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

Most probably not. What OS are you using? Do you have an old version of the software that corresponds to those folders?

the iMac is running 10.9 ... I have 10.8 on my macbook .. maybe I could try on here?

Hi Ronny -

the 'Reveal in Finder' button is actually greyed out when I try this :

That's because your media are actually not available (which I have learned from your recent posts).

As I said: this definitely will not be easy. The Inspector even does not show a Location for the clips you select, which means FCP X has no clue anymore where the original media reside. But we can try.

The first thing we need to do is to know if you actually still have any original media available.

Open a Finder window, select Toshiba 02 > FCP X Library and open the Final Cut Events folder. Post a screenshot of the contents of that folder. Then we can proceed.

- Ronny

It's not looking great - it seems with my had drive copy-over that only aliases were copied across :

Well, this narrows down the problem completely: you don't have the original media anymore. At least not on the drives that are connected.

What happened to the original drive? Was it erased? Has it stopped working?

When have you updated the events and projects to Libraries? Before or after you copied over the drive?

- Ronny

My old MBP began to behave strangely - weird permissions errors, crashes, so I realized the drive was probably going to die. I copied everything I could over to an external 2tb drive, but I think what happened was because of the permissions problems, it didn't exactly copy everything as it should. I still have the original drive - I've just purchased a hard drive enclosure on ebay to see if I can plug it in, and hope for the best. My only worry there is that I don't have the right permissions, etc

As for the updates, I'm not sure - these were probably my attempts this week at locating these files.

Ah okay, that explains everything. Except for the symlinks. When you have permission issues, you will get an error message while copying. But media will certainly not be copied over as aliases or symlinks. This means that the original media have never been inside the Event.

If you can make that old drive work I am sure the original media will still be on it, on a different location than inside the Final Cut Events folder. So, as it is now, getting this drive to work is your only option left.

To give you some hope: you say you have replaced the drive of the MBP because of crashes and permission errors. So I suspect the only thing that was really wrong with it was your user account. This could mean that the drive of the old MBP will still be intact and that you should be able to find back the original media on it. But we will only be sure if you can connect the drive to your computer. Post back as soon as you have the hard drive enclosure, and we can take it from there.

- Ronny

A breakthrough!

I did a 'Find My File' search on these 2 drives... I searched for files ending in 'mov', and then by file size. There's a lot of junk I should delete it would seem, but that's for another day!
Anyway, I have found what seems to be the original footage! Not where it should be, but it's backup worthy at least.
Ok, so my next question :
how do I find a way of getting FCP to recognise this footage as the 'lost' footage? It might be named differently is my worry....

You use the relink function, but it depends entirely on exactly where the files are.

Is the original footage inside a folder?

Can you post a screenshot of the Finder window with the original media?

- Ronny