[Sasha Hussey]

Thank you everyone for your suggestions. (and one last question)

At this point, it works well enough to just set up a disk image for each student to save their FCP X library into. When they eject it at the end of their work session, FCP X won’t be able to see their library the next time it’s launched. Along the same lines, they can instead save their FCP X library into their own external storage device when setting up a new project. I will put a reminder on the desktop background for students to do this when beginning a new project.

Is there a way to have FCP X automatically close out of all libraries when quitting? This way, when relaunched, it will prompt the user to either open an existing library or create a new one. I think this would really help clue people in to where their project is going to be saved.

Thanks again!

Sasha

[Sasha Hussey]

I ended up just reducing the pre-comp to 15,000×11,250 and re-animated it with the graph editor. I knew from the start I might have to do this, but I tried everything else. The huge pre-comp image is a composited drawing of a landscape I scaled-up to simulate the camera “falling” from the sky. The hard part was tweaking keyframes with the graph editor to make the acceleration look realistic.
Anyway, now I know to test the image with the preview monitor set to “full” before I animate at half or quarter preview resolution so I know I can export.
I still learned some new stuff from everybody’s tips, like the “purge frames” feature in the secret menu and disabling the preview monitor with caps lock.

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions!

[Sasha Hussey]

Thanks for the tips everybody, but it’s still not working.
It’s just that one huge 30,000×22,500 pre-comp within a 800×600 comp so I tried pre-rendering the pre-comp but it still immediately says “image buffer error” before it renders even 1 frame.
I tried that secret menu “purge frames” idea but since it won’t even render a frame, I guess that’s no use.
I put on caps lock to disable the preview monitor also.
I hope I don’t have to resort to reducing the resolution of the pre-comp because I’d have to re-animate it which would take awhile. Also, I need that resolution to be able to “zoom-in” on specific detail using the 800×600 composition. Why does After Effects allow me to make a composition that it can’t render out at full-resolution?

Any other ideas?
If not, thanks anyway for the help everybody.