How to organize in a desktop folder

Question

For the fifth time this week I just lost hours worth of work because Apple refuses to let us, the users, organize our folder in a way that makes sense. I work on several small projects during the week and as such I have many clips and voice overs and assorted clutter all over the place. Whenever I try to put everything associated with Project A into a single folder, Final Cut Express has a panic attack and destroys the project, refusing to reconnect to anything and trashing all of my work. For some reason Apple thinks it's highly intuitive to have raw video in one folder, clips in another, voice overs in a third, and assorted other stuff in a fourth. Trying to put them all into a single folder (so you can, you know, back up on a single DVD, or God forbid, actually find something to use in a different project) is beyond their comprehension. They like scattering all aspects of a project into as many different locations as possible and force you to try to find it all.
So is there a third-party program or something that will allow mere mortals to put everything associated with a project into one folder? Yes, I know I'm asking a completely blasphemous question here and should be banned from these forums, but I'm going to make one last attempt at using Final Cut Express before I delete it all, shred the install disc, and move over to Adobe's video editing software.

Answer 1

JustCallMe Dude wrote:
think of it like weaving a web in a sense or, like a road map
And when was "weaving" ever a good idea for placing elements of a computer project? When you use a word processor, do you store paragraphs as separate elements in separate folders? Here's what destroyed the project I spent two and a half hours on today: I captured the raw video, broke it down into a couple dozen cuts, arranged them and did some rough editing, then did various color correcting. So far so good. Then I did a voice over to work on the timing. Because I am not a professional voice actor, it took me a few tries before I read the short script all the way through without a mouth fumble. I went to the scratch folder to drag the sound file over to the project folder, and because I'm working on this with someone else, they need everything I do to tweak and finalize. Now I know every other person in the world who works with video can remember exactly what is in "Voice Over 27" and "Voice Over 46" but my friend and I are obviously brain damaged because we need descriptive titles to tell them apart, so I foolishly renamed "Voice Over 3" to "Scene 1 script read through." Yes, I admit this is all my fault. Who am I to screw up Apple's perfect weaving file system? In my ******** arrogance I thought I could reconnect the file to the project. God, am I stupid or what?
While I was there I deleted the two false starts. When I got back into FCE it panicked! Couldn't find the two false starts so decided to throw a temper tantrum. Wouldn't save the project, wouldn't reconnect to the proper voice over, wouldn't run any video until I brought back the failed voice over files (even though they were deleted from the timeline before I started again). Eventually the program crashed and the project file was trashed. I'll have to start over again from scratch.
You'd think with all of the employees Apple has, one of them would have said "Gee, maybe people would like to put all of the files corresponding to a project into a single project folder, and possibly even rename them with something usefully descriptive. Then maybe, just maybe, people might be able to archive their projects in a halfway decent fashion, like they can with Adobe programs." Of course, if an employee said that they would have been stoned to death by the software engineers before they went back to work adding more weaves to their file routing subroutines.
What I do before I start any project is. first create a project file and name it after the project. say " Dudes Movie " , now inside that file I'll add other files . still images , video or what ever else I may want or need. from that point on it's just a matter of always saving my FCE created files and material in that projects file and, never move any file from that files location.
That's what I did. But that voice over can only be saved in the scratch folder, and as I discovered every single false start voice over you ever do has to remain in that folder for all eternity.
I hope that all makes sense. I did the same thing one time and wasted a three month long project. it only took one time of feeling that sting to understand. it was simply my own fault.
Yup, it's all my fault for thinking Final Cut Express would let you save files in useful locations, or even rename them so others who aren't as ******** as I am can understand what they are. And then to have the audacity to think that I could archive all files for a project in a single folder, why, I must have been mad! Mad, I tell you!
(I've been watching too much Monty Python
Tom Wolsky wrote:
Eh? Aside from render and cache folders, FCE only uses makes folder for each project inside the capture scratch.
But inside separate folders within the scratch. Another project that was ruined because of this had the captured video in three different folders, with three different names, and had the two voice overs (and one false start) in two different folders.
Maybe we should start a collection so as to buy a few Adobe products and send them to Apple so they can see how to do it properly? Or maybe put on a theatrical stage production using mimes, puppets and dancing elephants to show them how useful a "Collect All Project Elements To New Folder" option would be. Or how about a historical paper on "The Design and Uses of Archives" read by John Ratzenberger and animated by Pixar.
You should create another folder for the project file and other associated media, stills, graphics, etc. Voice-overs recorded in FCE go into the capture scratch folder. Other voice over or audio elements can be put in the capture scratch folder with the video media as well and imported from there.
But once they are placed in the scratch folder (which gets messy when it's time to archive everything and send it to your partner) it has to remain in there for all eternity, or else FCE panics and you lose everything.
If I don't find a solution to this soon, I'm definitely going to trash everything related to FCE, buy Adobe, and tell everybody who asks to avoid Final Cut as much as possible. This part of it should have been so easy, so intuitive, so useful, but instead it's confusing, annoying and catastrophic.