From the course: Media Composer 2020 Essential Training: 101 Fundamentals 1

Linking with the Source Browser - Media Composer Tutorial

From the course: Media Composer 2020 Essential Training: 101 Fundamentals 1

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Linking with the Source Browser

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- [Instructor] Now that we've had an overview of the source browser, let's use it to link to some media files. I'm in the Scene 7 bin, I'm going to right-click and I'm going to choose Input, Source Browser. The source browser remembers the last location you viewed. So we're already looking inside this 007 folder. I'm going to make sure that the right side of the source browser is active by clicking once inside that area. And I'm going to press Control + A, that'd be Command + A on macOS, to select everything in that folder. And again, I should note, we're looking at the contents of a folder in the storage when using the source browser. And that's distinct from looking at the contents of a bin, which is showing us links to that media. I'm going to hold the Control key on Windows and Command key on macOS once more, while I click on that first item on the list. This is a standard operating system use of the modifier key to selectively add or remove items from your list, and I'm doing that because we've already linked to this clip in an earlier lesson. Now I'm going to quickly check my settings. I'm not going to use the double click option to link or import a specific item, and I'll leave everything else as it is in the source browser. I don't need to close the source browser right away. The important question is, am I linking or importing? Well, I'm just linking. And this means, of course, that there are no settings for me to configure the way the media is going to be interpreted, or for that matter, copies are going to be created. We're just linking to the original files in their original location. I do, though, need to tell the source browser which bin to put the resulting master clips in. And those master clips are the links that Media Composer uses to manage and access the media files. They're kind of shortcuts in Windows parlance or aliases in macOS parlance. I'm going to choose the Scene 7 bin, that's the one we want to use, and I'm going to click Link. I'll just close the source browser manually now, and here are all of our linked clips. Take a look carefully at these, notice the chain icon. If I double click to open one of these, I can view it in the source monitor in the Composer window and I treat it like any other clip in my project. I'm ready to get to work editing. This process is pretty quick, so my advice is generally to link groups of clips separately into separate bins, rather than taking a massive media in a single step, and then reorganizing them in your project.

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