[ This article was first published in the March, 2010, issue of
Larry’s Final Cut Pro Newsletter. Click here to subscribe. ]
Eko Nobel writes:
I just found out from an editor friend of mine, that it’s possible to drag file(s) from Finder directly to FCP Viewer window or even to the Timeline and that file(s) won’t appear in the FCP Browser, thus making the project file size smaller and less time to open.
Locating the file is still possible using the View > Reveal in Finder command.
My questions are:
1. Is it recommended to do this, because it’s going to be difficult if we have to go back to data files/folder and captured footage.
2. If someday we have to reopen the project and all the clips in the timeline become offline, how we suppose to recapture, without the batch list ?
3. How can we export a batch list from this kind of project ?
FYI: I did the off-line cut myself and sent it to a post house to do the on-line. The editor open a new project and copied my off line sequence and continued to work by starting to drag files ( stills, motion projects, audio etc) from Finder instead of importing to Browser
Larry replies: Thanks for writing, Eko.
Yes, you can drag files directly from the Finder into either the Viewer or the Timeline. The problem is that if you delete the timeline – or that clip – you loose all references to that clip. Plus, dragging to the Timeline does not make your project files significantly smaller.
Not putting a clip into the Browser does not save a lot of space. It is FAR better to drag a clip into the Browser, to properly track the clip in Final Cut.
For me the risk of losing a clip by deleting a sequence, or erasing a clip from the timeline is far greater than the time I would save by dragging directly into the Timeline.
You don’t need a batch list to recapture, but you do need a list of clips. You can use the list of clips in the timeline to recapture, but if that timeline gets lost, so do your clips For all these reasons, I really don’t recommend dragging clips directly into the Timeline.
