Where best to put Events and Projects with multiple drives...

I just got a new iMac, and I need to know how to maximize its speed with FCPX in terms of hard drives.
My old iMac had two internal drives: a 256 GB flash drive and a 2 TB standard drive. On that iMac, I had the OS and FCPX on the main internal SSD, and my events and projects on the secondary internal drive (the magnetic internal drive).
My new iMac is the latest 27" iMac with an i7 3.5 GHz, 32 GB RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4GB GDDR5 video card. It also has USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt, and only one internal drive: a 512 GB SSD drive. I am connecting a 6 TB OWC external magnetic drive (with 128 MB cache) to my new iMac via a LaCie Thunderbolt to eSATA adapter (the drive and adapter are a combination that OWC sells, has tested, and recommends). I plan to use Disk Utility to make this 6 TB external drive (which is 3 TB + 3 TB hard drives in one enclosure) raid 0 for fastest speeds.
With this new setup, my initial thought is to put both my FCPX events and projects on this 6 TB external drive. But is that the best option? Would it be better to get another high speed external Thunderbolt drive and put the events on one drive and the projects on another? I have a feeling that putting them on one drive is the way to go, and that there would not be much, if anything, to gain by putting the events and projects on separate drives. But I'd really appreciate any advice.
Thanks!

Hi Russ--
Only in the past year I have implemented a backup strategy. I've never had an internal hard drive fail. Until recently, I had never had any drive failure. Then I bought some desktop external drives from Seagate and paid quite a bit more for Seagate's FW800 adapters for them (my last iMac only had FW800 and USB 2.0). The drives kept getting corrupted, so I was copying terabytes of data back and forth to restore the affected data. Turns out it was the FW800 adapters all along. Seagate was aware of the problem, and had a firmware upgrade, but has done absolutely nothing to publicize the fact. I'll never buy their stuff again.
But I'm still using Carbon Copy Cloner (great software, great support), and now that I switched back to the original USB 3.0 interfaces, the Seagate drives are reliable. So I will continue to use CCC and those drives as my back-up strategy. I was playing with fire for decades by not doing any backups. It's ironic that I only started having problems when I started to back things up!
The speed of the 512 GB internal drive on this new iMac is insane (the external drive arrives tomorrow, so I don't know about it yet). The internal SSD drive clocks in at 697 write and 723 read (compared to 179 and 207 on my old iMac's internal SSD drive). I am anxious to see what the external drive clocks in at tomorrow.

Similar Messages

I have a FCP event and project with all accompanying media saved on a harddrive. I am now attempting to open the files on another computer that also has FCP X. I cannot figure out how to get it to open.

I have a FCP event and project with all accompanying media saved on a harddrive. I am now attempting to open the files on another computer that also has FCP X. I cannot figure out how to get it to open.

The events and projects folders have to be on the top level of the drive for FCP to recognize them.

Seperate events and project on hard drives

Okay I have started my FCPX editing and to improve performance in playback I want to move and/or separate the media from the project on separate hard drives. Right now I have all on one external hard drive and it is causing choppy playback. How do I move and continue on with my editing? This is my first FCPX after years of FCP7 work. Detailed step by step would greatly be appreciated.

Mike Rousseau wrote:
Wow. I just finished taking the event footage to Proxy media and clicked proxy media for playback and choppyness went away!
Just to make the point that Proxy is maybe a quarter the size of Pro Res 422, so it's pretty easy for just about any drive and any connection type to handle. And of course it's low quality – too low for dleivery or to use as a source file to convert for delevery.
By way of comparison, I have a 3 three year old iMac that can't come close to your machine's performance. My drives are only FW 800. Typically, I only need Proxy when I have a multi-cam project with heavy effects. Otherwise Pro Res 422 (Optimized) provides real time playback.
BTW, you will also get smoother playbacj if your preferences are set to Better Performance, not High Quality.
Russ

