[Andreas Kiel]

Lucy,

To figure out the size for a new sparse bundle you should have a kind of planning before you start working with a project – if you want to work on this virtual volume.
For example If you know you will have around 100 GB of (encoded) source material and each clip will have effects etc. you know you will have maybe 3 times the amount of the 100 GB for render files and or optimized media etc. Then depending on the complexity of your FCPX project file add a GB ore more.

It also depends on how much space is available on the volumes where you save the sparse bundles.
Take the example I made in my last post. You can create 2 500 GB sparse bundles on 1 TB drive which at the start won’t need a lot of disk space. When you fill both of the sparse bundles up to their limit you probably will get a crash and at least some serious warnings and oddities before the crash happens.

The next thing is – probably I was a little bit unclear there – before you want you duplicate one project (including all related things) from one sparse bundle or image you have to make sure there is enough space on the source volume in this case your sparse (bundle). If there is not at least 20 % free space resize it. So opening the Finder info for this sparse image volume will show you the used space and the free space.
Duplicating from FCPX will collect all needed files first on the source volume and will verify each file collected. This often enough needs a lot of disk space – and it takes time.

X-Files Pro can be downloaded here.
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools/X-Files/index.html

It will help you to make Disk Image handling easier — though it can’t take all burden when working with them.
As said read the manual and will understand much better.

-Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools
X-Files Pro, tools for working with FCPX
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools/X-Files/index.html

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

[Andreas Kiel]

Lucy,

… how would you guess the size of the sparse bundle? I understand I need to double size it, but where in Finder should I look for the number? …
It’s pretty simple:
For a sparse image just click the image file in Finder and press cmd-I or just activate the “Size” column in the Finder window.
For a sparse bundle image mount it and do the same as described above with the finder info.

To answer your other question.
If you create a sparse image with a capacity of 500 GB it will cover 500 GB on your hard drive – regardless whether there are any files on it or not. That’s because the sparse image is just one file. You can fill it up to the limit. Once you reached the limit you have to resize it.
Sparse bundles are directories with some subdirectories in it, but they look to the user as same as sparse image when mounted. If you create a blank sparse bundle with a capacity of 500 GB it will cover about 50 MB on your disk that will grow when adding files. Deleting files though won’t make the covered disk space less. You have to unmount the sparse bundle image and “clean” the unused space with some terminal commands. The next advantage of sparse bundles is data security. Cause of of their structure in most cases the image can be repaired if only a few internal directories are damaged. This can’t be done with sparse images.

To work with disk image you may have a look at my X-File Pro and even if you don’t want to use it read the manual/help file.

-Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools
X-Files Pro, tools for working with FCPX
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools/X-Files/index.html

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

[Andreas Kiel]

Lucy,

Bill and Craig described pretty good where you have to look at.
Also as Craig said better use a sparse bundle – they are more safe and only cover the space needed for the real data – at least as long you don’t delete any files.

When duplicating projects there is always a buffer needed (means enough free space on the volume). It’s needed to verify the copies.
So expand your sparse image before mounting (safest would be double size).
Make as said the destination sparse as same as big.

Then use the FCPX duplicate functions and stay patient.

-Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

[Andreas Kiel]

Bill,

Thanks for the feedback.
Probably I wasn’t clear enough (I’m not native English speaker). Let me try to explain again.

XML can’t carry any font instructions (at least at the current state) it just transports characters for whatever title template you use. As XML by default is UTF-8 any character should be displayed fine with any template which are normally UTF-8 XMLs as well.
Even typing something into a title template can crash or cause serious problems

As explained in the link I gave in the post there seems to be a problem with CoreText which obviously affects also FCP X in certain (quite often) cases using kind of “non expected” characters.

And also as said — I can’t fix the bug. I only can help those people who run into this trap.
I might find some time next week to create a little app which does a “delete FCPX prefs and all the other things which are no good for FCPX” 😉

Regarding charging for SCDI:
You’re right.
There is a lot of work/time spent for this little app. And a lot of time spent by replying emails and explain how it works.
To make it even better I started the “X-Files Pro” project – a collection of little apps to make “X-Life” easier. The base version will be a few bucks. It will work like SCDI but with more features (reliable)

-Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

[Andreas Kiel]

Just for the records — it’s implemented now.

-Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

[Andreas Kiel]

Just a follow up after some tests.

If you create a sparse (bundle) image with either my X-Files Pro or Disk Utility etc. the “ignore ownership” is set to true.
But settings for groups are different. This means the admin (that’s your user name) does have all rights while any other users or groups only have read access.

So to modify this you have to be the “creator” of the sparse or sparse bundle.
Or you have to be the “superuser”

So what to do:
1) unmount the “Sparse (Bundle) Volume”.
2) select sparse(bundle) file.
3) in finder info panel for this file change all entries to Read & Write
4) using the tool popup select “Apply to enclosed items…” – this only available for sparse bundles.
5) mount the image.
6) check the mounted volume the same way (steps 3 and 4)

The new beta of X-Files Pro tries to do another approach.
When creating a sparse or sparse bundle you can make it “public”.
I also includes a drag’n drop option to perform the the steps 1-6 from above.

-Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

[Andreas Kiel]

[Georg P. Mueller] “Now I am able to open the project but final cut cannot save to the sparse bundle.”

[Jeremy Garchow] How do you know this. Do you get that warning about how it can’t save?

Jeremy,

Yes you will get a warning.

-Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

[Andreas Kiel]

Hi Georg,

As said this is kind of problem with the OS.
Every machine does have it’s own volume database and every user on every machine does have it’s own as well.

Have you used the “Apply to enclosed items…” after changing permissions?

Just a note here (even though I wrote that in several other threads already) which may also help others reading this thread.

If you create a sparse image it’s one file. If it is broken, it’s broken

If you create a sparse bundle it’s a directory with sub directories.
Apple uses sparse bundles for Time Machine for the following reason(s):
If a sparse bundle is corrupted it can be repaired automatically in most cases because only parts of the directory structure might be corrupted.
In other cases Disk Utility can be used.
In both cases though data might be lost.

Also Disk Warrior may help if the sparse bundle can be mounted.

-Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

[Andreas Kiel]

John,

There are two kind of titles.
One is a kind of “stand alone”
The other one “use clip connected”

You normally can see which kind they are. All these ones which do have this little landscape icon will influence the clip.

To make sure what will happen open a copy of the title in Motion. If there is a drop zone the title and it settings can influence the clip.

If you like that title and want to use it remove the drop zone and save it under new name/group/theme.

-Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

[Andreas Kiel]

Hello Georg,

I’m Andreas and love to hear you like my app.

And I’ve heard this issue happened to several people. And meanwhile I can reproduce it — took some time.
It’s not a thing which finally has to do something with my app but an OS issue. Even if you don’t use my app it will/can happen.
By default any sparsebundle ignores ownership — which doesn’t mean that read/writes are allowed.
If you move it to another computer the “volume.database” on that computer may be corrupted or “think” the bundle isn’t allowed to do read/write action.
I’m working on a solution with my X-Files Pro and I’m getting closer.
In the meantime you have to do 2(3) things.

Log in as user who is admin.

First select the sparsebundle file (the image must be unmounted) press cmd-I and make sure everybody can read and write. Otherwise press the unlock icon, log in and change the permissions. You may have to add you as additional (admin) user.

Then mount the bundle. Select the volume icon in Finder and do the same as above.

This will work. But it’s no fun and doesn’t mean it will work on additional computer without these steps. But at least you don’t have to copy the stuff which will take way more time than those few steps.

I will have a new version of X-Files Pro at the weekend which simplifies the procedure.

-Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil