Just setting up FCE and have question

Question

This is probably a stupid question but when I set up FCE and select my external drive as my scratch drive, where will the project folder be created? Is it on the external drive with the clips etc. I import or will it be located in the documents folder on the system hard drive?
Thanks

Answer 1

If you set your scratch disk to an external drive, all files created by FCE during capture, rendering, auto-saving, and all support files (waveforms, thumbnails etc.) will be stored into the external drive. Instead your project file (.fcp) will be saved where you decide to, when you issue the Save Project As command. Project files are usually saved into the user document folder of the startup disk.
A Final Cut Express Documents folder is created by FCE in the scratch disk, containing subfolders specific for each use. One specific subfolder (Capture Scratch) will store all media captured by FCE, and you must never delete files from that subfolder, unless you remove the whole project, because they contain your actual movies.
A warning: in FCE a "clip" is in fact a "pointer to" a portion of the media file in the capture scratch folder, it is not the media file itself. When you capture, a new media file is created in the capture scratch folder and a new clip is created in the FCE browser pointing to that media file. But if you remove the clip in FCE you do not remove the corresponding media file. The opposite is also true: if you remove the media file from the folder the clip will still be in the FCE browser (or timeline) pointing to nothing. This is called an offline clip, which may also be reconnected to the same media file manually.
Piero