[Joby Anthony jr]

Thanks Jeremy for the clarification; you’re right (obviously). I wasn’t thinking in terms of a proxy only workflow straight out of the Camera Archive. I guess to do that, you’d have to use an external transcoding workflow outside FCPX.

In our workflow, we only keep the Camera Archive as a backup, allowing FCPX to do the rewrap and working with that media for the rest of the project (and making proxies/optimized as needed–and throwing that away at project’s end for archiving).

— Joby.

[Joby Anthony jr]

Jumping off of Vince’s thread: backup. . . .

My encouragement would be to budget with this in mind. For example, buying a RAID and setting it up as a 1 or 5 isn’t backing up, it just means you can keep going while you replace a drive. So if you opt for a 12 TB RAID, you probably should buy two–or at least be comfortable putting a bunch of smaller drives together to add up to 12–again, as backup.

But, backing up in such a tight turnaround does take time, like transcoding. So definitely a risk assessment all things considered. A proxy workflow, however, might buy you some time by gaining speed on current equipment, but again, at the risk of time. Editing native has its own pitfalls as you’re finding out. But getting off your internal drive and on to a RAID will be a big step in the right direction with such a large amount of footage each week.

— Joby.

[Joby Anthony jr]

You should be able to generate proxies without generating optimized media. You can either do this upon Import, or later by right-clicking the media in the Browser and selecting Transcode Media. Optimized and Proxy are different selections.

What Jeremy is referring to is a proxy/optimized option for just a media range. FCPX doesn’t work like that–at least in most scenarios. Larry Jordan has an article discussing how this works:

https://larryjordan.com/articles/fcp-x-import-clips-vs-import-clip-ranges/

Might be something there that will aid your workflow.

— Joby.

[Joby Anthony jr]

Apple does/did provide a trial of an older version of FCPX that could be installed and sit next to a current version of FCPX. In other words, you don’t have to uninstall one to install the other. That trial allows you to update the project and prep if for the newer version of FCPX going forward. Search their support pages for it. Also, check your other thread–I think someone may have left a link for it there.

— Joby.

[Joby Anthony jr]

Updates should show up in the App Store, but there very well could be times when an update wouldn’t show if it wasn’t compatible with your current OS. For example, I believe FCPX 10.4 requires OS 10.13. So it’s one of those things where you kind of have to keep an eye on both. In my situation, I’m in a corporate environment that has a desktop image managed at the IT level well-beyond my control. So my App Store updates are turned off. That means I have to occasionally manually check for updates. But I do try and stay up-to-date through a few industry newsletters and generally have an idea when something has popped up.

Having said that, nothing is foolproof. For example, I’ve stayed on top of updates, but somewhere missed one of the more important tid-bits of information–that you’ve found out the hard way. One of those updates left behind older FCPX projects. When they converted to libraries I think in 10.1(?). Anyway, it was a rude awakening. Thankfully Apple provided that older trial and I spent quite a bit of time trying to future-proof older projects by converting them with the trial before it ran out.

Which brings up a good point about archiving older projects. It’s one thing to move forward via the latest updates, but another to keep an eye on the past in terms of being able to open older projects. And Apple (unfortunately) hasn’t done us too many favors in that regard. For example, I’ve got a ton of stuff in FCP7. Which means to future proof those projects, I probably should, at the very least, export an XML of each project in the hopes of being able to get most of it recovered in PPro (or using the 7toX app)–should I ever need to get ahold of one of those older/aging projects. I’ve got one more machine in the shop that will still run FCP7 before IT takes that one away and upgrades it. I believe it’s 10.13 that goes full 64-bit and thus leaves behind FCP7.

One eye in the future and one eye in the past with a lot of troubleshooting in-between. It’s what we do. Good to hear you’ve been able to get yourself back up and running (or limping along). ☺

— Joby.

[Joby Anthony jr]

And correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s no way to see from inside FCPX whether the clip is the actual file or an alias. The only way to confirm the original clip’s location is from outside FCPX, either via Terminal or actually going into the Library package file via Finder.

Again, unless I’ve missed it, that’s one feature to FCPX that’d be invaluable (IMO).

— Joby.

[Joby Anthony jr]

Dying harddrive will definitely cause the pinwheel (LOT of pinwheel in fact–just experienced this myself). As will a nearly full harddrive. A general rule-of-thumb is to not fill up a drive more than 85% (so 1 TB drive = 850 GB of usable space). You need that 15% headroom on the drive or bad things can (will?) happen, similar to what you’ve described.

The black holes sound like dropped frames. That could either happen on the capture side or the import side. Hopefully you have the original card structures to go back to. That will tell you which side that problem is on.

In terms of copy/paste from one project, event, or library to the next–no big deal as long as you do it all inside of FCPX. It’ll track all of that for you pretty seamlessly.

I’d say concentrate on the harddrive issue first. 1. Don’t edit on the internal drive, use an external drive (USB3 or TB). 2. buy two new drives at the same time (one for edit, one for back up–always by drives in pairs).

And forgive all the workflow suggestions here if they’re already familiar to you.

— Joby.

[Joby Anthony jr]

In addition to Steve’s thoughts, switch the View to Better Performance, and consider creating Optimized media (or even Proxies for that matter).

There’s also the outside chance one of the files has gotten corrupted. Might take awhile to figure out which one. Creating new libraries with a re-import might help troubleshoot that.

Also, double-check any effects you’ve applied, especially third-party plug-ins. I know NeatVideo will slow things to crawl. If it’s an effect, disabling it should get you through the edit. Just remember to turn it back on at time of export.

Other considerations too could be the extent you’re using multicam and compound clips.

And more extensive troubleshooting would include doing a Safe Boot (sort of a soft reset of caches at the system level), and resetting FCPX Preferences. Here’s a Larry Jordan article that can help walk through those considerations. It’s older, but still relevant:

https://larryjordan.com/articles/five-step-trouble-shoot/

— Joby.

[Joby Anthony jr]

Walk carefully if digging into the actual library file to extract the original files. It can be done, but it can also wreak havoc. This article by Larry Jordan, however, will help. It’s older, talking about 10.1, but the principles, I believe are still relevant for 10.4:

https://larryjordan.com/articles/fcp-x-convert-managed-to-external-media/

— Joby.

[Joby Anthony jr]

Saw this article just yesterday. Although a year old, the info is still relevant, and might help you walk through pros, cons, and various solutions:

https://blog.frame.io/2017/08/07/prores-on-windows/

Dovetailing the article and reinforcing Shane’s advice, friend with a Mac and Compressor probably your best option.

–Joby.