I’m not able to open an event in Final Cut Pro

Slow down... it looks like you may have one library that is corrupted but it is a bit unclear all the talk about folders and all.

What is "open half way"? Do you have the beach ball? Does the application crash?

Is this on only one event or one library?

Please explain exactly what you see where.

Thank you for your reply.

I now understand that there is a problem with one library specifically.

There are still things that are not clear to me.

What is "actic"? Or "artic"? How and where are you determining that you had imported +9000 clips? I am not aware of any way to know this unless you open the library (which in this case you are not able to)

By "restore FCP folder" do you mean you used Time Machine to restore a folder (presumably where you had your media or libraries) to a previous state?

What drives are you using or restoring to/from?

There is no specific path to store libraries, they can be almost anywhere you like.

When you click "Locate" it just shows you the last place you opened, you are free to navigate to the location you want. It is important to take notice where you store your libraries.

Thanks. Artic - ok. I have to wonder what led them to change from a clearly articulated name to such a cryptic one (probably some rights issue, as I don't see how the new name is an advantage from a marketing viewpoint). But I digress.

Artic does show a yellow warning, indicating that something is amiss with that event or library.

Does Artic provide any additional information about the problem? (I don't have this application, though I tried it once and found it great; I just don't have that many libraries to catalog).

I agree, missing media should not affect the ability to open the library.

I don't know what happened, but at this point you may have to try and open a recent backup library, and see if you recover from there.

By default, backup libraries are saved in ~/Movies/Final Cut Backups, inside a folder named after the library in question. Backup libraries do not include the media, but since most of your media is external, that should not be a problem.

I suggest you navigate to that folder, copy one of the most recent backups somewhere else, and rename it, then double-click to open in FCP. What happens? If it still does not open, try a slightly older backup.

Once you get one that opens, relink the media if necessary (all external media should just work without you doing anything). See how much of the work may need to be redone (of course, that will depend on the age of the backup you can open).

If you properly renamed the backup, you should start to have backups of that.

I can't say why this happened, but the fact that FCP does these backups means that in case it happens again there is a way to recover.

Incidentally, this is one situation where keeping the media separate from the library helps immensely.

I always work that way. Many people, even seasoned professionals on this forum, advocate for managed media (i.e. keeping everything inside the library, making it self contained). I prefer to organize media in Finder, and keep it separate (and backed up separately as well, of course). This makes moving a library to another drive or mac a breeze, and also as in this case recovering using a backup far simpler.

In the interest of completeness: if you had the media stored inside the library, you'd have to go inside it in Finder, and copy or move the media files (which would be in separate folders throughout the library bundles) out of the bundle, and store them somewhere else, and then relink. With the media separate, it just appears there, since the library already points to the correct locations.