Moving Media in FCPX: Problems I've come across...

:ohmy:

Hello:

In my latest video projects using FCPX, I've found that trying duplicate/move functions doesn't seem to work very well. There are always issues that, instead of making the workflow easy and functional, make for more headaches.

Please let me explain and if anyone has insight, I would love it:

- When I've tried to move an event to my laptop from my desktop (say, when I'm traveling and need to work on something), it's never smooth on the return. I can get it onto an external portable drive, but when I want to move it BACK to my desktop, it's a mess. I'll get another event with the (fcp1) attached and that's never good. Sometimes, the Move is started and the spinning ball of death spins on its eternal course forever, until I have to force quit FCPX.

- Now that I have 3 events that the one project (a wedding) is pulling from (some usable clips in one, some in another, etc.), I'd like to Merge the events, if that's possible. I know you CAN merge events, but it's undoable and I've read that if there are 2 clips with the same name (I have this issue.... some are aliases and some are the original media), the program will delete both on the Merge. I'd love it if, when I Merge, all the duplicates and aliases would be deleted and I'd be left with original clips and ONE event.

Please advise! Thank you ---

Hi Sean,

There are two ways to take your FCPX project on the road:

1. Work from the same external drive

If you want to work on the same project both at home and on the road the easiest workflow is to put your Event and Project folders on one external drive and work from that drive both on your desktop and your laptop. You haven't given any hardware specs, but if both your desktop and laptop are Thunderbolt machines there are very affordable, fast and portable TB drives around that could work for you. If you don't have TB you should use a small but fast FireWire drive, of possible a striped one for editing HD.

2. Move Project and referenced Event back and forth

If the first option cannot work for you (e.g. because you use a large RAID drive with your desktop and you cannot take that drive on the road) you can move your FCPX Event and Project folders from the RAID to your portable drive whenever you go on the road, and move them back to your RAID again when you return.

The emphasis is on the word "Move". Moving a Project with its referenced Event in FCPX deletes the folders from the source drive and copies them over to your destination drive. This means you will not have any duplicate folders or files on any of your drives no matter how often you do this.

The reason why you your current project is a mess is that you have been duplicating your Event folders back and forth instead of moving them. Duplicating Events keeps the original Event folders in their place, so when you duplicate them back to the same drive you get doubles (fcp1). This can never work. The only reliable way to take a project on the road using different drives is to move the Project with its referenced Event from one drive to the other.

The downside of this process is that you will be transferring all your media from one drive onto the other every time you move them, which can take some time depending on how large your Event folder is.

NOTE:

I know people will chime in and say: hey, but if you never add anything to the Event you can just use the same Event on both drives and only copy over the Project files. That's a good theory, but it hardly ever is like this in a real project. Even if you only add some music or a still when you are on the road your Event will change and you will get offline files when you bring the Project back to your desktop. The same goes for Compound Clips: as soon as you create a CC on the road it will be stored inside your Event and you will lose it back on your desktop. And more: the Event folder also stores all your analyzing data, so if you do any speed effects or stabilizing using Optical Flow while on the road you will also lose them back on your desktop. So this really is not a fail-safe workflow.

In short:

Working from the same external drive is the fastest and most reliable option.

Moving Projects and referenced Events back and forth between drives is also reliable, but it can take a lot of time as you have to copy your media over to the other drive each time.

Duplicating Projects is used for versioning, and when your computers are attached to a media server. Duplicating an Event back and forth between different drives is a recipe for disaster.


Finally: what can you do with your current project for which you now seem to have different duplicated Events?

You cannot merge Events that have duplicate media inside them. If you have clips with the same file name (or aliases pointing to clips with the same file name) inside the Events you want to merge FCPX has no clue to which ones it should keep and which ones it should ignore. Remember: clips with the same file name are not necessarily duplicate clips! With all due respect, this is a mess you have created yourself.

Either you keep working from your different duplicate Events to finis this project and you change your workflow for future projects.

Or you create a new master Event and you manually drag every clip you want to preserve from the duplicate Events into the master Event. You can do this inside the Event Library. Once you have done this select the master Event and choose File > Organize Event Files to make sure all the clips inside your master Event are actual media and not aliases. When his is done you only need to select your Project and Modify the Event References to your new master Event. Now your project will again reference to one single Event that you can take on the road if you wish.

Depending on how many clips you have the second option could be a lot of work. So the choice is up to you.

- Ronny