Best practices workflow for laptop + desktop?

[Bill Davis]

David,

I simply don’t ever capture any video media directly to my machine drives in the first place. When I shoot in the field, I make disk images of my cards. I store a copy on my main hard drive, and a copy on a firewire portable drive.

I double click the disk images (as many as I have cards from the shoot) and open them FROM THE FIREWIRE DRIVE before I start building my edit on my desktop. If I have to “go remote” I simply MOVE the FCP-X projects I need to my laptop using the internal FCP-X MOVE command – and when I open the same disk images from the Firewire drive, my FCP-X projects automatically re-link to the files they need since the opened disk images look exactly like the original cards are once again present.

In X, “proxy media” aren’t clips I have to manage, they’re just alternate versions that X stores in the Event folder at the root level, that let my machine process things faster than working with large original media files. I don’t think of them as “another set of clips” anymore. They always live on my firewire drive. If anything happens to that portable drive, I can use my backed up copies of the original “disk images” to re-populate my timeline from any hard drive that has the copies – since opening those disk images looks EXACTLY like re-loading the original cards. The computer doesn’t care where they’re stored, it just sees the disk images on the desktop and since they looks EXACTLY like the original cards – everything re-connects.

(It’s also comforting to be able to make a THIRD copy of the disk images to a “backup the backups” drive for another layer of protection if you like.

Basically adopting a “disk image strategy” solves a lot of headaches – which might be why Apple essentially built a disk imaging utility directly into FCP-X – tho I’ve become accustomed to making mine via the Disk Utility App that comes with every Mac.

FWIW.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Andreas Kiel]

David,

Never use XML for something like that you’re planning.
You will be in trouble.

Bill’s way is better route to go.
But don’t start editing and applying effects on the one or other machine until you’re sure those ones are installed on all machines using the same installation path.

Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

[Loren Risker]

David,

I’m not sure about best practice, but here’s what I do:

I normally just use the same external for both, and then also keep up daily backup copies on my macpro in a backup folder.

If you’re starting on one drive and moving to the other, you can just keep copies of the original media and transcoded media on both drives, then just the project file and event file to whichever drive you want to move to. Work from your new drive/laptop, and when you want to move back just copy the project file and event file back over. That way it doesn’t take awhile to transfer.

[David Friedman]

Those are good tips. It sounds like a tower/laptop workflow will work best working from an external drive. So in that case, what drive do you recommend that’s fast, portable, and bus-powered? What do you use?

[Loren Risker]

I use an external powered USB 2.0 drive. Its good enough for me for now but if I was getting a bus powered I’d definitely want a 7200 rpm drive. I just do prores proxy then do the finishing on the tower with prores HQ on the internal drive.

[Andy Neil]

I use a Lacie Rugged FW800 with my laptop. I would NOT recommend using a USB drive since throughput is variable and not steady. USB is not a very good choice for video editing. Also 7200rpm is a must.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Ron Priest]

Hey David

Im just now working on my first FCPX project, so I don’t have much of a proven workflow that I can recommend, but until I can purchase one of the Promise TB RAIDs for my new iMac, I’m using an external eSATA drive enclosure that holds 2 separate SATA drives (no RAID) with their own eSATA connection per drive. I normally devote a single drive to an entire wedding project since it will take up a great deal of space due to the size of ProRes 422 captured files and the amount of footage shot at a wedding via 3 different tape based cameras.

With this first X project, I’m simply using the original ProRes 422 source files captured on the external eSATA enclosure via my old Mac Pro in FCP7 and creating a new FCPX event and saving the Event and Project files associated with each event on the corresponding drive containing the original source files. So my point is, I can connect this enclosure to my MacBook and edit for a while in X and then simply disconnect it from my laptop and connect it to my iMac (via the Sonnet Echo Thunderbolt adapter) and pick up where I left off without having to worry about copying anything since everything is self contained on the eSATA drives. I can even plug that drive back up to my old Mac Pro with FCP7 and edit a sequence in 7 if need be, but so far I have’t needed to do that, as I’m finding FCPX can almost everything 7 could do and do it better and faster!

Until I can get the Pegasus enclosure I will probably continue this workflow. Actually I should be able to continue the workflow with the new Pegasus enclosure just connecting it to the MacBook or iMac depending on which machine I want to work on. Of course, carrying a 6 drive enclosure around with a MacBook Pro isn’t what you would really consider portable, so I may have to purchase a smaller TB drive for the MacBook when I need to take a project on the road, or otherwise edit away from the studio when needed.

Ron Priest
Videographer
Louisville, KY