Best method for building a project with multiple video tracks

I'm working a project where a client wants some edits made to an existing DVD they had - some video tweaks but mostly menu changes. I'm rebuilding the menus from scratch and I've ripped all the video files from the DVD (there are about 80 of them on one DL-DVD), transcoding them with DV-DVCPRO/NTSC settings.
The problem is when I import them all as assets into my project build, the DVD disc meter shoots up to about 12 or 13gb. What I've done is added them all to their own separate track, as they're meant to be played not as one continuous video but individual sessions.
What I'm wondering is if there is a better way to build it that would reduce the amount of space it takes up (I'm rather new at DVD Studio Pro, so I can't tell if I'm going about this the wrong way or not), or if I need to compress the video files or re-transcode them using some other settings (H.264? I'm trying to maintain as much video quality as possible).
Any help on this would be much appreciated, thanks.

What is the running time? You should encode to m2v and AC3. Take a look here
http://dvdstepbystep.com/faqs_7.php

Can you move events and projects to disk images in iMovie 11?

iMovie 08 allowed you to move events to disk images and keep them there. In other words iMovie 08 saw disk images the same as a hard disk. iMovie 09 lost this and could not recognize disk images. Can an iMovie 11 owner tell me if this functionality has been restored. I liked being able to keep projects in progress in encrypted disk images and away from prying eyes. Thanks!

Yes you can do it with Finder.
I move projects and Events into and out of temporary folders with Finder nearly every day.
Problems arise when you have Events and Projects with identical names on more than one drive. If you're going to do that, put the files on one of the drives into another folder somthat FCP X doesn't recognise them - or eject one of the drives.
Andy

I want to back up2 hard drives with imovie events and projects as well as 2 desktops. Is TC the best way to do that

I want to back up 2 hard drives with imovie events and projects as well as 2 desktops. Is TC the best way to do that? Also, I already have a wireless network. Does this create a 2nd one or is it possible to just use it for the backup function?

Time Machine can do that, if your Time Capsule is large enough (see #1 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions).
For backing-up multple HDs on a single Mac, see #32 in that same link.
If by "2 desktops" you mean 2 separate user accounts on the same Mac, see #26 there. If you mean 2 Macs, see #33.
You might also want to review the Time Machine Tutorial.

Keeping same Events and Projects on 2 external HD - Best Practice

I would like to receive your suggestions on this working flow. (I am also interested to get some confirmation that I am doing the right way).
I use FCPX since few weeks. Coming from iMovie and FCE.
I import videos from external drive "C" on 2 different external drive "A" and "B" with settings to copy the files there.
In this way I hope orignals remain on "C"
I edit using "A" or "B" and the resulting Projects remain on the same drive.
I copy Events and Projects between "A" and "C" to keep them uptodate after some work. I do all copy with FCPX with both drives connected.
Will this workflow let me to keep Events on both drives according the latest editing ? (If I reopen each project on the same drive of its events A with A and B with B).
Then I like to group projects under folders (move not copy) again working only inside FCPX. This removes the project form the Project folder and let me to save a new version of the next editing workflow with the same project name. But if I try to save the same project again it will be renamed with extension (fcp1).
This way will bring me to a serie of projects instead of replace the previous with a new version. I would prefer to limit this to a few versions: any way ?
Last: I like to keep also a copy of projects on the main HD. Only Projects with its Render files without Events.
Will it be possible to use this Projects moving them to one of the 2 HD "A" or "B" and go on ?
Thanks for your time.

Hello Zebber28.
I do exactly as you propose doing in terms of having a 500GB Western Digital elements portable external HD which I simply connect up every three months or so on a top up basis. I don't disconnect the primary external HD while I do this as I don't need to. I simply plug into the port in the keyboard.
Just make sure you properly eject the new HD each time you use it, otherwise it's all pretty basic.
Message was edited by: seventy one

Where to store and later import an event and project again?

