Worst Crash… Event corrupted, Project files ok?

[Jack Niedenthal]

Are you sure your event file is only 666.66 MBs big, or 666 GBs? I had a very serious crash too because my event file had grown to a whopping 758 GBs and I was using compound clips a lot at the same time within the same event folder (this is for a 90 minute feature film). You can read about my FCPX adventure here:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/37972

Eventually an Apple representative read of my tribulations on this CCow website, contacted me directly, and helped me get things back online (though I lost about a week’s worth of work). The fix involved using one of the backup versions of the event. The key when making projects with FCPX is keeping the event files small. I made 2 mistakes, one was loading all the footage I shot for the film into one event (this sounded logical to me at the time I began doing it). Then I started doing everything in compound clips, which apparently bloats the hell out of everything… Maybe that was happening with your multiclips action.

I do use Event Manager as this helps speed up FCPX by not loading every single project and event when i open up FCPX, only the ones I need to work on.

I still find FCPX tough to work with. A lot of spinning beach balls and wait time even though I have an i7 iMac. Sometimes it takes 20-30 minutes from the time I hit command/quit until the program finally shuts down. FCPX also takes forever to load even using event manager.

I know there aren’t a lot of solutions in what I wrote here, but I have felt your pain!

Jack Niedenthal
Microwave Films of the Marshall Islands
http://www.microwavefilms.org
iMac i7 using Lion 10.7.x, HPX 170 using only one 64GB card
I live on an island in the middle of the Pacific, YOU are my only resource.

[James Ewart]

I would have thought the whole point is to have all footage for a specific “project” in one event…if Apple are saying that’s abad idea then I am seriously having severe doubts about the software.

Does FCPX keep backups of the Event or do you…is there some hidden place I do not know about?

Backups is an issue. I am backing up projects by physically copying and pasting everything into a new project every day… is there a better way?

Interested to hear more about this Apple person…if it’s bad idea to load everything into on Event then we are all surely doomed.

I guess that means rushes from each days shoot on a movie should be in a different event but 12 camera angles from a two hour concert for example? Is it not okay to put them all in one Event?

[Bret Williams]

[James Ewart] “Backups is an issue. I am backing up projects by physically copying and pasting everything into a new project every day… is there a better way?”

Use the duplicate project command? Right click on project and choose duplicate project. You’ll find a number of options.

The workflow I’ve noticed most are using is pretty much how I dealt with projects in FCP 7. But now, it’s a little different, and integrated into the software better.

In the Project library, create a folder for your project. Right now I’m doing a retirement video. I’ll have a folder called retirement. Inside the folder I create the project called “Retirement v1” for example. I do my versioning and backups right there. If I want to lock a version in place, I duplicate it and call the new version “retirement v2” and quit working on v1. Or, just for a backup, I might duplicate a project and call it backup 1 or whatever. If you want to work like FCP 7 even more, some people put all their other asset files (psds, scripts, after effects files, etc) within the folder that contains all the projects. Works if you’ve got one big drive like a pegasus raid.

As for bloating, I don’t know. I’ve done a 45min 3 camera multicam h264 native videos without any slowdown. And it was chock full of stills and bullet points on top of the multicam. That must’ve had 5 hours of footage loaded into the event. All h264. No prores, no proxys. A good number of compound clips for nesting bullet point builds and such but nothing outlandish.

I don’t actually copy any footage INTO the event. it’s all linked to the folder where I copied the media from the cards.

[Steve Connor]

[James Ewart] “I would have thought the whole point is to have all footage for a specific “project” in one event…if Apple are saying that’s abad idea then I am seriously having severe doubts about the software.

Interested to hear more about this Apple person…if it’s bad idea to load everything into on Event then we are all surely doomed.”

I don’t agree with this at all, I regularly have events with 50-100 hours of footage and yes there is a slowdown on initial load but apart from that FCPX handles it very well. I do use Event Manager to make sure that I load only the events I am currently working on though.

Compound clips do seem to be a major problem though, I only use them when I have to

Steve Connor
“The ripple command is just a workaround for not having a magnetic timelinel”
Adrenalin Television

[Tom Brooks]

I had an event that lost a lot of clips after a crash. This left me with a project with missing corresponding clips in the event. Because the event still contained the most recent clips I was using, I didn’t notice it for quite a while–thus rendering the event backup useless. When I finally needed to use some more, similar clips, the event no longer contained them.

My edit was almost done, so I tried “Duplicate Project and Used Clips Only.” This created a new event for the duplicate project to reference. It seemed to contain everything I need, including the used clips with favorites marked. All my compound clips functioned as expected. The end result was that I had a functioning project and an event for it to reference. I assume unused clips were not contained in the new event.

I am considering buying Pro Versioner backup software that can keep sequential backups of the event and project databases.