Destructive Editing in Final Cut

[stingray88]

I want to be able to edit destructively in Final Cut Pro. While I understand how amazing non-destructive editing is, there are reasons to want to be able to edit destructively.

The question is, can you edit destructively in FCP?

For those who don't know what this means:
Let's say I have a few 10 minute long video files. I want to be able to cut a few minute long clips from the original 10 minute videos and put them into my timeline. Then I want to make these smaller clips their own stand alone files, enabling me to delete the original 10 minute files.

In all honesty, this is a very simple concept and idea and as far as I've found there is no way to do it, which makes no sense to me from such expensive software.

Not knowledged with Final Cut Pro? Well I've got Adobe Premier CS3 as well so if you know how to do it with that, let me know.

 

[ChemiosMurphy]

just set in and out points and export those. Or media manager to bounce out new clips.

 

[stingray88]

This does not solve my problem.

Media Manager is not doing a thing, where as friends have walked me through how it is supposed to do something (and its not).

As far as exporting EVERY time I make a new clip? This would be an awful solution because I have a 100+ clips to edit.

 

[cpcarrot]

What is your reason for wanting to edit destructively?

If it’s just to save space on your drives then the best way to save space is to be more conservative at the capture stage and actually log and capture properly only importing the bits of footage that is actually going to be useful. Otherwise as above there are work arounds they just take longer.

Basically from the sounds of it what you need to do is before importing the footage into Final Cut Pro and onto your computer – Log all the clips fully and then just let it capture the clips you want in the durations you want.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Make subclips of everything you want to keep and either batch export all of them or use the Media Manager to make copies. The MM would be the better choice, IMO. First, you need to make sure that all of your original clips have a unique name/number in the Reel column. If the clip doesn't have a Reel name/number it won't go thru the MM properly. The settings for the MM, starting at the top, should be:
Copy
Unchecked
Unchecked
Checked (Delete unused media from duplicated items)
Un/Checked (Use Handles is optional)
Unchecked
Existing file names
Checked (Duplicate selected items and place into a new project)
Unchecked


Lethal

 

[ChrisA]

I want to be able to edit destructively in Final Cut Pro. While I understand how amazing non-destructive editing is, there are reasons to want to be able to edit destructively.

Simple answer: It becomes destructive wen you render the edited product out.


Longer answer....

A lot of people do this. I kind of like to build it into my work flow.

I download all the camera footage onto the hard drive then make a very rough cut, not even that really, I just cull out the junk, the parts where the camera was running and there has nothing happening, out of focus or over exposed junk. I call this phase "culling" not "editing". Then I simply output this as if it were a finished product. Next I delete the media from the hard drive. This "culled" video file is what I archive. Any further serious editing is done from this archive.

I find that this does speed up the work as I just have less crap to look at and if I ever look at the archive it ill go quicker then too. I don't loose any generational quality because it's all lossless video. I would not do this with mpeg. That is the important part, render to a lossless format, even if it is huge. Disks are cheap.

 

[cpcarrot]

My process is similar but done at the log and capture stage. Review all the footage on camera and log the clips how I want cutting out all the obviously useles stuff. Capture hen put the original tapes in archieve and work off the "culled" footage.