The boxes with events and projects are becoming overloaded so i want to remove them from there.
But how to remove and how te restore if i want to alter things or go further in an earlier made project/event?
Thanks,
bruce

You can use the Event Manager X application to selectively activate or deactivate events and projects.
You can also do it manually: create new folders, say "Final Cut Events (Disabled)" and "Final Cut Projects (Disabled)", beside the normal "Final Cut Events" and "Final Cut Projects" folders.
When FCP X is NOT running, drag any events or projects that you want to disable to these new folders. FCP X will now only see the ones remaining in their original locations.
If you want to use them later on, just move them back (again, when FCP X is NOT running).
(Note: the above procedure is exactly how Event Manager X works, though the folders it creates may have slightly different names, the principle is the same; it just presents a nice interface with checkboxes for you to select the events and projects and then silently moves them as needed)
Message was edited by: Luis Sequeira1

FCP 10.1.1 messed up my Events and Projects...

I just updated FCP all the way from 10.0.7 to 10.1.1, but I ran into some major issue that's messing with my workflow. When I launched the new FCP 10.1.1, it asked me if I want to upgrade my Events and Projects folders into a single Library, I clicked Upgrade and it got that done. Then I was asked whether I want to preserve the old Events and Projects, fortunately, I chose to preserve it, and it moved the two folders into a new one now called 'Old Macintosh HD (something etc.). Later when I was trying to use the new version of FCP, something went horribly wrong, and it crashed. I tried relaunching FCP again, this time however, instead of loading the new Library it just created in my Movies folder, it created a new Library in the same folder named Untitled.
So I tried dragging and dropping the older library that contained all my Events and Projects onto the FCP icon on they dock, and it immediately crashed. I then try deleting the 'Untitled' library in my Movies folder to see if FCP would recognise that older Library it created before. No luck it just created another Untitlted library and ignored my old library, tried dragging and dropping the old library, crashed again.
Fortunately I chose to preserve the old folder, and even if I didn't I still have Time Machine to restore them. So now I'm going to try to re-import all my Events from the 'Original Media' folder inside of each individual Event, and redo all the copying and transcoding, etc. That is not a big deal, the big problem is, however, the Projects. I can't figure out how to put my Projects back in place now that the Library is closed off an inaccessible (to the best of my current knowledge). And even if I can get those Projects inside the Library, I still have to relink it back to the media which I am now importing in as new events and thus making it very difficult for FCP to see that they are actually suppose to be connected.
It would be IMMENSELY helpful if anyone can help me with this I still have a pretty big project to finish and I need to finish it preferably in the next week or so since I won't have access to my iMac and editing on my 5+ year old MBP wouldn't be feasible as it doesn't have enough extra storage to hold my 40+GB of clips.

First, take a look at these free videos about the FCP X new library model.
From your description - moving folders around and renaming them - it's not clear what your situation is currently.
I think it would be useful if you would post a screen shot of your Finder window that includes the first library that FCP created when you updated.
You can navigate to that library in the application by choosing File>Open Library>Other>Locate. When you do what happens?
Russ

Events and Projects not opening after Restoring from broken Hard drive.

Hi all!
I have a major problem. After almost 3 months editing 6 projects within the same library the hard drive died. These projects are for a very important client and are worth a lot of time and money. We always backup all the raw material on 3 hard drives so we do have all the raw material, however FCPX for some reason had stopped making backups of the projects after it was updated to 10.1.2. (The loss of these projects could mean the downfall of my production company.) We had a professional data recovery company recover all the data to a new hard drive without any problem, we can see the libraries and open them, HOWEVER the events and projects within the libraries DO NOT OPEN OR SHOW UP.
I have entered into the library in the finder and everything seems to be there, all the events files show up. But FCPX wont recognize them.
Any help would be much appreciated,
Thanks, Tom
You can see here that everything is inside the library folder.
But they don't show up in FCPX.
P.S
Also this file is showing up only after the data was restored.

