[Doug Metz]

[Richard Walton] “Will an external boot drive with OS X 10.8.5 and FCP 6.0.6 work with the MacBook Pro?”

No. You can’t / shouldn’t run versions of the OS that are older than the one that ships on your machine, and the new machine will (most likely) ship with Mavericks. Apple suggests that it may appear to work in some instances, but key functionality and stability will suffer. It is strongly discouraged.

I think you’re stuck with the tower unless / until you convert your legacy projects.

Doug Metz

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[Doug Metz]

[Trevor Asquerthian] “Right, but I get away with it with every other bit of software AND these aren’t changes that I’m losing because they weren’t saved yet – it loses metadata that is present in an older backup.”

Only thing I can think of is a corrupted database… I don’t think you’ll get it back.

When was the last time you repaired the disk and it’s permissions, etc.? I’d say this is the first step.

Also, stop forcing the machine down! Find out what the underlying problem is and fix it. Just because you ‘got away with it’ before doesn’t mean you can’t / won’t get bit. It’s bad practice and you know it.

Doug Metz

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[Doug Metz]

[Michael Hadley] “BTW, as I understand, the 2009 towers are only capable of 3G speed. You can use a 6G, just can’t fully maximize it.”

Yeah… I wanted to maximize the useful lifespan of the SSD in a world without a giant aluminum tower next to my leg. When my nMP arrives, this SSD will likely end up in my laptop’s optical drive bay.

Doug Metz

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[Doug Metz]

I’d recommend saving some cash and getting a smaller SSD for boot / apps. I don’t edit on the boot drive.

I got the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G for my 2009 Mac Pro (120GB), and it’s been great! I’ve got the other 3 bays set up with 2TB drives in RAID0 and work from those – backing up and transferring to externals / NAS as necessary.

Doug Metz

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EDIT: Corrected 2GB to 2TB… big difference! ;o)

[Doug Metz]

It’s not the Events or Projects folders that were in question, per se. It was the fact that FCX has been generating files on the boot disk (Camera Render Files, Effects Browser Thumbnails, etc.) that was the basis of the OP. Bret and Andy both noted that they can be safely deleted, so, question answered I guess. The link you provided in the previous post, though, has Bill suggesting that they not be deleted. Maybe that’s part of the reason Seth was confused.

The file structure makes sense, if you have projects and events on a disk. The part that doesn’t make sense is the fact that it’s still writing Peaks Data and Camera Render Files to the boot disk when there are NO projects, events, or media on it. None of the links provided (or the FCX documentation) cover those folders.

They don’t take up much space in the grand scheme, so I don’t particularly care if they’re there or not. Would be nice to have some official word on when and why they’re generated though, given all the attention paid to ‘file structure’.

Have a great weekend, everybody – drinks are on me!

Doug Metz

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[Doug Metz]

[Bret Williams] “They are what they say they are. Not everything gets stored in the event or project folder you determined. Effect browser thumbnails are simply that. In the effect browser, there are thumbnails. That’s what those are.

Sure. I said as much in my last post…

Render files, peaks data I think has to do with audio peaks, waveforms, or something. Could be for audio analyzation. Camera render files, thumbnail media, might be when you open an import window and it creates all the thumbnails for camera files. Or it could be stabilization data. I don’t know exactly, but it’s that sort of stuff. And it doesn’t take up much room.

I guessed as much, but as has been stated earlier, if it belongs to a specific event or project, why is it stored on the wrong drive? And why isn’t it documented?

They’re just caches. You can delete them and they’ll get recreated as needed. I mean, 110MB. Who cares, really. It’s like worrying about how big your preferences folder is getting.

The stuff that is NEEDED for projects is contained in the event and project folders.”

And this was the object of the exercise. I was simply trying to get everybody onto the right question. The OP asked about these folders, and was bombarded with answers that didn’t address them. Sometimes condescendingly. The space is negligible, sure. Knowing that your database isn’t going to blow up if you delete them is the tidbit I was after.

Thanks, Bret!

Doug Metz

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[Doug Metz]

The mystery, Andy, is that these folders do not exist anywhere else. If they were event or project specific, should they not be present on the drives where those events and projects live? Have a look for yourself. I have never had an event or project on my boot disk, let alone moved one from there, yet here these folders are in ~/Movies -> Final Cut Pro Events:

Camera Render Files -> Thumbnail Media -> 385 folders created from 7/12 through 10/13
Effect Browser Thumbnails -> 30 folders created from 7/12 through 9/12
Render Files -> Peaks Data -> 1,200 folders created from 7/12 through yesterday

7/12 is when I got the SSD and re-configured the system, post-FCS3. And as Seth pointed out, no mention of these in the documentation.

I suspect that if I delete them, they’ll regenerate as needed. But that’s just a guess. I can understand that Effect Browser Thumbnails should live here, as they’re system-specific. But certainly not the other two.

Doug Metz

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[Doug Metz]

Hey Seth,

Apparently, nobody bothered to really read and check what you were asking. My setup is a MacPro with a pile of RAM, a decent video card, 3-disk RAID, and a fairly small SSD for OS / apps. I connect various network, portable, and not-so-portable drives during the course of a day. The RAID is always online.

Because the SSD is so small, and because I don’t edit off my boot drive, I NEVER select it for Events or Projects. I get that some data needs to live there – Motion Templates comes to mind. Now, everybody, follow me here…

None, zero, nada, not even one of the Event folders on any of my drives contain the three folders that Seth mentioned. With the lone exception of my ~/Movies folder. They exist in the one place I never use for Events or Projects. They have varying numbers of folders with cryptic names and two files in each of those. It would appear that FCPX is using them – sometimes, but definitely not always. I’ve got 5,000 items in there for a total of 110 MB.

So now I’m curious, too.

Doug

Doug Metz

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[Doug Metz]

Bump:

https://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/download/Avid-Codecs-LE-2-3-9

Doug Metz

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[Doug Metz]

I concur. I’ve had some weird occurrences with eSATA cards as well… might be that a driver update and/or new shielded cable would stabilize things.

Doug Metz

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