Final Cut Pro X - Compound Clips Missing on a Shared Drive

Hi All,

I use allot of compound clips for audio synching and other basic edit functions, I also save and share all of my projects and events on an external drive, but when my colleague opens the projects and events on his machine the compound clips are always missing, the question is where does FCPX save the compound clip information to and Is there a way to avoid this without exporting and re importing the clips as a separate file and re importing it to the timeline? This issue is causing no end of headaches.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Robin

What version of FCPX are you using?

-Ronny

Thats very odd Ronny as I was just about to mail you directly after seeing a rather complex thread where you seemed to solve a similar project for someone.

I'm using 10.0.9, we cannot both upgrade yet as we're working on some long term collaborative projects, but having read the update changes I didn't see a fix.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Hi Robin,

Yep, that's karma

If you are both working on long term projects in 10.0.9 it is indeed very wise not to update in the middle of these projects. 10.1 can be quite quirky with updated projects.

Compound clips are references to Event clips that are grouped together. That's why CCs always appear in the Event Browser, along with the clips. But there is no physical place where the CCs are actually stored in the Event folder: CCs are just links, just like multicam clips or synchronized clips.

Are you always exchanging the same Event and Project folders? I.e. you open the Event and the Project(s) in FCPX, you work on them, then you send them to your colleague. He opens the Event and the project(s), he works on them, he sends them to you....?

-Ronny

Yeah, thats exactly as we do it, and the only consistent issue is compound clips, that show up as missing date (in red) when we open one another's projects, which must mean part of the information is stored on my Mac, as when I bring it back from him all is fine. FYI all the events and projects are set to write to the external drive.

Aha, interesting

This leads me to thinking that the CCs contain references to pieces of media on your computer that are not physically stored inside the Original Media folder of the Event on the external drive. These media may have been imported with the "Copy Files to Final Cut Events folder" option un-checked.

To avoid this: before you send the drive to him select the Event and choose File > Organize Event Files. This will copy any symlinked media into the Event folder on the external drive, making sure that no clips are offline when your colleague opens the Event on his system.

-Ronny

Thanks for the advice Ronny but working with all media imported to event files on the hard drive is a standard working practice for us in order to prevent exactly what you have mentioned, hence my confusion as to why this still happens. It must store something in my home folders but I can't find any link as to what.

Having said that I haven't tried nor was I aware of the 'Organize event files' option, so I will run a trial and let you low if it still happens.

Okay, you never know

You also can check this in the Original Media folder of the Event: if you see any files with the symlink symbol (curved arrow) in the original Media folder this means these clips are referring to media stored on your computer and not inside the Event on the external drive.

Just to rule out any other transfer pitfalls: do the CCs by any chance have clips to which you have applied filters or effects that may not be present on the other machine?


-Ronny

Yeah thats a very good point and is quite likely, I have a play around and see what I can figure out.

Thanks so much for your help, I'll check back in for the resolve when I'v done the test.

Good luck, and please keep us updated because this is an interesting issue.

And if this does not solve the problem here's one more thought:

If you have created the CCs in an earlier Project that is stored on your computer the CCs will reference this Project and not the one on the external drive. This my cause missing media in the CCs on the other system.

To make the CCs independent of any older Project versions that may be on your computer: select the CCs in the timeline and choose Clip > Reference New Parent Clip before you send the drive. This will create independent copies of the CCs in the Event. If this works you can delete the original CCs if you wish.

-Ronny

That latter comment also sounds like it will work, I'll be sure to let you know how we get on.