SSD problem. *fcp can't see projects on my boot disk.

Hi everyone!

Im new around here! So hello, and nice to meet you.

I recently bought a 128GB SSD for my Macbook Pro. The purpose of the SSD for me is to improve general responsiveness and improve Final Cut performance.

Since my SSD is so small, I keep my Home folder on my other internal hard drive. Since my hard drive now contains the home folder, final cut pro uses that hard drive's movies folder for my events and projects.

Now with the problem I am currently facing; I can't get final cut to recognise the Events and Projects on my SSD (boot disk)? They are in the root directory of my SSD, but they are still not visible by final cut pro.

The event and project folders need to be in your Movies folder on your system drive, not in the root.

Thanks for the reply.

Because my home folder is on my secondary drive, fcp uses the Movie folder on my secondary drive. All 'User' related folders are on the secondary drive. (Movies, Pictures, Music, My Documents and Desktop.) The other 'system folders' such as Applications and System are on my primary drive.

This solution works extremely well with all other applications, as I can run the applications on my SSD while the data is stored on the secondary drive.

Therefore I though that it would pick up my project files on the primary drive if it was in the root directory.

Herco,

You definitively don't understand the way it works (no offense)

You have a boot volume. This includes Users/yourname/ maybe other other users
Each user has a "Movie" folder.
Once you have FCPX installed the "Movie" folder will have the subfolders "Final Cut Events" and "Final Cut Projects" (depending on your installation and usage there might be more FCP X related folders).
So from a point of view of FCPX your projects and events must be stored there -- this path on your boot drive.
Having a second drive "Final Cut Events" and "Final Cut Projects" must be on the root level of this drive. Having a "Home" folder there with "Final Cut Events" and "Final Cut Projects" just will hide those for FCP X.

So use your SSD as boot drive and create the events and projects on the second drive (put your media there as well)

-Andreas

Andreas,

I think I have a fairly good understanding of the way it works. You are not understanding what I want to achieve.

I have 2 disks. An SSD and another internal disk. My OS is running on my SSD, the primary drive. Then I have all my storage files on my secondary drive.

As I have explained my Home folder, which contains the Movie folder, resides on my secondary drive. NOT on my primary drive where my OS is installed. I moved it. It is very possible as, you can choose where you Home folder resides in the user options of System Prefs. I do not want to clutter my SSD with downloads, music and other things.

I want to use my primary drive for fcp, therefore I would also like to have my videos, projects and events on there for the speed advantages the SSD provides. But since my Home folder is not on my primary drive, the project and events folders are created on the secondary drive.

I have been using fcp for awhile now, so I know exactly how the file structure works. You just explained the basics to me again, which is clearly not the problem I am facing.

Here's what I would do....

Replicate the Users/UserName/Movies folder structure on your system drive and see if FCPX can access the event folders there. If it can, problem solved. If it can't then you can delete the folders and eliminate that as a possible cause.

Dave,

Thanks again for your reply.

I think I might have wrote my first post too quick and wrote it with my own thoughts in mind.

Let my try to explain again what problem I am facing at the moment. Let's rather look at it as something I want to achieve, as opposed to something I am struggling to achieve.

I want fcp, along with all my videos, project folders and event folders on my primary drive. I also want my operating system and other applications on my primary drive.

I want my music, movies, documents and files on my secondary drive.

How do I achieve this?

*The way I attempted to do it at the moment, was to move my Home folder to the secondary drive, as this is the most painless and easy way to get everything on my secondary drive. This way, in finder, when I click on a folder in the side bar it is actually going to a location on my secondary drive. Which is exactly what I want.

This solution however, does not seem to be working for final cut pro.

Maybe the problem is not with fcp, but the way I want to achieve my goal.

You are trying to achieve something I suspect Apple has not tested, so I'm not sure there's an official way of doing what you want.

Since you say you already have everything except FCPX working, it would only take a few seconds to try my suggestion above, and if it works you have a solution while if it doesn't work we can dismiss that as a cause of things not working and try to think around it.

Herco. A couple of points-

First, if you want the best performance from your system, DO NOT keep your Event and Project files on your Boot/Primary Drive. Regardless of whether it's an SSD, asking the Boot drive to run the OS, FCPX, and the media will result in poor performance compared to having them run from separate disks.

Second, if you've moved your Home folder to this second drive, and it's showing up an as a separate drive on the desktop, then you should just have your Event and Project files on the Root of the drive in folders called "Final Cut Events" and "Final Cut Projects". Keeping them in your Home folder is, I think, exclusive to where to put them on your boot drive.

Thanks for all the the replies.

After a whole day of reading and researching, I have finally found why it is not working.

Fcp expects your work files to be in the Movies folder, in you Home folder on you boot disk. It then also looks for work files in the root of any other disk connected to the system. That being said, it will never look in the root directory of your boot disk. Not even if you Home folder is set to a different location.

If it is how Disproportionate says, that using the secondary drive will grant me the best performance, then I have no worries. I will just keep my fcp projects aand events on the secondary drive as they are now.

For some reason it made sense to me that having everything on the SSD will have better performance than to load it from another, slower disk?

I would not place my FCPX projects on such a small SSD anyway. It only take s a few decent render files and OSX will be popping up a dialog telling you your drive is almost full.

Keep your data on your other drive and be happy.

This second disk- what port is it? USB3, FIrewire, Thunderbolt? Just be wary of USB2 drives- they are slow.

The secondary drive is in the laptop. So the interface for both drives are sATA III.

You'll have no problems then.

Thanks for all the help.

I will test it and see how it works for me!

I am just dreading that 'You are dropping frames due to poor disk performance.' message.

So just to clear things up on this topic; You are saying that having the project files on another drive will have better performance than having everything on the SSD?

In general, running the media off the drive which runs the app and the OS will give you more "hangups" while working (momentary freezes in the UI, response time).

By running the application and the media off separate drives, you're not asking one drive to do too much. An an internal SATA drive is plenty fast enough for most media.

the only other reason for responsiveness issues would be RAM and processor Speed. But those should only affect how well FCPX runs, and not dropped frames. That's simply a speed of the drive/ data-rate of the media issue.

Okay, I understand.

Thanks again for all the responses. It has been a great help.

I have an SSD and hybrid Momentus in my MB Pro. I used this procedure to set up my home folder structure back with Lion 2 years ago. Never had a problem and I've upgraded to Mountain Lion and now, as a beta tester with Mavericks. No problems. No FCPX folders, though, for sure on the SSD! Only on the 750G hybrid.

mattgemmell.com/2011/06/21/using-os-x-wi...-ssd-plus-hdd-setup/

This config is not supported by Apple, not at all. But it works and survives OS upgrades.