2009

Before focusing on where workflows diverge in different projects, it’s helpful to take a
step back and look at how all workflows are alike. In this overview, you can see how every
single project you work on in Final Cut Studio—from music videos to educational and
corporate communication programs to feature films—follows the same basic process.
Ingesting and
organizing
media
Editorial
development
Finishing
Mastering
Client
review
Output
and delivery
Stage 1: Ingesting and Organizing Your Media
The first stage in any post-production pipeline is to ingest the film-originated, tape-based,
or tapeless media files that you shot or generated into Final Cut Pro. Different types of
media require different ingest methods; for example, ingesting from tape requires the
Log and Capture window, and ingesting from a tapeless format requires the Log and
Transfer window. Ingesting film-originated media, on the other hand, requires additional
steps to develop the camera negative and transfer it to a video or image format that can
be ingested into Final Cut Pro, sometimes with the help of Cinema Tools and Color.
During ingest, you’ll already be taking steps to organize your media by choosing what
media to ingest and by adding logging information, such as clip names and notes. After
ingest is complete, you immediately take other organizational steps to sort clips into bins
and review, mark, and annotate each clip using controls in the Browser.
Although most of this work takes place in Final Cut Pro, other applications may come
into play during this part of the process. Transferred film may come into Final Cut Pro
through a Cinema Tools database, which provides additional logging and tracking data
from the film-transfer process. Multiple-suite post-production facilities may benefit from
using Final Cut Server to manage project and media files on a storage area network (SAN)
to facilitate projects worked on by a post-production team.
10 Chapter 1 Developing a Post-Production Strategy