HOW TO: Do Edit-While-Ingest with MovieRecorder (Express) and Final Cut Pro

DISCLAIMER: This information is provided without guarantee. We are not the coders of Final Cut Pro, so we can not vouch for its behaviour. We can of course vouch for MovieRecorder's behaviour. If you experience issues with growing media in Final Cut Pro  you should contact your Apple representative. Our files are generated in a "standard" way, and have been working fine since a few years, so there is no reason they would stop working. Of course you can always contact us, and we will try to help, but if the issue is that your file does not grow in Final Cut Pro, it's important to check with them too.

Warning: We have seen some issues with files read from SMB storage. They would not automatically grow in Final Cut Pro. If you experience that issue, try to use a different type of storage.

1. Which type of destination ?

When you create a new destination with MovieRecorder, you can select a QuickTime or MXF destination.

Both types can work for edit-while-ingest with Final Cut Pro.

1.1. QuickTime

With MovieRecorder, you can opt for 3 types of QuickTime destinations:

You can read more about these different type of destinations here. But for edit-while-ingest, you can either use Segmented or Classic and here are the pros and cons of each:

• Segmented: There is no predefined duration to set. The file is growing upon ingest and is a much more modern format which supports more codecs such as the H.264. But, 
• files are not usable during the first 10 seconds of recording. And they are updated every 10 seconds.
• you can not use them in the project and see them growing there. You can only see the portion of file that was there when you inserted it in the timeline, except if you trim it manually
• you can not use segmented movies to do edit-while-ingest in multicam clips.
• Classic: See below how to configure MovieRecorder. You have to set a predefined duration and some codecs such as H.264 are not supported but:
• you can immediately use the file
• you can place the whole file (with its predefined duration) in the project and cut it from there. 
• you can use classic movies to do edit-while-ingest on multicam clips.

1.2. MXF

Final Cut Pro also supports growing MXF files. There is nothing specific to set here.

2. Configure Final Cut Pro

Important Note: the two limitations indicated below apply ONLY if you intend to copy the files that MovieRecorder is recording during the ingest. You can choose any option and disregard these limitations if you copy the files when FINISHED recording as the files will then just be regular movie files.

2.1. Do NOT "Copy files to library storage location", leave them in place !

If you Copy the files to library storage location, Final Cut Pro will copy the file in which MovieRecorder still writes the frames, and thus this copied file will not be updated.

There are different ways to do this, but I would recommend changing the behaviour in preferences:

2.2. Make sure that you have disabled all the Transcoding and Analyze options

In the same panel, make sure that none of the transcoding or analyze buttons are checked for edit-while-capture files.  This is because Final Cut Pro may try to transcode or analyze video frames or audio samples that are not there yet and this could lead to weird behaviors.

 

3. Setup for "Classic" Quicktime destinations

3.1. Disable the option "Update Movie Duration when Stopping"

You can skip this step and configure MovieRecorder the way you want if you set in and out points from the media browser of Final Cut Pro and drag only used media to the project (and do not place media that is not yet recorded in the timeline). But some workflow require to disable the option "Update Movie Duration when Stopping".

In MovieRecorder, when you configure a destination, in Classic mode, there is an option to "Update Movie Duration when Stopping".

If you want to know more about the Classic mode, and what the "Update Movie Duration when Stopping" option does, read the following article. 

But, to explain quickly, the idea of the Classic mode is that, as soon as the recording starts in MovieRecorder, a file is created to the duration of what is set in the settings. If you did set the movie duration to 1hour, the file will  have that duration as soon as the recording starts (without using the disk space), and this files gets filled by the new frames coming in.

But if in the end you record only 30 minutes, here is what happens when you stop the recording with or without the option

• when the "Update Movie Duration when Stopping" option is enabled, MovieRecorder will modify the duration of the recorded file to the real recording duration, and not to that theoretical duration, so you have a file of only 30 minutes.
• when the option "Update Movie Duration when Stopping" is disabled, MovieRecorder will NOT update the movie duration at the end of the recording, and you will have forever a 1 hour file, even if only 30 minutes was recorded.

The problem with Final Cut Pro with that option, is that it may refuse is some cases (see below which cases) to relink to the file and it will display this warning:

You will then see that Final Cut Pro shows that the file that was being recorded as offline and has created another clip that has the new duration:

 

If you used only portions of the file in your projects that are still present at the end of the recording, Final Cut Pro X will relink to the file.

3.2. When will Final Cut Pro refuse to relink the file ?

This will only happen if you used, in a Project or in a Multicam clip, a part of the file that won't be present after the duration is modified by MovieRecorder. So in our example, if you used in a Project only portions of the file that are before the 30 minutes recording, all will be fine. But if for some reason (for example if you dragged and dropped the whole file to the Project and edit from there), you have used some parts after those 30 minutes, Final Cut Pro will refuse to relink.

4. Edit-while-ingest with Multicam files

Yes it is possible to do edit-while-ingest with multi camera files, but only with "Classic" movies. With segmented movies, the files are not automatically updated in the multicam clip (they are updated in the browser). Also, in your "Classic" destination, make sure that you disable the option to "Update Movie Duration when Stopping", otherwise you will see the issue explained above and Final Cut Pro will not be able to reconnect the files.

Once that is done, just import (in place) the files being recorded into Final Cut Pro, and use them to create a multicam file as other regular files. Just make sure that your storage as enough speed to read AND write at the same time the number of channels that you want to record and edit.