The journal files are something that've been generated by the data recovery. It's completely hosed the data base.
I don't know if this will work. Try carefully removing all the journal files. Put them somewhere else in folders with the location where they came from. Also move out the currentversion.flexolibrary file. Hopefully without the flexolibrary file the application will generate a new one. Then launch the application.
WHy did you continue to operate when there were no backups, without even a hard drive backup?
Wwhat version of the software are you using? 10.1.2?

Moving Events and Projects from one location to another on the same hard drive.

Hello.
I've searched in the FCP X User Manual, on this forum and in Google, but have found no explanation of how to do this, so I'm posting this here in hopes that someone in our community will be able to help.
I've previously stored my FCP X Events and Projects folders on an external 3TB hard drive, because there is more room on it than on the internal 1TB hard drive, but, since then, I've worked with other media apps, for video, photography and audio, the files for which are also stored on the external hard drive, and this has created a bit of clutter with no folder structure to keep it tidy.
I like an organised file structure on my system, to keep it uncluttered, easy to navigate and efficient to use, so I put all the files for my photography, video and audio apps into their own folders, which are, in turn, stored in their appropriate folders for Audio, Photography and Video, and those three folders are stored in a folder called Media, and then I directed each app to its own files.
The only app with which this has been a problem is FCP X. While there is a way of relocating projects and events from within FCP X, it allows the user to move them from one hard drive to another, and not, as I want, from one place to another on the same hard drive.
I'm not sure if it matters, but perhaps it's relevant to mention before the next paragraph that the files that had previously been imported as events are, to save hard-drive space, stored in the events folder as shortcuts to the original files, which are stored elsewhere on the drive, rather than as duplicates of those files.
In Finder, I copied the Events and Projects folders to their intended new locations and tried in the app to link the events and projects to their new Finder location. It seemed to have worked, until I moved the original folders to the Trash. On re-opening FCP X, it was clear that the linking hadn't worked. I returned the original folders from the Trash to their original location, but that didn't entirely reverse the problem. I noticed also that, in the original and duplicated Events folders, the shortcuts had lost their links to the original files stored elswehere on the drive.
Fortunately I had run a backup before starting, so I restored the original folders and the app from the backup, and all was back to normal.
I'd be grateful if anyone could advise me on whether or not it's possible to move FCP X events and projects from one place to another on the same hard drive with the app's compliance.
Thank you.

Ludio wrote:
I'd be grateful if anyone could advise me on whether or not it's possible to move FCP X events and projects from one place to another on the same hard drive with the app's compliance.
I
Message was edited by: Russ H Apparently mis-read the questions.

If i move my iphoto & iMovie source library / Events and Projects to an external hard disk, due to size, will my existing slideshows work ?

I need to move my photo library and Movies (Events and Projects) to an external hard disk as my 700gb drive on my iMac is now full (*see note below)
I have brought 2 Samsung External drives (3TB each) which I plan to partition each for Photos and Movies i.e 2 partitions on each drive, and will use one for use with iPhoto and iMovie, and the other drive for a dedicated backup. I will backup the remainder of my iMac hardisk to a seperate disk.
What has just occured to me is that after I have moved the libraries I cannot see how existing iMovie projects and iPhoto Slideshows will work, as each Application will be looking for the source files on the original iMac hardisc (I assume).
I am running Snow Leopard v10.6.8 ( I did not want to upgrade to Mountain Lion as I was told the iPhoto and iMovie changes were a 'backward' step. However I now want to upgrade to Mountain Lion, for security updates reasons mainly, and so need to free up my hard drive.
Can anyone advise on the best way to proceed ?
* - the iMac hard disk become full very suddenly, possibly due to duplicates, as I have noticed duplicate events and clips in my iMovies event library. I have noticed that some events are also now not showing, with message 'No video clips match the current selection' (I have not search criteria set).
Thanks

