use the same media in other sequences in the same project and those sequences were not selected, any media used in those unselected projects will be ignored and deleted.

1) Most importantly, BEFORE starting Media Manager, select the sequence(s) you want to media manage. Here, I've created two sequences: Seq - Snowboard Intro and Seq - Snowboard Act 1 and I've selected both BEFORE starting Media Manager. This step is critical!
2) Select File > Media Manager. Then select Use existing from the pop-up menu. This tells Final Cut that you want to delete all media that you are NOT using in the two selected sequences.
3) Then, just in case, check Use Handles and give yourself some pad in case you need to trim a shot or add a dissolve. I generally use either 3:00 or 5:00.
4) Duplicate selected items... means that Final Cut will create a new project and put the items you've selected into the new Project. This is generally a good idea, that way, your old project remains untouched in case you need to recapture a clip that got deleted by mistake.
Include nonactive multiclip angles means that Final Cut will include clips that are part of a multiclip, whether they are used in the selected items or not. My feeling is that checking this is a good idea if you are using multiclips, because you can't rebuild a multiclip if there's a break in timecode in the middle of a clip. If you don't use multiclips, leave this unchecked.

5) The bar chart at the top indicates how much space you are saving with this procedure. Your numbers will be different. Keep in mind that you are often dealing with hundreds of gigabytes of files. This process will take a long, long time to get everything copied. Don't be impatient -- give your Mac time to work.
6) When you click OK, Final Cut displays a dialog asking you to name your new project and find a place for it to be stored. I always store my Final Cut projects in the FCP Projects folder.
7) This dialog drives me nuts. None of these choices make intuitive sense. So, here's what they mean, according to the Apple manual:
Additional Items Found dialog: When you use the Media Manager to do a potentially destructive operation, Final Cut Pro checks all currently opened projects to see if there are any other clips that reference the same media. If so, the Additional Items Found dialog appears.
Add: Click this button if you want to tell the Media Manager to consider additional portions of media files referenced by other currently open projects.
Continue: Click this button to continue the Media Manager operation without taking into consideration the additional portions of media found. This may make some clips offline in projects outside the current one.
Abort: Click this button to stop the Media Manager operation (for example, if you want to change your original selection). Decide what you want to do, then click a button.
My recommendation is to err on the side of safety and click Add if this dialog appears.8) Final Cut then displays one last warning that what you are about to do is not undoable. Click Continue if you are determined to proceed.

9) Final Cut then goes thru all your selected items and removes media. This process can take a while, so it displays a progress thermometer.
One Example of when to media manage besides using a sequence:
Example: 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. In this example, the Media Manager creates a media file for every subclip in your project. Portions of your media that are not referenced by subclips are not turned into new media files, and thus unnecessary media can be eliminated by this process. To eliminate portions of a media file not referenced by subclips:
In the Browser, delete the original master clip that your subclips were derived from. Note: When you create a subclip, it becomes its own master clip. A subclip does not refer back to the original clip it came from, but both the original clip and the new subclip refer to the same media file.
Because the Media Manager tries to preserve media referenced by clips in your project, it is necessary to delete the original master clip (which refers to the entire length of the media file) so only the subclip media will be preserved.
Rename your subclips with descriptive names. When the Media Manager creates new media files, they will be named after these subclip names.
Select all of the subclips that you created from the master clip you just deleted. Important: The media for any subclips you don’t select will be lost. To be safe, you can move all the subclips whose media you want to retain in one bin, and the subclips you don’t want to preserve in a different bin. Then select the bin of subclips you want to preserve.
Control-click one of the selected subclips, then choose Media Manager from the shortcut menu that appears.

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