FCP X: “Media Manage” Your Projects

Chris Mansfield, in New Zealand, sent me the following technique. (I’ve edited this a bit for clarity.)

Hi Larry.

I’m not sure if you knew this or not but something that has been bothering me for a long time is archiving large libraries without the possibility of trimming or adding handles. This was something we could do in Final Cut Pro 7 using Media Manager.

I just discovered something I wanted to share that allows us to do something similar with Final Cut Pro X.

It’s seems that the “Media Manager” way is possible by going through DaVinci Resolve. I just tested this and was extremely pleased to end up with an .xml and a media folder of trimmed clips. I haven’t tested this comprehensively but it’s looking like what we used to do with “Media manager” and handles in FCP 7

My workflow is:

• Export an XML file from FCP X
• Import that XML file into DaVinci Resolve
• Choose Resolve > Delivery > Easy Setup: Final Cut Pro XML Round – Trip
• Specify codec, handles and location
• Use Render to to set the destination
• Then select > Add job to Render queue > Start Render
• Open FCP X and choose FCP X > New Library: Import newly created .xml

The XML file will only import the newly created and trimmed footage.

Thanks again for all the amazing insightful tutorials

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Larry adds: The reason this technique works is that Resolve, unlike FCP X, is creating new media during the export from color grading. Since new media is being created, it is easy to specify exactly which media you want to create.

Click here to learn more about DaVinci Resolve.