Relink files

Last week my main drive on my macbook pro mac os 10.8.2 was filling up so I moved files to external drives and now my project is missing from FCP X. I have lost weeks of work. The media files and events are still there, but the projects are gone. Even with the external drives hooked up, I can't find the projects. What can I do? I may have a back up--it's hard to tell because I can't see what the back ups are since they have strange names and say they can only be backed up from within Final Cut Pro X. I have a DVD saved with a rough version of the 12 minute film. How hard would it be to work from that?

Excuse me, I meant to say that I can't see what the back ups are since they have strange names and say they can only be OPENED from within Final Cut Pro X.

FCPX creates two folders on your drive: "Final Cut Pro Events" and "Final Cut Projects"
When you create your event and projects they get populated. When you create a project FCPX always ask which event it should be connected to.
It is always a bad idea to move folders out of this strucutre on the finder-level. You can do this from within FCPX (Move Events and Projects) without breaking the database connections.

Did you move these folders?
If yes, are the backup drives formated with a Mac-format (not FAT32 or such)? Otherwise they won´t be recognized by FCPX!

Does the event seem fine? Or does that also have red icons?

Do you see the projects and have they red icons (missing media) or don´t you see the Projects at all? They HAVE TO BE in a folder called "Final Cut Projects" on the root level of a drive.

If you see the projects, select one (don´t open it), then go to the inspector and there you can modify the event references! Maybe that helps already.

pdesch wrote: Excuse me, I meant to say that I can't see what the back ups are since they have strange names and say they can only be OPENED from within Final Cut Pro X.

The backups are just making sure you have a backup when the database gets corrupted. Then they can only be opnened from within the database. They are not Backups like you assume they are. You don´t need to touch them ever normally.

I'm having a similar issue with an old project that I've manually moved. The compatibility seems to be a mismatch of the # of audio channels but I haven't changed them. Still trying so I'll report back when (if) it relinks. I've seen the videos on youtube, read the help files, read Apples forums, but still not explanation. It should relink but since FCPX is database driven, everything must match up. I think it's lacking, IMO.

I'm sending a screenflow video link to my Apple's feedback - I encourage others to do the same.

Ok. I found my solution. You have to remember the file structure of your original folders. Luckily, I moved a sub folder and not the root folder that caused the link to break. I just shuffled a large chunk from the drive I'm moving to and moved the sub folder containing the original media back, fired up FCPX and it relinked.

Odd behavior but it worked! I'm happy once again. Many hours was spent on this hour long project and I'm glad my trial & error worked!

Hope this helps someone.

Yes you have to be careful when moving files around in the finder.
I do it all the time and have moved several projects more than three times without issue.
Including moving a project to a different computer in a different state.

Have never had an issue with it. As to relinking I find that it works much much better for me than it ever did in FCP 7.

Thanks, Seanus. I never had issues except with this one project. Live & learn as the saying goes.

There's gotta be a better way to re-link though - if file names & sizes match up it should relink. The # of audio channels (the error I was having) should not matter. I was using re-link to the same medium but located in a different drive. I just moved it to the original drive it came from and all is fine again.

I was able to resolve my problem by creating a new film project and then replacing the new project file with the back up I found of the old project (I'd lost). I put the back up file in the folder for the new project and renamed it--to make it the same name as the new project. I deleted the new project file. FCP X identified and used the back up because it identified it as the appropriate file to bring up for editing. In a way, I tricked FCP. What I learned: don't ever moved FCP project files with out moving the whole folder called Final Cut Projects. You don't have to move all files within that folder--but the name of the folder has to be that, specifically (Final Cut Projects)--so I understand.

I should say don't eliminate your final cut projects folder from FCP. duplicate the folder. My problem arose because I didn't work from within FCP to move files. I used finder to free up space from my hard drive. if you work from within FCP, this problem shouldn't occur to my knowledge.