"file access denied" error

Hi(Bonjour)!

Be sure that you have "permission" to access files on external Hard drive.

Try to select the external HD icon, use command-i shortcut to get info about this drive, and check the "permissions" tab. You must have acces to write and read privileges.

Michel Boissonneault

Do you log into the admin account before running FCE ? If not you might try that.

You wrote that your project file has read/write access (and also some clips).
Who is the owner and group of the file ? You can check it by clicking on the small Details triangle on the bottom of the Get Info window for the files. In my case I am the owner (with admin privileges) with read/write permissions.

At first I though your problem was the external disk: then you could also make sure you had the "Ignore ownership..." set on the Get Info window for your external volume... but then you wrote you have the same problem with the project files copied to the internal disk. And this doesn't apply to internal disks.

Piero

It's probably a permissions problem. Even though some of your clips appear to be "read/write" there are probably other files in the project, maybe even the project file itself, that are secured to your MBP user account (because that's where you created them). When you copied the files from your external HD to your iMac's internal HD they carried their original permissions with them.

I don't know how important it is for you to preserve file/folder permissions on your external HD but if it's not a big deal to you, the simplest fix would be this:

1. Reattach the external HD to your MBP, log back in to the account you used when you set up your scratch disk location on your external HD.
Then, in the Finder, select the external HD, do File > Get Info, click Ownership & Permissions, then CHECK the box that says "Ignore permissions on this volume". Close the Get Info window.

Note: if you are going to move your projects back & forth between 2 Macs, you should use your external HD as the scratch disk location AND make sure "Ignore permissions on this volume" is set.

2. Then, with your external HD still connected to your MBP, use the Finder to select the Final Cut Express Documents folder on your external HD. Do File > Get Info, click Ownership & Permissions. Then set the permission for Others to "Read & Write" and click "Apply to enclosed items".

This will cause OSX to ignore permissions for all folders/files written to the drive in the future and will ensure that every file/folder in your Final Cut Express Documents folder is set to Read/Write for all users on any machine.

And btw - since you copied your files/folders to your iMac's internal HD before doing all this (above), you should get rid of those copies because they still have the old (original) permissions.

After you copied the files from your external HD to your iMac's internal drive, did you delete the files from your external HD? Or are the original files still on your external HD?