Easiest way to make a project portable?

[Cody Walters]

Media Manager is the way to go.

In the media manager dialog box, click the drop down and just do a copy. Make the Media Destination your portable hard drive. If you don’t want a new project file, uncheck “deplicate selected items and place into a new project” Also, if you want to keep you render files, make sure to check “include render files”. That should work for you.

Cody Walters

Mac Pro 2.26GHz 8 Core
16 GB 1066 MHz DDR3
Final Cut Studio 3
Adobe CS5 Master Suite
Panasonic HVX-200
Canon 7D

http://www.codywaltersvideo.com

[Jason Jenkins]

[Cody Walters] “In the media manager dialog box, click the drop down and just do a copy. Make the Media Destination your portable hard drive. If you don’t want a new project file, uncheck “deplicate selected items and place into a new project” Also, if you want to keep you render files, make sure to check “include render files”. That should work for you.”

Thanks, Cody. I wonder if I just select “move” instead, can I avoid duplicating everything? 90% of the media is already there.

Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style!

[David Roth weiss]

[Jason Jenkins] “I wonder if I just select “move” instead, can I avoid duplicating everything? 90% of the media is already there.”

There is a really good reason for using the copy function, not the move function in Media Manager. Consider copy to be non-destructive, while move is in fact destructive, with no recourse if something goes wrong.

If your system crashes in the process you’re going have a very tough time figuring out what you lost and what to do next. So, it’s far better to have to manually delete the old version than to lose anything during the process.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums. Formerly host of the Apple Final Cut Basics, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Jason Jenkins]

[David Roth Weiss] “There is a really good reason for using the copy function, not the move function in Media Manager. Consider copy to be non-destructive, while move is in fact destructive, with no recourse if something goes wrong.

If your system crashes in the process you’re going have a very tough time figuring out what you lost and what to do next. So, it’s far better to have to manually delete the old version than to lose anything during the process.”

That sounds like a great reason to use “copy”. Thanks, David. BTW, does it dump all the assets into one directory… or how does that work?

Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style!

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I edited a full length feature some years ago where I had to edit at a client’s MacPro when his presence was needed, and edits on my time on my iMac at home.

All dailies and sound was captured on the MacPro’s internal drive. Right after i captured all the dailies and sound, I cloned the MacPro drive into another Firewire 800 drive and named it the same name as the drive in the MacPro. When I carried the drive home and connected it to my iMac, and opened the project, it was all online without needing to reconnect.

When I needed to work on the MacPro, I just took the project only, on a USB thumb drive, to the MacPro. When opened there it just worked fine. No reconnect. After working on the MacPro, if I took that project back to the iMac and it opened and connected automatically there too. Just to be safe, I set the drive as one of the targets in the ‘Search Folders’ setting in FCP System settings in both machines.

I did this back and forth for about 4 months editing alternately on both systems and keeping media at both locations too..
If new dailies were captured on the MacPro drive, I carried the Firewire drive there and cloned it again, so both drives were always identical. I used SuperDuper for the cloning, but you can also use Silverkeeper or Carbon Copy Cloner

When FCP opens a project, it simply looks for a drive by name and folder structure and doesn’t care if the drive is internal or Firewire. Clips, sub clips, sequences all connect perfectly. Also, FCP allows you to connect two drives of the same name, to one Mac simultaneously. Of course, I never opened the projects with both drives connected.

Not sure if this answers your query, but it’s another route.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Cody Walters]

David,

If I remember correctly, Media Manager will create a folder for video, audio, and graphics. It will create the main folder where you specify in the browser. If you already have 90% of your media on the portable hard drive, why not manually move over the other 10%?

Cody Walters

Mac Pro 2.26GHz 8 Core
16 GB 1066 MHz DDR3
Final Cut Studio 3
Adobe CS5 Master Suite
Panasonic HVX-200
Canon 7D

https://www.codywaltersvideo.com

[David Roth weiss]

[Cody Walters] “If I remember correctly, Media Manager will create a folder for video, audio, and graphics.”

Nope, it chucks all media into a single file.

[Cody Walters] “If you already have 90% of your media on the portable hard drive, why not manually move over the other 10%?
“

There are two reasons:

1) If you media manage you never have to relink or worry about things that won’t relink, which has been a problem for many in the past. That aspect of things is simply 100% seamless all the time when using Media Manager.

2) Invariably, when manually moving a project between drives or between facilities, human beings make errors, and they often forget one or more media files. Media Manager allows the computer database to gather all files, doing what computers do best and what what humans do worst, and again, it’s 100% seamless all the time.

In case you have noticed a trend Cody, I’m all about using computers to do what they do, while leaving the other work to the humans. Understand that in facilities here in L.A. there is simply no margin for error where things like file management are concerned. The demands of the creative and technical work are paramount to everything else, and the possibility of losing or leaving behind a single media file can have untold bad consequences. So, the workflows I promote take those possibilities out of the equation completely whenever possible.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums. Formerly host of the Apple Final Cut Basics, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Jason Jenkins]

[Cody Walters] “If I remember correctly, Media Manager will create a folder for video, audio, and graphics. It will create the main folder where you specify in the browser. If you already have 90% of your media on the portable hard drive, why not manually move over the other 10%?”

I just did it! It seems to have worked out fine. Media Manager created one media folder within the directory I specified, which is fine.

There didn’t seem like an easy way to track down the clips and move them manually, so I’m glad this method worked. Thanks for your help.

Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style!

[Jason Jenkins]

Neil, it’s always good to hear about real-life workflows that work. Thanks!

Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style!

[Jason Jenkins]

Thanks again, David. Everything is looking good!

Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style!