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Should I Backup Camera Cards?

Every time I come back from a shoot, I always archive the footage from my card to my hard drive, but then when I import into Final Cut X, it copies all of my original files and converts them into a folder called "Original Media" using filename (id).mov. Then, if I want to optimize the footage, FCX makes yet another copy of the footage. This is taking up a lot of space on my hard drive, and usually I just delete the FCX files once I’m done with the project, but now what happens when I want to work with those events again? Is there a way to reconnect the missing files with my original archived footage on my hard drive?


Is it worth it to continue making straight backups of my cards? Or should I just import to FCPX straight from the card and use the "Original Media" folder as my backup? Can I trash the transcoded ProRes 422 media files when I'm done editing the project, assuming I can recreate them if I ever revisit it?


Also, does anyone have better alternatives to backing up thier work other than Excluding all the "Render" and "Transcoded Media" folder from Time Machine manually? This is very annoying and time consuming.


In FCP 7 all of this was very easy, but that has unfortunately changed in this version. Any help is appreciated.


Kurtis

Mac Pro 8-core, 8TB storage, 12GB ram, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Jun 5, 2012 10:15 AM

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6 replies

Jun 5, 2012 10:35 AM in response to ksensenig

There is no one workflow fits all productions or situations. Some general rules of thumb. It's always best to make separate archives of your cards on a separate drive, either using the FCP archive function or Disk Utility or simply make a folder folder each card.


If you use one event for one production, when you're done with the production, you can back up the event and its asociated projects to a separate drive. Throw away the ProRes files and the any render and thumbnail files for the events and for the project. You can trash the render files from inside FCP or manually from the backup drive. The simplest way is to select the project you want to back up and duplicate it to your archive drive with the used event but without the render files. I'd still manually clean out the projects and events after FCP duplicated it.

Jun 5, 2012 12:03 PM in response to Tom Wolsky

The situation in which I am shooting requires me to keep backups of my footage, in case I need to revisit the project and make changes. In FCP 7 my workflow allowed me to make these backups of my cards, and then convert this backup to ProRes 422 while I edited, then discard the ProRes version when I was done editing. Then, if I ever had to revisit the project, it would automatically recreate the ProRes files from my card backup.


This felt like an elegant solution. I didn't waste disk space with the massive ProRes files, yet I could go back anytime and automatically recreate them if I wanted. Furthermore, I just set Time Machine to backup the folder with my card archives, but set it to ignore the Capture Scratch folder that contained those massive ProRes files that I didn't need to backup (because I could just recreate them).


What I want is an elegant solution like this in FCP X. The million dollar question is: Does such a solution exist, or is this ease and simplicity a thing of the past?


Any help would be greatly appreciated!


Kurtis

Jun 5, 2012 12:09 PM in response to ksensenig

To summarize my above post, the solution needs to:


1. Allow an archive of all cards, that Time Machine can back up

2. Allow ProRes files to be created and recreated from the above card archive. If the ProRes files are deleted to clear disk space, they should be able to be easily recreated. These ProRes files should be able to go in a folder that Time Machine can ignore.

3. There should not be any other files needed or created, such as the "Original Media" folder (since this is just a redundancy of the card archive, which wastes disk space)

4. Data and markers added in the Event in FCP X should be able to be preserved, even if the ProRes files are deleted (this was possible in FCP 7)

Should I Backup Camera Cards?

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