I was planning on manually backing up my external to the time capsule - but is there a way to set it up to back up automatically instead?
Time Machine will backup up automatically - you can not have your iPhoto library on the same volume as the TM backup (it will not work and it would not be a backup)
Dragging the iPhoto library to any external drive will backup it us also
I was also thinking about having the library copied to another external (I mean we're talking about irreplaceable photos here) - would i just drag a copy of the library to that drive as well?
Yes - that is a good idea - I run TM giving me hourly backups and a daily clone of my entire system giving me a bootable backup - plus do an occasional TM backup at our second home so I have one off site
is it possible to deal with my imovie library in the same way? so all my movies and photos are on my external?
Probably - but I use iMovie very little - better question for the iMovie forum
LN

Storing iMovie events and projects on a time capsule

All I can say is Apple hasn't made this one as easy as drag and drop. Have tried many configuration options on my TC, keep getting a message that the iMovie can not be moved required by the OS?
I'm open...

Thanks for joining the conversation Eric and your suggestion. I'd like to move as much as possible the new version of iMovie is eating my laptop hard drive up. Both the Event and Project Libs seem to be the culprits? Haven't tried moving things one at a time, kind of concerned I may break existing links. One of them has grown to over 28 gigs in like notice. I'm doing my best with importing only portions of video clips and not entire recorded segments.

Backing up iMovie Events and Projects As Opposed to Moving Them

Hi all. I'd like to make some backups of my iMovie events and projects. I read on the Apple site that the best way to do this is through iMovie itself and not the Finder. I should drag events to an external hard drive inside the iMovie window. When I do this, does it copy the event to the drive, or does it move it to the drive. I'd rather have a copy since I'm trying to make a backup. Also, how would I do this for projects to make a backup?
2) If I already copied my Events and Projects folder to an external drive, would I be able to use these in the future? Would I just place them inside my Movies folder under user and launch iMovie. These just seems easier in the event that everything crashed. Am I missing something here? It seems like it would be easier just to copy these two folders everytime, and save them in case of a hard drive crash.
Thanks.

If you drag your Projects folder over to the external drive icon in the Project Library, a pop-up window will give you the option of just duplicating the Project or getting the Project + associated Events too. I suggest going with the copy of Projects + Events to get a real duplicate backup of your iMovie project. By default iMovie assumes you want a copy.
If you want to move a Project/Events combo, you would hold down the ⌘ Command key and drag the project to the external drive icon in the Project Library.
Any time you want a backup, just drag that project folder to the external drive icon, but just make sure you do it regularly. Otherwise you'll end up with an older incomplete previous version of the project because the backup is based on an action you have to remember to do.
If you already dragged those folders over outside of iMovie, it's unlikely iMovie will be able to see or find those files. You would have to drag them back to the iMovies folders inside your Movies folder. So there's an extra step involved. And if you do that regularly, and don't mind dragging files back into the iMovies folders, that will work too. On the Mac, there's always more than one way to do things, so do what makes sense to you.

Really confused about libraries, events, and projects

Hello,
I'm brand new to editing and I'm having a hard time understanding the difference between libraries, events and projects. If anyone can explain them for me, that'd be great. Thanks

Here some reading material:
http://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/docs/Media_Management.pdf
Final Cut Pro X 10.1.2: Updating and working with libraries FAQ - Apple Support
http://www.larryjordan.biz/fcp-x-10-1-manage-projects/
http://www.fcpxbook.com/updates/101/
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/fcp_x_first_look_10_1_martin.html
And viewing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGogEwnX9yE
Hopefully, the above info will clarify everything about the library/event/project hierarchy. The important thing to keep in mind is you can't work without a library; and that library has to hold at least one event. Your event is a folder that organizes your media according to a wide variety of criteria that you can specify. Your project contains the timeline where you assemble your selects, apply your effects to tell your story and it is stored within the event folder.
You will be happy to hear that those who come to FCP X without much traditional NLE experience (sorry, David) usually pick it up very fast. A guy that I work with didn't even have any iMovie experience and after less than 2 hours of DIY learning, cut a very credible show that aired on a local station.
Good luck.
Russ

Where best to put Events and Projects with multiple drives...

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