replacing H1 footage

[Michael Galvan]

Hey guys ...

So I recently shot something with the XLH1 in 24F HDV and made two conversions of the .m2t raw file - 1 DVCProHD and 1 DVCPro50. I did all of the edit with the DVCPro50 version and now I would like to replace the edited footage with the DVCProHD footage. Is there anyway I can do this ... somehow have Final Cut Pro reference the DVCProHD file so all of my cuts get replaced with the HD footage?

I'd like to make an HD master of the piece I put together, but don't want to redit of course ...

Thanks!

[Chris Hurd]

Hi Michael,

I moved your post over here because it's more of an FCP question than an XL H1 question. My first guess is that it's possible only if the time code matches up between your two .m2t files, but I'll leave it to our FCP experts to give you a definitive answer.

[Nate Weaver]

Hi Michael,

I do offline edits all the time, usually with half-res photo-jpeg media to speed along multicam edits.

What I'll usually do is start with the full-res media in FCP, then have Media Manager make me new, recompressed media with the SAME file names, but in a new folder labeled "Offline Media" or something. This insures EVERYTHING will be identical between the original media and recompressed, including timecode, reel number, etc. This is important. If worse comes to worse, all you need to succeed is identical framerates and timecode, but all the rest helps smooth things over.

The key here is to have the two sets of media to be the same filenames. This speeds along the replacement process.

Anyway, the replacement process is simple. You select all your media in the bins (organization helps here), select "Make Media Offline" in the modify menu. Everything will go white. Don't touch a thing, keep everything selected, then right click on one of the unconnected clips and "Reconnect Media".

It's at this point that having identical filenames helps. If all the filenames are different, you'll have to reconnect each file one-by-one and mentally keep track of which file corresponds to which lo-res file. If the file names are the same, all you have to do is select ONE file in the correct folder, and FCP will automagically pick up the rest.

I shouldn't have to tell you to be careful and methodical when doing this...it's possible to really mess up your project if you start getting the two kinds of media connected in the same project. I've never done any permanent damage this way, but things can get dicey.

When doing 7-8-9 camera multicamera projects, I'll often bounce back and forth between hi-res and lo-res media maybe as many as 10 times before I finish.

[Michael Galvan]

Hey Nate ...

Thanks! Your totally right. Funny thing is I actually knew this all along ... I guess I just needed someone to tell it to me :)

Thanks for the refresher reminder ... luckily the cuts all come from one long clip, so it should be an easy replacement.