Capture to HD move to Scratch Disc?

Hello,
I have a Canon DV camcorder and a 250 GB HD on my iMac G5 that is filling up. I usually have enough HD space to capture video without problem, but I run into some sluggish performance as I move through the editing process.
Realizing the FW bus issues with capturing from my Canon camera directly to my 250 GB external LaCie HD, is it feasible to capture to my internal HD and move the captured video to my external HD and edit from there? Are there specific steps I should take so FCE will recognize the new location of the files?
Many thanks,
B.

is it feasible to capture to my internal HD and move the captured video to my external HD and edit from there? Are there specific steps I should take so FCE will recognize the new location of the files?
1. Yes. But you may be able to capture direct to the External. Try a few configurations. No guarantees.
2. Copy the Scratch Disc files over and reconnect. Usually if you reconnect one, the rest follow.
Al

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Moving contents of FCE scratch disc to external Drive from an iMac Drive

Is there a way of moving the captured HDV video in the Scratch Disc for a project from an iMac hard drive to an external drive if the initial capture placed it in the iMac drive.
FCE captured my original HDV on my iMac in the FCE Document folder. I thought I had specified my external Glyph drive for the captured video but discovered after editing and saving the project to the external GLYPH that the original capture was in the FCE document folder on the iMac --where I did not want it. The project is saved on the external GLYPH. Is there a way of moving the Scratch Disc (original captured video) for this project from the iMac Hard drive to the Glyph drive (in other words, after the initial capture) without screwing up the editing I have already done.
I had created a "Media" folder on the external drive for all media to be used in this project before capturing the video but the Easy set up did not give me a scratch option and placed it in the default (iMac) drive.
This is my first time trying out FCE. Help would be appreciated.
macrobob

Is there a way of moving the captured HDV video in the Scratch Disc for a project from an iMac hard drive to an external drive if the initial capture placed it in the iMac drive.
Yes, just copy the files to the folder(s) you want them to be in.
I normally capture to my internal drive (Final Cut Express Documents > Capture Scratch folder.) After capturing, I copy the clips to a folder on one of my external drives; usually give the folder the name of the shoot. That's my simple way of organizing clips on my hard drives; and it makes backing up easier too.
After you copy the clips, you should delete the clips from their original location (I assume that is your Capture Scratch folder on your system HD). Be sure to Empty the Trash. Very important - make sure you have successfully copied all your clips to the external drive; once you empty trash, the originals are gone.
When you open your project file the next time, all your clips will be offline and you will have to go through the Reconnect Media process to re-associate your clips with your project. After successfully reconnecting media, Save your project and all should be fine.
I highly recommend reading the sections of the manual (online help) about scratch disk locations; and reconnecting media.
but the Easy set up did not give me a scratch option and placed it in the default (iMac) drive.
Scratch locations are not part of Easy Setups. You set your scratch disk location in FCE > System Settings.

How in the world can I select my external hard drive as a scratch disc for video? Please skip the obvious, like 'is it plugged in?'

At wit's end trying to select my external hard drive to load video on. Time Machine backed stuff up on it so the computer knows it's there but it won't show anywhere else, iMovie or FCE4.

Hi Eric and thanx for the fast response. I've had very little time to piddle around with this iMac and fce4 since I got it a few years back but I DO remember seeing an option back then--when capturing video from the camera--to choose some other scratch disc. Some time after buying and plugging in the ext. drive I clicked on Time Machine (not even knowing what it was--some window popped up and it looked good). I wonder if turning on Time Mach has locked me out of the ext. drive. It doesn't show up ANYWHERE ANYTIME now, not under system pref., user pref. in fce4 or iMovie or anything else EXCEPT when I click on Time Machine it does tell me I've 2.97 terrabytes of space (which has to be the ext. drive; the iMac has 500 gb). I'm thinking of uninstalling and reinstalling fce4 and starting over.

What does it mean when I get the message "scratch disc is full"?

Trying to work on Photoshop and I'm getting the message, "scratch disc is full".

