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Workflow suggestions for archiving projects??
Having just had a catastrophic Raid failure three days after completing this years pre-christmas commercials, its put me in mind of finding a better way to archive projects.
I had been predicting the failure for weeks (the raid was dangerously full) and was actually physically installing a new raid to share the load when the data became corrupted and rendered the entire 3.5tb as unusable. Fortunately, I have a tape backup of the entire raid so i just have to wait quite a few days for the data to be restored onto the new drives.
Anyway, as i can now start from scratch I have been wondering how other editors structure their project workflows.
As i said, i work in commercials, so its all pretty short form stuff. Currently, i tend to have files in a variety of locations mainly because thats the default setups the various apps suggested when i first started using FCP. Now, two years and a thousand commercial down the line, i am not totally happy with those defaults.
Is anyone using a workflow that would allow the editor to have all the files relevant to a single job stored within a master project folder? Ideally, i would like to have the Capture Scratch, Render files, Color (renders and project files) files, AE project files, etc all within one Master folder specific to that job. This would make backing up specific projects a whole lot easier.
I’d be really interested to hear how other have approached this problem (and before anyone suggests it – I do have shanes dvd, and will be watching it again when i get back in the edit suite!)
adam
Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK -
2 Replies
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Check out FCP Manager. It now can allow you to link certain presets to a certain project. That would mean you could set your capture scratch folders to wherever you want, and those prefs wold be linked to that project when you fire up FCP.
All of the other assets, you would have to organize yourself, which is easy enough.
Jeremy
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I’m not sure if this is what you’re looking for, but what I do is simply make a folder for each project on the root level of the volume I’m using and select that folder as the capture scratch folder. FCP, of course, creates the Capture Scratch, Render files, Audio Render Files in each respective project’s folder. The disadvantage is every time I work on another project I have to remember to reset the Capture Scratch prefs. For some people, switching back and forth between multiple projects often, it might drive one bonkers. The alternative is to set the Capture Scratch pref to volume level and allow FCP to separate the media into various project folders within the three standard folders.
I like creating discrete project folders because I have one folder at the root level which contains all elements for a particular project. If I have graphic and audio elements that I import into the project I organize them into various folders within that one folder, including DVD output files, etc. When I’m finished with a project it’s a simple matter to decide what elements and footage I want to archive onto whatever media.
This is also why I think Apple should assign capture scratch prefs to the project. I’m going to check out FCP Manager.
-Russ
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