Making a back up copy

tarsier123 wrote:

Russ, yes, I don't want to do via Finder I am trying to follow your suggestion using FCX and I am a bit cofused. What do you mean by putting a project in an event is a non-starter?

I simply don't understand what FCX is doing when I select these options. That's what I am asking. I just want to make sure that if I need to use a back up copy everything will be there. Right now in FCX I have an event with a bunch of projects. I want to make a copy of that event with these projects, that's what I am asking how to do. I just probably don't understand the fundamentals and that's why I need help. I am just imagining an event to be like a folder that contains things I need for a particualr project, when I duplicate my projects I am ending up with all projects in one folder from different events, it just seems disorganized. Please help me understand it. I down't want to buy any products, I want to do it via FCX, the right way.

Did you see my screenshot?

You would benefit from following a few tutorials about media management in FCP X.

Events are the places where your media is organized. Projects are where you create your stories.

There is no way to use FCP X without events. Every piece of media that you add to FCP X has to live inside some event.

Probably the simplest organization is to create one event per project, and make good use of keyword and smart collections to organize the media inside the event. This will avoid having media scattered all over the place and will make it simpler to archive - one project, one event. But there are reasons to use other schemes, so the best place to start is understanding how media is managed and then figuring out the best workflow for your needs.

tarsier123 wrote:

I just probably don't understand the fundamentals and that's why I need help.

A couple of comments, that I mean to be helpful.

You can improve your FCPP experience tremendously by investing in a course that will give you a firm understanding of basic terminology, workflow and technique so you can use the software efficiently and enjoy the creative part of editing. There are several excellent tutorials that include instruction and practice media. They are an excellent investment, Tom is a well-known instructor and has authored books and online training products. Do a search.

Here is a very useful list of links on media management from Apple. They address many of the areas you're interested in learning about.

Russ

You have to have at least one event. The event is the container that holds your media and the data base for that media. FCP will always create one event if none if available. In fact it doesn't have to have projects.

If you're going to duplicate with used clips it has to create a new event. It's removing some items that are unused from events and gathering together the media from all the different events that may hold them. The media has to go somewhere, and that's what the new event is.

I want to make a copy of that event with these projects, that's what I am asking how to do.

If you want everything you shouldn't duplicate with used clips, you should duplicate with all referernced events. You then duplicate each of the projects without media. Then in the inspector for each project click the modify referenced events buttons. A dialog will appear. You just drag the event you want the project to look to for its media to the top of the list and that will be the referenced event.

I want to make a copy of that event with these projects, that's what I am asking how to do.

The option isn't available. If you selecting the unused clips the only option is to make a new event. There is a way to do this to get all the clips into a single event, and it works pretty well for simple projects. If you have compound clips in a project, or compound clips created in events and not used in a project, or compound clips in events with the media used outside of the compound clip, there can be problems.

Basically you create a new master project and then copy and paste all the contents of all the projects into this project. It doesn't matter how long it is as FCP will not duplicate the media. You then make a duplicate of the master project with used clips. Now an event will be created that contains all the clips used in every project you want to back up, but no clips that aren't used. Once that new duplicate event is created you can thrown away the master projects that hold everything. Duplicate your individual projects and then point them to the new event with all the used media.

If you use compound clips then you should use duplicate everything, all the projects and all the events,a nd this is easiest at the Finder level. Clean them up and then zip them together.

The simplest thing is after you've backed up the projects and events is to dump all the render files in projects and events at the finder level.

That only dumps render files used by the project. It doesn't dump thumbnails and peak data and other things. I prefer just to throw away the whole render folder at the finder level and also other media files, keeping just the Original Media folder and backup and old versions, and for projects just backup and old versions. Everything can be recrated automatically by the application if you need to.