What Can You Do with the Media Manager?
The Media Manager can duplicate an existing project, or individual items in the project,
as well as the corresponding media files, or portions of those media files. Final Cut Pro
treats media files and clips independently, so some Media Manager options determine
how clips are modified, duplicated, or reconnected, while other options determine how
media files are processed. Most of the tasks you do in the Media Manager could be
performed manually, but it could be very time-consuming. It’s much more efficient to
let the Media Manager do this work for you.
You can use the Media Manager for the following media management tasks:
 Copy entire projects or items within projects
You can create a new project file that contains whichever items you select in your
original project file, as well as copy all of the corresponding media files.
 Move all media files to a single folder on your scratch disk
It’s fairly common to capture media files to more than one folder (or more than one
scratch disk) during the course of a project. You can use the Move option in the
Media Manager to consolidate all of your project’s media files to a single folder on a
single scratch disk, as well as to automatically reconnect all of the clips to their media
files in the new location.
 Delete unused portions of media from your hard disk
You can break your media files into smaller files by using the “Delete unused media
from selected items” option. This option analyzes what portions of each media file
are used by your current selection, and then creates new media files that contain
only the necessary media. You can use this option with the Copy or Recompress
options, so only a limited amount of new media is created. If you use this option with
the Move or Use Existing options, smaller media files are created and the original files
are deleted.
Note: This is a good way to free up disk space or create smaller media files from
subclips that originally refer to one large media file.
Chapter 7
Overview of the Media Manager
89
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 Recompress media files with different image dimensions and compression settings
The Recompress option in the Media Manager allows you to create copies of your
media files compressed with a different codec or frame size. For example, you can
recompress your DV media files with the OfflineRT settings in order to reduce their
size for editing on a portable computer. This is a common method for creating media
files for offline editing in Final Cut Pro.
 Create a copy of a sequence for recapturing clips at full resolution (online editing)
You can use the “Create offline” option in the Media Manager to duplicate a
sequence with different video and audio settings. This option doesn’t actually create
any new media files, so the resulting sequence and its clips are offline (meaning the
clips have no media files to refer to). You can then recapture the sequence’s media
files at full resolution for the final edit. This option is typically used in preparation for
online editing.
If two editors both have copies of the media files, but each uses different settings (for
example, DV on one system and OfflineRT on another), you can use this feature to
quickly exchange sequences back and forth via email or the Internet. In this situation,
only a project file containing a sequence needs to be transferred, since both editors
have their own copies of the media files. Once an editor receives a project, the clips
can be reconnected to local media files.
For more information, see Chapter 5, “
Offline and Online Editing
,” on page 57.