Send a project to Final Cut Pro

Bundle the entire project, with metadata, into a single FCP event with one click.

This is the payoff for spending time in Project Tags. When the planning is done, you can hand the whole bundle to Final Cut Pro as one event, with every asset's tags, ratings, and color labels coming along.

How to invoke

Right-click the project in the sidebar. Pick Send to Final Cut Pro.

If at least one asset in the project has a ProRes proxy on disk, the menu expands into two options:

• Send Originals. Full quality, larger files, slower import.
• Send ProRes Copies. Snappier import, lighter on the editing rig, ProRes already optimized for FCP.

The proxy substitution is per-asset. A mixed-quality project will send proxies where they exist and originals where they don't.

What's exported

ReelChest collects every asset in the project (the union of direct adds and tag-matched assets, same as what the project's grid shows), sorts by filename, and writes one FCPXML.

What lands in FCP:

• An event named after your project. "Wedding Smith" in ReelChest becomes the "Wedding Smith" event in FCP, dropped into FCP's most-recently-used library. If FCP has detection problems, FCP shows its own picker.
• Every asset, with its tags as keywords. Each tag becomes an FCP keyword on that clip.
• Color labels as keywords too. Encoded as color:<colorname> so they're searchable in FCP without losing the meaning.
• Ratings translated to Favorite. ReelChest's 4-star and 5-star ratings become FCP Favorites. Lower ratings don't carry; FCP only has Favorite and Reject as binary states.
• Original asset UIDs preserved when applicable. If an asset originally came from an FCP library, its UID rides along so re-importing doesn't duplicate the clip.

What gets dropped silently:

• Fonts and "other" category files (FCP can't import them).
• Assets whose source file can't be resolved (offline drive, deleted file, stale bookmark).

What doesn't ride along

Project Tags export is for assets and metadata only. It does not bundle:

• Paper Edits or Mosaics built against this project. Those are separate timelines and have their own Send-to-FCP commands. Send the project for the bin organization, send the Paper Edit / Mosaic for the cut.
• Transcripts. They live in ReelChest's index. FCP doesn't have a native transcript field for them to land in.
• ReelChest's lower-star ratings (1, 2, 3 stars), per the note above.

This is intentional. The project send is a curated bin. The cut is its own object.

The full pre-production loop

The whole pattern, end to end:

1. Add a source folder, let it transcribe, run the codec compatibility pass.
2. Tag generously and color-label. Rate the keepers.
3. Make a project. Drag in the assets that belong to this deliverable, or subscribe the project to the right tags.
4. Send the project to FCP.

In FCP, the new event is your starting bin: every asset already labeled, the keepers already favorited, your tags already searchable as keywords. You start cutting with the prep work done.

The honest tradeoff: this only works if you actually do the tagging and labeling pass first. Sending a project before the metadata is set just sends a pile of clips. The discipline is the value.