Tip Of The Week: Asset Management (or "The Frankenfile")

Aside from just plain being organized, proper file/asset management can really save your tuckhass. Unique, remember-able names for Photoshop layers, editing bins (FCP and Avid), projects, etc. separate professionals from coffee-getters. Organization will definitely help you when you're away from the project for some time (even a weekend) or people get sick and others on the team have to work on it.

This little homage to Dr. Frankenstein happened on Wednesday, November 7th in Lab 136. Amanda Simon (one of the edit team leaders along with Eric "Smooth" Kridle) was there when this happened. She participated in this event...

Amanda and Eric are working on segment four of a cooking show my 4250 and 5250 class is designing. For the editing teams (four teams total), Amanda, Eric, and I designed a standard naming convention for all of the assets (bins, folder, files, clips, etc.). To save drive space, we also decided to do the work "offline" (in a lower resolution) saving us drive space, but sacrificing quality. After we have picture lock, we'll re-capture the media at full resolution for effects, color correction, and transitions. This also means NOT taping over old footage...NEVER reuse tapes. Bad.

For some reason, when we went to re-capture the media for a clip (let's call it 001), we kept hitting a timecode error. Nothing would correct it. We tried all of the standard tricks, but nothing worked. We still haven't figured out the reason for the problem (mostly likely due to accidentally re-using a tape...the shoot was a bit stressed, so things can happen), but the solution required sleep and thinking around FCP's stupidity (FCP is stupid, editors are smart).

When FCP captures footage, it gives the QTime file in the capture scratch and the Clip in the Browser the same name. Since the clip was "offline" (yes, the horrible red line), we tried capturing the clip on either side of the break.... which did work.

We created a new sequence called "repair". We put both sides in the sequence and repaired the breech via editing. From there, we exported the clip to the Capture Scratch (as a Qtime movie, self-contained, with current settings). We then closed FCP.

Navigating to the Capture Scratch in the Mac, we found the file and duplicated it. We then renamed the duplicate with the name of the original clip that we could not re-capture (for this story, we used the name 001).

We then re-opened the project in FCP...and it flippin' worked!!!! The clip reconnected to the "Frankenfile".

So, organization and understanding how assets get managed can really save your work and your stress level.

For more information, see Biddle or Amanda Simon.