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How/Can FCP X access Camera Archives on an AppleShare Server?
I am having difficulty getting FCPX 10.0.7 to access Camera Archives on a shared disk which is on a MacMini server that is running Mac OS Server 10.7.5 (Lion). FCPX is running on a MacBook Pro that is running Mac OS 10.8.2 (Mountain Lion). Both the server and the laptop are using a wired Ethernet connection.
If I store a Camera Archive on the file server, and mount the disk using AFP protocol, I see the disk in the finder and the disk is appearing in the //Volumes/ directory of the laptop. Also, the mounted disk appears in the “DEVICES” section of the Media Import window.
However, I am unable to get FCPX to access the Camera Archive on the shared disk (it works if the Camera Archive is on the laptop’s local hard disk). Moving the “Final Cut Camera Archives” directory to the root of the shared volume makes no difference.
The inability to put a Camera Archive on a shared volume is a major headache because the laptop does not have enough hard disk space for long term storage while the server has many terabytes of space.
Any suggestions on how to access Camera Archives on a shared disk would be most appreciated.
Thanks,
Mark Weber -
6 Replies
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You can create symlink named “Final Cut Archives” locally, pointing to the network share. Don’t forget to mount shared location.
Hope that helps.
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Thanks for the suggestion.
Perhaps I am not doing it correctly – I created an alias to the shared disk directory in the finder which is called “Final Cut Camera Archives” in the “Macintosh HD/Users/xxxx/Movies/” directory. When I double clicked on the alias in the finder, the link worked. However FCPX is still not finding the Camera Archives. I also see the same behavior when I create the link using a Unix shell command.
Any suggestions are most appreciated.
Thanks,
Mark Weber -
You should use not aliases, but symbolic links.
Here’s how I did it step by step:– Launch Terminal app;
– Type: cd /Users/xxx/Movies and press Enter
[don’t forget to replace xxx}
– Type ln -s path Final Cut Camera Archives
[path – path to the network folder with archives]That’s it. Works for me.
The picture below shows the details:
The “bottom layer” shows that archives appeared in FCP Import window.
“Middle layer” is a network location. Note, that you can place archives deep inside your folder structure.
“Front layer” is a Movies folder on a local machine.Hope that helps.
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Eugeny
That worked – thanks much for the advice and insight.
Mark Weber -
Using that method, are multiple users able to access the same camera archives at the same time?
Keith
Keith Koby
Sr. Director Post-Production Engineering
iNDEMAND
Howard TV!/Movies On Demand/iNDEMAND Pay-Per-View/iNDEMAND 3D -
[Keith Koby] “Using that method, are multiple users able to access the same camera archives at the same time?”
I tried it on two machines – they both were able to mount the same archive. But who knows if it’s gonna work with further updates.
When I tried to implement this method with 10.0 version, FCP couldn’t see any archives in the aliased folder… Something has changed. It is constantly changing. And these unpredictable changes, in fact, make me feel uncomfortable setting up any workflow. Today it works, tomorrow – nobody knows… For example, there was useful feature before they unified the Import dialog in10.0.6 – “Open Archive…” button in the “Import from camera” window. Besides opening archives, It allowed you to open any folder with .mov files inside as an archive, thus you could import not the whole clip, but a small part of it. For me, it was a great finding – I have a lot of “long and heavy” clips on my network archive that I wouldn’t mind importing partially rather than copying 60 GB file into my event to use only 10 seconds of it. But now it’s gone. The workflow is gone as well. So, be prepared))Hope that helps.
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