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Moving projects between multiple computers with FCP X. Is it possible?
Hi All
I run a editing lab at a university art department and we are considering what to do with our editing software. I have been doing some research on FCP X and one of our faculty linked Walter Biscardi’s article on the Creative Cow Magazine.
https://magazine.creativecow.net/article/final-cut-pro-x-whats-missing-for-some-pros
One particular part caught my attention.
Cannot collaborate with other editors. You can’t simply hand off a project file to another editor who has the same media like you could with previous versions of FCP. All of your project organization is now globally contained in the application rather than in your project file. You would literally have to give that other editor your computer to open your project with all of your organization.
Is this still the case? Has Apple updated FCP X to allow working on multiple machines? This would be a big issue for us as currently students will work on FCP7 in the classroom and then copy their projects and media to an external HD and move to the editing lab after class ends. If you can’t move between multiple computers FCP X would be real problem.
Any info on this issue or whether there are simple work-arounds would be extremely helpful.
Thanks
Nikhil
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3 Replies
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Definitely not accurate. Projects and events can be copied to another drive, and opened on another computer. Once the media folders are copied, then all you have to do is replace the event and project file, so it can be very portable.
I edit on 2 computers, my work and my laptop. I keep my project and event on an external drive, which opens fine on both machines as soon as I plug in the drive.
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I teach at a university (we have a huge film-digital media department, with over 450 majors), and we run several computer labs. Students have their own drives (FireWire) and they use either FCP 7 or FCP X.
There is absolutely no problem having projects reside on students’ external drives and having them plug into any workstation and editing flawlessly on either FCP 7 or X. (Of course, FCP 7 projects are edited on FCP 7, and X projects edited on FCP X respectively).
I simply don’t understand the statement: “You can’t simply hand off a project file to another editor who has the same media like you could with previous versions of FCP. All of your project organization is now globally contained in the application rather than in your project file. You would literally have to give that other editor your computer to open your project with all of your organization.” As long as the project refers to an event or a group of events on the external drive, then that project is self contained–no need to hand off “your computer to open your project with all of your organization.”
Each student can have their own projects on their own external drive. PERIOD!
If they want to collaborate, they can hand their drive to the collaborator, or simply make copies of the “Event” and “Project” folders and have other people edit. (But like in FCP 7, you would have to figure out how to reconcile different work being done simultaneously on the same project timeline by two different people at the same time). However, if different people work on different parts of the film/video, then there is no problem.
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Great.
Thanks for the input.
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