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I’ve created a monster! Need to stabilise my project
Hi all I’ve created a monster! Bit of a long story but I started a feature doc in FCP 7 then used 7toX to transfer it to X. It didn’t translate very well due to all the subclips I made. I got my main sequence over and did a fair bit of work on it. I then re-translated the original project as 7toX was updated after I gave them feedback about my specific problem. The new event much better reflected the way I had organised my media so I carried on using that event. All my media is on an external drive but my Events and Projects were on my main computers drive as I thought that was the best way to keep a back up of all my projects and events (as my computer automatically gets backed up by time machine). Recently everything was slowing down and I thought it was because all my projects were on my system drive so now I am working on projects on my external drive but everything is still slow and beach bally.
My main problem is that my project references 4 events that all contain the same media (don’t ask they just do). Those 4 events reside on my system drive but the media is on an external drive I am sure this is causing the problem. I would like to make my main project reference one event only then I’d like to copy that event over to my external drive. I’ve tried modifying event references but I couldn’t really get it to work (I’m not sure if I even know how it should work). I realise now that my backup strategy was flawed. My main concern is that I am making a new version of the project every day so that I can go back to different versions if I need to but it is causing massive bloat.
This probably doesn’t make any sense. Basically I just want my main project to just reference one event not four different ones containing the same media
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14 Replies
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FCPX 10.0.07 Mac OSX 10.8.2 3.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 16 GB Ram
I’m thinking that maybe my computer just can’t handle it anymore time for a new one?
p.s. what are people doing regarding back up these days. Shall I just mirror the drive with all my events and projects in it? I already have the media backed up separately
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Use the duplicate function that consolidates the media used in the project into a single new event.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
I’m going to ask.
What’s the difference in the 4 Events?
This is one area where fcpx needs help. Merging Events causes a lot of clip duplicity in the Event (not in Finder).
In my experience it doesn’t merge the Events, it simply sticks them together side by side in one Event. If a clip has a keyword in Event 1, and a different keyword in Event 2, fcpx simply imports that clip separately and doesn’t combine the keywords on one clip in the new and Merged Event.
If you can live with that, merge them, then use the “move” command. You will probably have to modify event refs on a few Projects after you are done.
Merging is destructive. Make sure you back up. Besides backing the Event/Project files, exporting an XML of the Event is a good idea. I have created a metadata view called “Everything View” on which I have turned on all metadata options. When I export an XML, I chose “Everything View”.
When you import the XML, you get a fresh copy of the Event in the Browser with a new ID so there’s no conflicts with the original.
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I can live with merging the events if it makes my project quicker. Would you agree that I should try to move the events out of my system drive and merge them to make one super event?
As long as I don’t move my media (it is already backed up btw) can I just get away with backing up the CurrentVersion.fcpproject and the CurrentVersion.fcpevent files. If I do this for all 4 events and any projects I want to backup then if everything goes to shit then this is all I would need to get back up an running right?
These database files all point to the place where my media is right? So if I confuse everything I can get myself back or do I need to make sure that I back up other stuff like the alais media files that point to my media
What I’d like to do is get everything off my system drive then buy another drive and use that as my backup, I’ll just mirror it at the end of each day using Suoer Duper. Simple and old school I know it is done
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[James Bayliss-Smith] “I can live with merging the events if it makes my project quicker. Would you agree that I should try to move the events out of my system drive and merge them to make one super event?”
I think having all of this media on a fast external drive is a good idea.
What I would do us get an external drive, as fast as you can afford.
Dupe all four events to it using fcpx.
Quit fcpx.
Move the fcp events/projects on your system drive out of the “movies” folder to deactivate them.
Open fcpx and work with the external only.
See if that makes a difference first, and this way you haven’t started messing with the structure.
[James Bayliss-Smith] “As long as I don’t move my media (it is already backed up btw) can I just get away with backing up the CurrentVersion.fcpproject and the CurrentVersion.fcpevent files. If I do this for all 4 events and any projects I want to backup then if everything goes to shit then this is all I would need to get back up an running right?”
Potentially, yes.
[James Bayliss-Smith] “These database files all point to the place where my media is right? So if I confuse everything I can get myself back or do I need to make sure that I back up other stuff like the alais media files that point to my media”
No need to backup alias files, those are easily recreated.
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Okay I get all this, the thing is my media is already on an external drive. It’s just that the 4 events that reference that same media 4 times are on my System drive. If I duplicate the 4 events to an external drive I will have 4 sets of that media, I only need one.
Is there a way to re-conect the clips in a project to a specific event in the same way as you can reconnect clips to different source media. Then I can move or duplicate that event to another drive and only get one lot of media. I’m happy to get rid if three of these events they serve no purpose but there are over 100 clips referencing one event 100 clips referencing another then 10 and 4 referencing the other two.
Anyway I’m going to back everything up and have a play around,
Cheers
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[James Bayliss-Smith] “Okay I get all this, the thing is my media is already on an external drive. It’s just that the 4 events that reference that same media 4 times are on my System drive. If I duplicate the 4 events to an external drive I will have 4 sets of that media, I only need one.”
If media is on your external, quit fcpx and move the final cut events/projects folders to your external.
Open fcpx.
If files don’t relink, simply reimport and fcpx will relink them.
Or drag the media back in to the Event X will relink.
Is the media all .mov?
Jeremy
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Yes the media is all .mov
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Then it’s even easier.
You can also use the relink event files command.
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I put both my events and projects on the same external hard drive, then back that up when necessary and remove the backup hard drive before using FCPX. I have no events or project folders on the internal drive. This way, I never have FCPX find duplicates. My early learning period before I reorganized was full of these kinds of problems.
I like how FCPX can access an event file that has been duplicated and moved and doesn’t require any relinking. That is a big improvement on FCP7.
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