After relocating projects to external drive, no Events exist on any drive

Thanks Luis.

My external drive is formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled),

and the two folders were indeed dropped at the root of the drive.

The folders were indeed also removed from the movies folder, as they were moved (not copied) from Movies to External drive (root).

Thomas

Thanks Andy, that's a little closer – as mentioned above it is formatted correctly, but I will follow your suggestion and move it back into the old location – and see what FCPX says to that.

As mentioned I first tried moving the projects within FCPX, but my local (macbook) disk was filling up completely, rather than freeing space. I will investigate more the best way to move projects including events and files, everything, onto an external drive. If you have suggestions, I'd appreciate it.

I hope to work directly from the external drive, with no project files on my computer.

(For reference it's a 2TB WD My Book Studio II connected via FireWide800 - and formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled))

Thanks guys,

Thomas

Oh dear.

So, the files and folders Final Cut Events and Final Cut Projects are back where they were - in my Movies folder. I don't want them here, but it's where they were. Now back in FCPX:

In the Event Library, the events from before are still missing. I can't figure out how to get them back.

In the Projects Library, the folders and the projects within are there again – however the media appears disconnected (the red warning) – which is odd because all files are back where they were, and all drives ever connected are connected. There is access to all files on any drive (alongside the External drive mentioned before, there's also a smaller external drive attached, with all original footage).

In other words, all files now exist both on the MacBook HD and the External drive – with additional copies and footage on the smaller external drive. It should all be available for FCPX – but it's like back in the old days of FCP, except I have learned that FCPX doesn't have a reconnect media function.

A little lost here – anyone?

Thanks a lot,

Thomas (now worried)

Hey again Luis,

No, disconnecting the drives and restarting FCP X does not change anything – whether I restart Final Cut before or after a drive restart.

However my events are on the HD and visible as such – just not sorted in the folders/collections from their original location on the HD. Let me try to give a better overview:

Events:

My files (clips, graphics etc.) are all available in the Clips section next to Event Library, but located on my External drive – nothing on the HD. I copied them back to the original location on the HD, but they remain only on the External. They are not categorized into folders on the External (as they were on HD), but nevermind that. So: Events appear, but only in one location.

Projects:

My projects exist in these locations – via the Project Library:

HD (my Home / Macbook drive)

– all projects are here, but none of the actual media is connected – everything red.

External (the 2TB drive)

– same as above.

So identically the projects are there, both on my computer and my external drive, but the media (video) is disconnected.

If I choose any event in the Event Library > All Clips and Reveal in Finder, I can see that there is a file alias next to each of those .mov file on the drive, but the video file itself is there as well. The same is the case for the copies on my local HD. So in Finder everything is identical on HD and External, but only External shows up in Final Cut, and its media is disconnected from the projects.

I hope this information helps.

Thanks again, Thomas

I should add that the files are very much present on my local drive, clogging up my system. Pretty much no space left on my computer. I could delete it if only I am sure to connect my files (on my External) to my projects (on my External) and everything would be okay.

Hi Andy,

No worries, thanks for your time in any event. I've supplied a picture overview below instead. You were right that FCP X does not recognize a duplicate project on seperate drives; indeed the events are there when I dismount the External drive - but still disconnected in the timeline. I'll paste the images below for reference to others experiencing the same.

Final Cut Event Library + Project Library both viewing HD (home/macbook):

Final Cut Event Library + Project Library both viewing Potosi (External Drive):

Finder viewing files on HD (home/macbook):

Finder viewing files on Potosi (External Drive):

Final Cut Event Library with External not connected - the events are back on HD!

... but media is still disconnected.

But perhaps we should end the discussion under this heading, since it is now a matter of reconnecting the media, and hence another discussion?

Your reply answers my question of re-finding my events - but I still have the problem of all my files being disconnected, and there doesn't seem to be an easy way to reconnect. Dragging event into timeline an Replace will overwrite the timeline element and not address my edits a.k.a. paste into the right place.

And yes, I did use Finder to move everything originally.

Hi Ben, thanks for chipping in.

Reimporting will probably work to restore my events and organizing them, yes – I will do that for my future events.

However, as mentioned above, my problem is how to reconnect the events with the projects – even if I have to do it manually (dragging every event into the timeline, see below), a Replace command will not replace it correctly – that way I'll have to make my edits all over again. This can't be the way.

Thanks for the help you guys. I have been struggling some more with the issue of reconnecting the clips with little luck; you last idea Andy – opening each disconnected clip in its own timeline and dragging the original event to Replace did in sort of work – but not quite. Edits were still a little out of sync, and any clip adjustments (such as colour correction) were gone, sadly. So there is a lot of reconstruction to be done still.

I have decided to start over – reimport all my footage into new events from and to the external drive, keeping only my running copy of FCP X on my MacBook, and every file on the external drive.

As long as I keep all footage, files, projects, everything, within their respective folders on the same location on the HD, I should be able to work uninterrupted on my FCPX projects, yes? And if every I need to move to another location, this must be done stricly from within FCPX – Finder is definitely trouble. Well, for FCPX anyway.

Temperamental horse and all, I must say that still this doesn't bode so well for my experience with Final Cut Pro X. I thought it would be more clever than previous versions (really I did just move it onto the external drive, and then back again to the exact same location when things went bad).

Thanks again for your help.

Thomas