Final Cut Pro Documents folder safe to appear on system drive?

[Peter Dunphy]

Hi guys

I’ve tried deleting the FCP Documents folder from the system drive, but each time I reopen FCP, it reappears on the system drive – won’t go away.

Now that I’m heavily into logging all my material now, I’m experiencing a slow startup time (around 20-30 secs) when I open FCP and am often getting the little ‘timer’ circle popping up ‘hanging’ during playback of material in the viewer – could this be because of the FCP Documents folder that won’t go away I wonder?

I’ve made my playback ‘low’ quality and unticked ‘scrub high quality’ but am still getting the hanging every 10 mins approx (each ‘hang lasts about 5 secs’ but can be pretty irritating)

I’m using a brand new 2 x 2.66 GHz Quad-Core INtel Xeon and 8 GB Apple RAM with all software updates applied in advance of using FCP to capture my material. I’m also using a Sonnet D800 Raid 5 with 1 hot spare.

Any tips would be really appreciated!

Peter

[David Roth weiss]

Your preferences are probably still pointing at the system drive. So do the following in this order:

1. Point your system settings to the raid in FCP
2. Close FCP
3. Delete the folders on the system drive
4. Trash your prefs
5. For good measure fix disk permissions in Apple Disk Utility.
6. Reopen FCP and you should be good to go.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

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

[Peter Dunphy]

Hi David

Thanks once again for your prompt advice – you’re a gentleman.

Okay I tried what you suggested but unfortunately the Final Cut Pro Documents reappeared at the same following location:

Macintosh HD > Users > me > Documents > Final Cut Pro Documents

There is nothing in the folder at all, just the hollow ‘Final Cut Pro Documents’

In case there’s perhaps a problem with its location, my FCP Projects folder is located at:

Macintosh HD > FCP Projects (it sits alongside ‘Applications’, ‘Library’, ‘System’ and ‘Users’

I’m thinking…perhaps I might need to move my FCP Projects folder to the location where the empty Final Cut Pro Documents folder keeps reappearing.

The Final Cut Pro Documents folder seems to reappear within my ‘Users > me >’ whereas my FCP Projects folder (where I have been using ‘Save As’ in FCP to save my project, is located ‘outside’ my ‘Users’ identity, if you know what I mean?!

I verified and also repaired my system drive.

I ran a verify on my 1TB MyBook which backs up my system drive.

I did not run a repair or verify on the D800 Raid 5, as I’m not sure whether this could cause any problems or not.

I turned off thumbnails and kept all my playback and sound on low quality with high quality scrubbing turned off.

When I experience the hang it’s when I’m scrubbing through footage in the viewer for logging purposes, not in the timeline.

I have 861 GB free on system disk.

On the Sonnet D800 I have 2.33TB available (capacity 5.46TB) – although I’m constantly creating new, shorter subclips of ProRes footage captured from full 60 minute via Media Manager so the amount of memory available will rise over the next few days.

Any more thoughts would be really appreciated!

All the best

Peter

[David Roth weiss]

Darn Peter, you’ve got me stumped now and I’m at wits end. I’ve told you all my tricks now, and I really have none left for you. I hope someone else a trick or two that works for you…

David

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

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

[Peter Dunphy]

Hi David

Thanks so much for all your effort.

I suppose my main concern right now is whether the hang I experience will get worse once I transfer clips to the timeline and begin editing in earnest.

If FCP”s already slightly hanging when just scrubbing through clips in the viewer then I fear it won’t really improve.

I’m hoping that the hang with go away the more memory I free up on my hard drive. However, I still have my doubts about the positioning of my FCP Projects folder – could this be the cause of the problem?

Perhaps I could create a new project in FCP? Would I be able to retain the titled bins and sub-bins I’ve created if I do so?

If anyone else can offer any tips I’d be really grateful!

Peter