Ultimately here is the deal. Like OS X and Windows do at the system level, Photoshop will grow a virtual memory scratch file on your hard drive if you don't have enough RAM to do what you are trying to do.
That means, step 1 in preventing the scratch file is to put more RAM in the Mac so that Photoshop doesn't run out so fast and have to shove data off to the disk to make room.
Step 2 is to put the scratch file on another disk. This is why pros have often used desktop towers, because you can put multiple disks inside them. For example, system on one disk with lots of free space, photo library on another disk so it can grow freely, and another disk that is used exclusively to hold scratch files for Photoshop and other programs that need to do the same thing like Apple Final Cut. Splitting the data streams (system, file access, scratch) like this also speeds up the machine considerably since they're not all trying to use the disk at the same time.
The way you put the scratch file on another disk is to go into the Photoshop prefs, click Performance, and assign one of your other disks as a Scratch Disk there. (Use a fast disk, not a network or USB 1.0/2.0 disk, and partitioning your main disk will not help.)
If you do this, you don't need to change your main disk at all, you don't need to manually move any files off of it. Because by moving the scratch file off your main disk, the 58GB of free space you have there will now be plenty.
I used to use a PowerBook with an external monitor as a Photoshop machine, and plugged in a FireWire 800 external as a scratch disk. Even just doing that helped a lot.

SuperDrive scratching discs?

Not sure if I'm the only one experiencing this, so I'd like to get other experiences on this.
Picked up a new MacBook from the store today. I've burned a couple of discs and read a couple others, and was rather startled to see spiral scratches around the discs. Saw it on a DVD-R and a CD-RW that I've used in the drive. This is going to destroy my discs, I think!
Any other MacBook owners seeing this with their Superdrives? I'm not sure whether to take it to the Apple store and hope they'll do an on-the-spot exchange (does that ever happen?), or should I call AppleCare and send it in?
Thanks for your comments.

yes mine is scratching discs too with any movement. you can't be serious that they don't consider this a defect? first time it happened i wasn't even using the drive, i just moved the machine while one was in there. the disc became unreadable in the internal drive, luckily i have an external drive which could still read it.
i wish they offered an option with no drive, i have already bought an external dvd burner as the one that came with it is fairly worthless even when it isn't chewing my dvds. i bought this to replace my ibook which also had a worthless drive, couldn't even read the cds it burned (one main reason i bought a new macbook!).
i could also complain about their customer service, but i guess everyone already knows about that. it is upsetting because i am a loyal mac owner (on my 6th one) and always thought apple had a good product, but fear their service will take them down. seems like arrogance to me.
oh, i forgot my fix for the drive is a piece of scotch tape over the slot to remind me not to destroy any more discs (i guess another option could be to tape the computer to my desk).

Ghosted audio scratch disc in FCE

So I've been FCP and FCE for years. Today I was digitizing material into FCE just fine. Then I switched tapes. No, no matter what I do, I can't capture audio. When checking my scratch disc setup, everything is checked but audio is ghosted which means audio is not being captured. Since FCE doesn't have the editable options that FCP does when it comes to issues like this, I'm limited in what I can do. I can't, for the life of me, figure out how to get the audio to "wake up". The only thing that happened that might have effected this is that the external drive became disconnected during the tape change so it may have messed with the automatic device settings or something. But I've rebooted, closed projects, started new projects, etc but I just can't seem to get the audio up and running. HELP!

Remember that you can't hear audio in FCE whilst capturing.
Have you got View>Video Out>Canvas Playback selected?

Capture ended due to lack of disc space

I am currently trying to capture a large amount of footage into FCE from 6 separate mini DV tapes. I captured the footage from the first tape ok but half way through the second tape capture stopped and an error message occurred saying disk space full. I went into system settings and changed the scratch disc to my 750gb external hard drive. When I resumed capture now the next 9 mins, 25secs and 5 frames captured ok then it stopped again with the message saying "capture has been ended due to lack of disk space". However, my hard drive says there is 670.9 total free space. Can anyone tell me where I'm going wrong? I am now capturing just 9 mins, 25secs and 5 frames at a time.
Thanks

That's your problem.
Your HD is formatted for Windows - many are when you get them.
You need to reformat it (which will wipe off anything already on it).
You use Disk Utility which is kept in the Utilities Folder in your Applications Folder.

Best scratch discs settings for CS3

I have read that a PC with 3 hard drives should use them as follows:
Drive 1 = OS & programs
Drive 2 = Media & projects
Drive 3 = Previews, Media cache, Exports
Can somebody please advise are these the best scratch disc settings under preferences:
Captured video & audio - Drive 2
Video & audio previews - Drive 3
Media cache - Drive 3
DVD encoding - Drive 3

Thanks guys,
I've taken on board everything you've said and have changed my hard drive setup accordingly.
I've also deleted a lot of unwanted material and defragged the drives.
I've aslo turned off windows indexing off and removed all unnecessary programs.
I now have 3 drives, one for the OS & programs, one for projects, and one for previews & exports as advised.
I've set the scratch disc settings as follows:
Captured Video & audio: Drive 2 (Same as project)
Video & audio Previews: Drive 3
Media Cache: Drive 3
DVD Encoding: Drive 3
Would you say this the most efficient way?
Brian

4 HDrives - Scratch disc preferences?

Have a modest Dell Core 2 Duo system w/ 2 hard drives, and use PP3 multicam to edit event performances shot in SD - has worked pretty well, but I've read that extra drives would increase edit performance, so I added 2 more drives (all 7200rpm SATA internal [4 drives is all the motherboard would support]) (boot drive is 250g, the others are 500g, 630g, & 630g.).
Would appreciate any advice on setting up scratch disc preferences?

