FCPX and Dropbox Collaboration

Anyone had any experience good or bad with collaborating using libraries saved on Dropbox?

Is there a better way?

Basically a typical example of what we're thinking of would be to create a library using external R3Ds and transcode them to Proxies (which would sit in the library) then share that via Dropbox with our offices in Dubai. Once they've done their edits/cc/effects etc we then open it at our end, reconnect all of the R3Ds and export.

Would that work? Also, would we just keep the library in the dropbox and the guys in Dubai work on it from there or would it make more sense to just use DB as a transfer tool so they would then move it to a local drive at their end, do their thing and then put it back on the Dropbox for us to pick up here in the UK.

Any advice, experiences etc would be very much appreciated.

How do you plan to manage access in this scenario? IOW, how do you prevent simultaneous attempts to access or to know which update is the correct one?

Oliver

I recall reading somewhere that there was a problem with this because of the way Dropbox interprets files - and the FCPX library being a growing file or 'live'. I haven't tried so I don't know personally. What I DO know is that often I've tried exporting directly to Dropbox so I can share files remotely later and it's been very buggy. Files aren't correctly uploaded (due to the growing file type I mentioned with libraries) and I've often had to overwrite corrupt ones later.

If anyone's interested now I export to the desktop and remotely drag them to dropbox once the export is complete. Be better if Dropbox could fix this though.

Another issue with Dropbox is that if one person deletes the file locally from their Dropbox folder, the syncing will delete it from the cloud and the other machine, depending on how it's set up. Therefore, I think it is safer to have mirrored media on the local machines and externally linked in the libraries. Then move a transfer library or FCPXML in/out of Dropbox for exchange.

- Oliver

I would suggest to let the user download locally the library and send back to you just thr xml of the projects. With your library open import the xml and it will relink all the media instantly