Photos showing up as Alias in Final Cut Pro

Tom, here's the system and computer type

Here's the FCP window where it shows the list of stuff and puts the image under "ALIAS." I used the one in the jpeg list and am going to output the video now using that. But I am concerned about going forward to have a better "practice" about handling this.

And next is a finder window which shows the path at the bottom of the window. It's definitely on the 6TB drive, and the Synology label in that list is just the name of the folder of things that I have to move onto the Synology when I rebuild my data files (more fallout from the Drobo crash); it is nothing to do with the physical Synology.

I appreciate any thoughts this might raise for you.

Thanks.

I have a 6 TB attached drive where I keep these photo files and I pulled it from there and dropped it on the file list of my project.

Jogged by your question I just went in and used the import media at the top left of the FCP workspace (arrow) and went through the file lists to get to the drive, and that folder, and that piece and imported it that way.

It still ended up as an alias.

I was able to import a jpg of the piece. (I just had gotten into the habit of using tiffs.)

I don't know exactly what you mean by the Desktop and Documents feature, if it is something different from what I described as my second try above.

It is not an iCloud folder.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Roz

On the 6TB drive it's not the library it's just a folder I keep photos in of my artwork. These are the original scans, straight from the scanner to the 6TB drive and then I call those files up into Photoshop and color correct saving them as a renamed copy of the original so I know the work has been done.

I'm not sure how it is formatted, it is connected at the back of the computer and handles files just the same as the machine's internal drive would handle them. (I'm sorry I don't know the technical terms for much.)

The library was on a Drobo. But my drobo died in 2020 and it was replaced with a Synology which I'm not using. By that I mean I don't have the same connection path to it. This is a huge mess you really don't want to hear about. But it's still a work in progress. When the Drobo died my tech guy gave me the 6TB to set up a new series of files. Video and art. I open FCP and drag what I need into it from that and I do my edit and out put to the 6TB.

Now that I write this all out I'm worried that I have unwittingly created a new library on my machine's hard drive since I didn't have the path to the Drobo. I'm going to have to look that up and see how I check that.

I'm beginning to think I'm in too stupid a situation, without enough knowledge, for you to even help.

But if any of this makes sense to you and you have a suggestion let me know.

All I know is that when the drobo worked I had my separate files of videos and art scans in dedicated folders and then had my library also on the drobo. And as I mentioned the change to the Syn. was very confusing because I had to change file "protocols" or something on that so FPC would recognize the libraries. And because of that and the whole disaster of the switch over I didn't use the Syn for FCP in the intervening time and started a new library on the 6TB (or so I thought)

Again, if you have any thoughts let me know and I'll try them out tomorrow when I come in. Thanks for your patience.

Tom, The 6TB drive says it's "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" under format.

When I look at Library properties with the library selected at the bottom of the list it says "Storage Used for Media and Motion Content" and then lists the Seagate_6TB and says also "Original 22.8GB. Optimized 97.5MB, Proxy --, Content--"

Roz

Tom, when I'm in FCP there is a list for the project's media, Waveform audio for my voice over clips, Quicktime movie I brought in to edit (which is my original ecamm recording, and then a list of JPEG images. Finally at the bottom of that was a heading "Alias" and my tif kept showing up in that portion of the list.

Since I don't know what was going on with it and definitely know it was an original, and did re-import it (after taking out the first one) using the method you suggested, I decided to just use the jpeg.

I'll finish my edit tomorrow and try to output it all and see what happens. I'm thinking since I'm not using anything labeled Alias it should be OK, but I'm concerned going forward.

Should I not be using tiffs? (I started using them years ago because I had a quality issue on one film when I used jpegs, but perhaps that was a fluke?)

I really appreciate you trying to help me work out what is going on here. Thank you for your efforts.

Roz