Eddie -
Thanks for the welcome.
I read both recommended articles; I note they recommend using separate drives for captured video & audio, if available (w/the caveat of unsupported "native DV" & HDV for separate drives)(I'm assuming the avi file output from my camera isn't "native DV" ?).
Since PP3 is on the boot drive, that leaves 3 drives to use -
the Scratch Discs menu lists 6 folders to place: captured video, captured audio, video previews, audio previews, media cache, & dvd encoding.
Can you tell me how would you assign those to the 3 drives?
(Sorry to raise such amateurish questions - I'm afraid I'm one of those people who knows just enough to get in trouble...)
Thanks again - appreciate the support
JB

Scratch Discs are too full?

I am working with Final Cut Express HD. I have been capturing film for about 3 wks and haven't had any problems yet. Anyway, today, all of a sudden I get a message saying that my current scratch disc drive(s) are full. What gives? I am not very good with this system yet, but i am pretty sure that I have not used 500GB yet. Maybe I need to allocate more space for this project? Not that I know how to do this. If anyone has any tips, I would really appreciate them.
G5 Mac OS X (10.4.2) External Drive Lacie 500GB

I have about 500 MB left. I don't understand b/c I have downloaded the same amount of video this year as I did last year. last years project with editing, rendering and everything else only took up about 4-5 GB. This years project is taking up almost 450 GB. Any ideas why?

New scratch disc

I have a large project with the Scratch Disc on an external drive. I am starting another large project and want to use a separate drive for it. When I try to set the Scratch Disc either both projects are on one drive, or they are on both. I can't seem to separate them. Or does it just fill up the first drive and move to the second.
Thanks
Randy

So I set each Project on a drive. When I open Project1 I set that Scratch Disc. When I open Project2 I set that Scratch Disc and clear Project1 Scratch Disc? And on and on. Not that I plan to go back and forth all the time, sometimes you need a break
Thanks

Sharing Files - Scratch Disc

Does anyone know if you can run FCE on a network or a NAS? I'm trying to share files with one other person and want to store everything in a central location. That way we can work on the same files without transferring HDDs back and forth between desktops. I've read on the forum that I cannot/should not have my scratch disc on the server. Can I use a NAS? Does anyone have a solution to shared scratch discs/shared drives?

I've had moderate success with a variation of what you envision in a small lab environment using standard definition footage stored on a G5 XServe and workstations connected with gigabit ethernet. Capture is to a local hard drive, then media is transferred to the server. When there's not much network traffic, it works fairly well.

How do I get files onto scratch disc?

I seem to have FCP X set up so that it uses my scratch disc yet my main Mac drive keeps filling up as I work on projects. In the project hierarchy it shows the two drives that I have and my projects (events) are listed under my scratch disc. Anyone have any suggestions?

In FCP X, in the Event Library, the Action Menu at the bottom of it (looks like a gear), select "Group Events By Disk", and you can see what is on what hard drive.
In the Events Library, you can click and drag Events from one drive to the other. This is the safest way to do this, so that the internal database of the Event updates to reference the drive it's on.
Right click on a Project in the Project Library, and Copy it along with it's Events to the drive you want it on.
You can right click on Events and Projects to "Move to Trash", in order for the appropriate databases to update cross references.
Do everything inside of FCP X to be safe.

How do I stop my macbook telling me scratch discs are full

I have reduced applications photos email etc from my laptop but I am being told 1. Start up discs are full and 2. Scratch discs are full what exactly does this mean. Would more memory help if so what type. The macbook is 2008 2.4 core 2 Duo, 2GB 667 MHz DDR SDRAM. Thanks I know this is a daft question for most people.

Yeah, same problem here, same sentiment! it sure feels like harassment. no solution works (even the absurd ones). makes me regret the update :s

Using an external hard drive (HD), on a network, as a scratch disc?

I am weighing my options on creating a wireless network around an external HD. My macbook pro is getting full and I am going to do a spring cleaning and get everything in order. I pretty much know how I want to do it but I am wondering if I can use an external hard drive as a scratch disc, wirelessly?
Thanks in advance,
Howi

Nevermind. This answered my question: http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-610667.html
Howi

Capture to HD move to Scratch Disc?

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