Avoiding duplicate clips with FCP import

[Dean Sensui]

To prevent duplicate clips when importing into FCP via the SONY XDCam Transfer application:

Select up to 10 clips and import as usual directly into FCP.

When that's done, go to FCP and move those 10 clips into a bin.

Import the next 10 clips via XDCam Transfer.

Again, go back to FCP and move those newly imported clips into the bin where you moved the other clips.

It's annoying to have to go back and forth. However the advantage of doing it this way is that it will preserve any comments you typed into the XDCam Transfer logging window. Quite helpful when logging a lot of clips.

Apparently FCP chokes when there's more than 10 XDCam clips imported into a project. It will also mess up if there are already XDCam clips in the browser, and your additional clips add up to more than 10 or 11 total clips.

To avoid problems, move imported clips out of the browser and into a bin. That way the next set of clips will be imported into a "clean" browser without any problems.

As clips are imported, they can be consolidated into a bin wihout any problems. Once they're in the project, clips can be moved anywhere and grouped as desired.

[Bryan Suthard]

Thanks for the tip Dean. My solution is to import all the clips into FCP using the XDCAM transfer process in one shot. Then I delete them ALL from the default bin in FCP and then import them again from the hard drive where the original transfer process had put them.

[Dean Sensui]

Bryan...

Hopefully some will find this useful.

Most important to me is that this work-around preserves comments and other notes that are input via the XDCam Transfer application.

I generally keep my file names short and add notes via the Comments window. Some might use more descriptive file and clip names, but sometimes those long names can create their own problems in the finder's file system.