Question about handling drives

Andreas,

I took a look at the new version and the error message is gone.

I added a new thread a couple of days ago about how I just removed my Optical Drive and replaced it with a media drive for FCP X-
www.fcp.co/forum/4-final-cut-pro-x-fcpx/...nally-and-internally
(I'm gonna fire it up in a few minutes and try an edit with it.)
--

What I've been doing is to right-click to "Eject" this FCPX media drive when I don't need it so that it's not constantly spinning and using battery and adding more white noise. When I want it back, I open Disk Utility and re-mount.

When I opened SDH, this drive was not mounted on the Desktop, but did show up in the SDH drive list with a "?". Once I double-clicked the drive name the question mark when away, the drive mounted, and the list showed the drive as "true" under FCPX. When I double-clicked the drive name again, the drive dis-mounted.

This is quick and easy for me, the problem is that when I dis-mount the drive by right-clicking to eject, it stops spinning immediately. If I dis-mount it with SDH, the drive icon is removed from the Desktop, but it is still spinning.

Great job so far! I hope this helps. As I said in my email, I agree with Ben, fonts could be bigger.

Thanks,
Dave

Just had one other thought...

Instead of the "?" mark in the FCPX column to show a drive is not yet mounted, how about leaving that column blank and instead, in the "Type" column, putting "not-mounted". That might be a bit more clear.

Dave

Dave,

I know what you are saying.

To understand:
There is a difference between unmount and eject.

"Eject" (in case it's possible) will really disconnect the disk and spin it down. "Unmount" will make it just "invisible" to the applications.
Latter one has an advantage: mounted disk images are always available when the machine is not shut down, this makes handling of sparse images way easier.
The downside is that the app at the moment only "unmounts", though it can do an "eject" if allowed by the device. That's why the device column is there.

I really appreciate the feedback here from you all. With this kind of help I probably can create a cool app.

Andreas

In my case, I absolutely want "eject", but it's very easy for me to right-click and take care of it.

You are headed in the right direction with this app. For me, even at this stage in it's development, it's easier for me to use SDH to mount the drive vs. going into Disk Utility.

Of course, feel free to ignore any of my suggestions you don't like or aren't, but another idea I had for the name (especially, if you wanted to make it available commercially) would be: FCPX-DH

Also, as I had mentioned earlier, if the functionality of Event Manager and this app was all available in a single app, that would be killer.

Thanks,
Dave

I'll state again, if this, EMX, the disk image utility (forget what it's called), and the one that moves templates to an unused folder were all in one app, call it "FCPX Utility" (like Disk Utility), that's be amazing. Actually, this should all be built into FCP X, but, there you have it.

Really great work Andreas.

So here guys,

A new slightly enhanced version is available which includes some of your suggestions.

So as Dave suggested the "Mounted" is either shown or not. You also can eject drives now, but as always you have to be aware that ejecting a drive also ejects all partitions of it. Depending on the media type they can't stay in the available "media list". So if you eject a USB stick or a camera card etc. you have to manually insert the device again.
Finally it gets a bit more complicated with the eject stuff. Let me know what you think.

I think I've good plan to bring all my "device apps" into one app. This means the current version + CreateDiskImage + CopyCards. I love CopyCards in it's old version for P2 cause together with the MXF4mac plugin you were able to edit just a second after the card was inserted (with FCP 7 and FCP 7 XML)

Regarding the EMX thing I'm not sure. Fro my point of view it's more complicated than it looks on the first glimpse. So there might be some Events that are always used (like openers or whatever) there are some Events which are partially used always, other Events may be used for some projects only. Any project can use any event item which were available during the project creation process. So moving an event is kind of dangerous since you have to scan all available devices for events, check the SQL and look what projects might be involved -- that's quite difficult the way Apple did set up the SQL. The other thing in this context is the way FCPX does it's "auto save", once something is missing it will be saved as missing more or less immediately and will be a kind of pain to reconstruct. Finally unmounting drives can cause the same kind of pain.
Moving projects (looking at security) though is easy as long as all event are available. You even can organize your projects using subfolders with ease.

Latter I will build into the app, it's already working but I'm very unsure about the interface.

Disk Image things are in the menus but not activated.

@ Ben: if you really would help with a manual I will be more than happy. I know what it takes to write or review manuals (I've done that for Apple and Adobe when I was younger) but at the moment I don't have the time to do both a good app and a good manual.

www.spherico.com/filmtools/diskHandler/diskHandler.dmg


Andreas

Very nice! "Eject" works as it should.

I did notice that if I don't have my media drive mounted, when I open SDH, it starts spinning (it doesn't mount, just spins up). Not a big deal, just thought I'd mention it. When I open Disk Utility, it does the exact same thing.

When I mount the media drive, the question mark is there. I know that I can wait for the auto-refresh or use command-R, but is there a reason it doesn't show up as "true" right away. If that isn't possible, maybe it would make sense to have a "Refresh List" button somewhere on the GUI.

Also, the red upper right "Close" window/program button doesn't work. I typically use command-Q, but if I already have my hand on the mouse, it's a nice option.

Thanks,
Dave

Red button on a Mac is a close window button, not a quit app button. Just FYI. I know some utilities quit with it, only cause, afaik, they are static single window apps. Just trivia.

BenB wrote: Red button on a Mac is a close window button, not a quit app button. Just FYI. I know some utilities quit with it, only cause, afaik, they are static single window apps. Just trivia.

Actually, that makes sense. I never understood why some apps would quit with it and others only the window closed. It is a bit annoying when you begin expecting one action or the other which is why I almost always use Command-Q.

Thanks,
Dave

Just made a little quick'n dirty new version where sparse images are handled -- it's not yet the way I want it to be handled, but it works somehow.

Regarding the "?" the question, if a drive is not mounted there is no way to figure out whether there are FCPX relevant folders.

Starting the app looks for all available devices which are "hard-wired" (same as disk utility) so they start spinning up. Maybe an option is to to fire them up and immediately eject them based on a user decision in some preference setup.

Many thanks for all your input -- helped me to look over my own fence.

Let's talk next year -- and all the very best for it.

Andreas

Andreas Kiel wrote:
Many thanks for all your input -- helped me to look over my own fence.
Let's talk next year -- and all the very best for it.
Andreas

No problem, you've done all the hard work. We can try to pick up after the new year here. If I don't jump in, I may have gotten busy or missed the post, but feel free to email me direct.

Dave

Andreas, talking about how to handle with the mounted drives I had a problem.
While editing with a sparse bundle mounted (I have a NAS in the studio), my mac just shut down (it was not a disk image problem, it was a mac problem). Later, when I tried to mount the bundle again, I was not able to do it. I believe the bundle "thinks" it's already mounted, so no one else is able do mount it or even delete it. Is it possible to restore or unmount the bundle even tough I'm no able to see it in my Finder?

Thanks for the help!

In most cases you can repair it using DiskUtility.
Just drag it to the apps icon, select the sparse and press Repair Disk

Andreas

I didn't recognize the sparse.
Any other suggestion?

Thiago Pelaes

Have you tried the "Open" in DiskUtility

Andreas

I tried. Disk utility says it can't recognize the sparse bundle.

You also may try the "hardcore" variant.

Open Terminal and type "diskutil mount " (without quotes) and then drag the sparse to the Terminal window and hit return.
From there you could use the repair function.

Andreas

Another option could be to "force open" the sparse by DiskUtility.

Drag the sparse icon to DiskUtility holding down the Option key.

Andreas

Thanks, Andrea!
Although it didn't worked (it was not possible to mount the sparse bundle), I was able to delete the file.

Thiago Pelaes.