FCPX project clips black/library issues - cannot find my files

Ok, hopefully I explain this clearly and can get this issue resolved to some degree!
First, I'm no real FCPX pro. Primarily I'm a musician, so I fumble around and do my best at it.

I had a Macbook Pro start to act up on me last year, so in a pre-emptive strike I got everything off there before the hard drive died on me.
I use FCPX on my Macbook (which I've since replaced) and my iMac.
I then started to use my external drive as FCPX's library, and here's where it's got messy.
I have a project that I HAVE to finish. After that I'll wipe both computers and start over, reinstall everything.

So - my clips are black. Cannot find them. I don't even understand FCP's file system, otherwise I'd drag/drop the original videos into FCP one by one if i could (I can't even SEE the original files though I know they're there as there's like 200gb of files in those folders somewhere)

Just ... help. I need to find these files at the very least.
I'm on 10.0.4 ..

Are you sure you are on 10.0.4? looks like you are at least after 10.1.

I've seen something like this before coming out of Plural eyes...

First, make sure your original footage is still "not black". if it is not...

Try exporting a project fcpxml then re-import it into a totally new library.
have the files COPY over into an external Media folder.

Hope that helps....

Sorry, yes - it's actually 10.1.3

My footage is still black, so I'm stumped as what do

In your post on another forum I have seen the things you have tried. As you have been moving your original media in Finder, it's pretty possible that this will be difficult to resolve.

Please do some tests so we can narrow down the issue. Here's the first one:

Select a black clip in the Timeline. Then in the Inspector > Info tab, do the following:

1. Under File Information, look at the Location. What drive is shown here?

2. Press the Reveal in Finder window. This will open a Finder window, please post a screenshot of that entire window.

- Ronny

Question 1 - when you initially imported media to FCPX did you choose to "copy to library" or did you choose "leave in place"? This assumes that you had copied the card media from your camera to the hard drive first, and imported clips from the hard drive. If you imported directly from a camera card, there would be no option to "leave in place".

To locate media within a library, control-click the library and select "show package contents". When the library folder opens look in the "original Media" folder and see if your clips are there. If so, make a new library as suggested and drag the working clips from the "original media folder" of the old library into the event browser and choose the new library as destination.

If your "original media" clips are black, then it appears something has been corrupted during your initial import to FCPX. In that case, do you still have the clips on the camera card that you can reimport?

As far as I recall, I always go with copy to library, so that should have been the case. I usually drag/drop my movie files from an sd card, or import into iPhoto. It's likely that to save hard drive space, those original files were deleted - but surely if I copy to library, that shouldn't be a problem.
If you look here at MIZAR 003 1 (which is the project I'm trying to locate), that project is showing 26.75gb of data. I'm SURE this must contain my missing videos, no? How can I get at that video footage if FCPX is not letting me do so?

I've got to this stage - I don't know how - but probably not much of a step forward though! Again, if I have so much in GB in these projects, why can I not access that? What IS all that stored files, if not actual movies?

Where actually is that 26G of media? You have to find it. They may be optimized files. If the original files are inside the library bundle and the application isn't seeing them, you have to take the files out of the bundle so that you can manually relink them.

Sorry to be a layman here - how do I take the files out of the bundle? When I go to that folder with the 26GB of data, there's only FCP type info. No movie files or anything ... (?)

If it's a library you can right click on it and select show package contents. Your organization is really complex. You need to be really careful with what you're doing in there. I would strongly suggest you try to find someone with experience in the application to see if this can be resurrected.

Not possible, just me i'm afraid

I just don't understand how I've 200gb almost in final cut storage here, and I can't get to any of this raw material

They're probably optimized media files.

Were you able to open the library bundle and see the event folders? Could you find the media inside there?

do you mean from the finder, or from final cut?

In the Finder with the application closed.

No, or rather I'm not sure how to?

Well, seemingly that particular library has no media in it. Which is odd/dismaying. But the fact that there's that 26gb in that projects/events folder still confuses the heck out of me

My earlier post in this thread tells you how to do that.

What ARE these unix files? Here's where all this 26gb of data is, yet I can't do anything with them - look at the path :

I don't know what your history with this application has been, but you have material that clearly is from versions prior to December 2013. A lot has happened since then, and I don't know what you've been doing since then. The Final Cut Projects and Final Cut Events folders seen here and in the first image in the thread are from pre-10.1 versions of FCP. All that media is irrelevant to anything you're working on now. What you're pointing to is obsolete, high quality ProRes render files from many versions OK. You can trash all those Render Files folders in each of those projects. They're not you're media. They're useless and just taking up space.

What if I installed an older version, 10.0? Would that even be worth a shot?