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No copying between libraries
When I select clips from one library and drag drop them to another library the clips seem to get copied. However, when I check their location in the finder there is just the hardlink. The only solution to finally get them copied is to consolidate the whole library. Did I do something wrong?
As my whole workflow relies on moving clips between libraries any help is highly appreciated.
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8 Replies
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Hard link is good. It stays a hardlink until you change something. So a win win situation.
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In my case it isn’t really a benefit as I want to physically move the data from a slow archiving storage device to my fast storage for editing. I am not sure if this is a bug as it says copying but it doesn’t actually. Furthermore all the information I could get from Apple or some Pros are saying that it should move the data in this case.
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Maybe this will help: https://www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/tutorials/1577-consolidation-and-hard-links-to-media-in-final-cut-pro-x
Check the video inside. -
If your workflow is to keep all footage internal to libraries, it’s particularly important to understand what’s happening under-the-hood. I’m pretty sure I lost some footage in my early days of FCPX because of this–thinking I had moved something from one library to another and deleted the “from” library and thus unknowingly deleted the physical files in the process. So I now have what I consider to be a healthy degree of paranoia, and have moved to a workflow that keeps footage external to the library. Then, as I organize myself at the FCPX level, I know all I’m moving are symlinks and not actual files. So two organization steps, first at the Finder level and then within FCPX. A little tedious at times, but I do have to keep my paranoia in check! (haha)
And there’s no right or wrong way to media management here: internal or external. There are pros and cons to each, so go with whatever works best for your setup. But I think keeping yourself organized inside of FCPX with internal footage will require the two-step ‘move then consolidate’ as the likely necessary process.
— Joby.
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Thank you. Now I know I was not talking about hardlinks as these are only work on the same volume. What I was referring to in my initial post are these kind of links you get when you pointing to a different volume. This can either be external or internal media.
However, there is really something strange going on with my archiving library. Most likely it has something to do with using media internally on a NAS drive. Support for that came with FCPX 10.3. Maybe it has still some bugs. With my more in depth testing this morning I experienced even more issues. Copying a clip from NAS library to library on my laptop gave me a link to the original drive on the first go (looking at it by ‘show me in finder’) Repeating the test with a second clip gave me a link on my local library on my laptop which completely broke with a missing link a minute later. Both libraries are configured to hold all media in the library.
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Here is an interesting video from Larry Jordan which explains that copying Media between Libraries should actually work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCXUQLUE1P4
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Ah–okay. Yeah, making those changes in FCPX between directly attached harddrives should move/copy the footage accordingly if internal to the library. I did some tests to confirm and it worked as expected. When I moved a clip that was external to the library, it stayed on the originating harddrive, and only moved the symlink to the new library on the new harddrive.
NAS, I think is/could be a whole other deal, and I suspect may come with some flakiness. Maybe. I have very little experience with NAS. The only NAS we use is only for archiving, and there I bundle up everything on a local harddrive first and then move the project/library at the Finder level to the server. I’ve opened up a couple of libraries on the server in the past, and all seemed to go okay, but it wasn’t to edit with, and it left me a little nervous–mostly because the server is not mine and I don’t know how its backend is set up; it seems flaky at times just at the Finder level. Maybe someone else here as more experience with an NAS workflow and any landmines that come with it.
— Joby.
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Thanks Joby for your thoughts and testing!
I hope I can fix this as I don’t want to back to external media. As you mentioned it is a pain when you want to delete clips in the library. I also had issues with missing links and then consolidating a library that contains about 3000 clips. Maybe it is about the size of my library which gets me all the issues. Further testing needs to be done.
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