iMac hard drive shows full while compiling FCPX project

Question

iMac hard drive shows full while compiling FCPX project

Hi All,

I've been creating instructional videos for a youtube series and have been negligent in getting an external hard drive to store the files on. During the latest video compilation, I was almost done compiling the last clip into the project and I got a message that my iMac hard drive is full. I've known that I should have gotten an external drive for my movie files for some time now and just kept putting it off because life is so busy, so this is all my fault, but at this point I need to actually take care of the issue. So my questions:

- I have heard that using a Firewire 800 drive on this machine would be preferable to using USB, but would like confirmation on this before ordering/purchasing.

- If anybody has recommendations on specific drives for this purpose, feel free to recommend them! I only have cursory knowledge of such things. My backup drive is a 2TB Western Digital drive that works fine, but something like that might not be the best thing for movies.

- Once I purchase the drive, how can I move my FCPX files to it (including the current project) and still be able to edit this last project? I don't quite yet understand the concept of "proxy media".

Any and all help appreciated, as always!

Posted on Oct 1, 2013 4:21 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

Ian R. Brown

Level 7

21,066 points

Oct 1, 2013 4:42 AM in response to ChrisFitzgerald

Unless you are doing very complex videos a USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 HDD will be perfectly OK.

I use the cheapest WD or Seagate USB 3.0s I can find.

Select the Event and choose File>Move Event.

Select the Project and choose File>Move Project.

Message was edited by: Ian R. Brown

Reply

Answer 2

Oct 1, 2013 4:44 AM in response to Ian R. Brown

Your Western Digital drive should be fine as long as it has plenty of free space.

Reply

Answer 3

Oct 1, 2013 10:18 AM in response to Ian R. Brown

Ian - thanks for the replies! Very helpful. I'm going to need to get a dedicated drive for movies, as these projects have lately been between 30 and 40 minutes long (although they are pretty simple for all of that from an editing point of view). So my next question would be, when I go to "File>Move Event" and "File>Move Project", once the files are moved to the hard drive I designate, are they also automatically deleted fromt he internal hard drive of the computer, or do I need to do that in a seperate step?

Reply

Answer 4

Oct 1, 2013 11:57 AM in response to ChrisFitzgerald

I can't remember as it's something I did a couple of years ago. 😕

This link should answer all your questions .......... including the ones you haven't asked yet.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5773

Reply

Answer 5

Oct 1, 2013 12:05 PM in response to Ian R. Brown

This one may be even better and easier to follow.

http://www.larryjordan.biz/fcp-x-move-events-or-projects/

Note that Larry does not use the File menu, he simply opens the Event and Project windows directly with keyboard commands.

Reply

Answer 6

Oct 2, 2013 9:14 AM in response to Ian R. Brown

Very helpful, thanks! I have one of these for my backup drive: http://www.staples.com/WD-My-Book-Essential-2TB-External-Hard-Drive-USB-30/produ ct_906287#pr-header-back-to-top-link and like it very much so far. I may just get another for this.

One last question: how do I know if my 27" imac has usb 3.0, or does it even matter for this?

Reply

Answer 7

furrytoes

Level 2

235 points

Oct 3, 2013 3:36 AM in response to ChrisFitzgerald

I'm pretty sure it would only have USB3 if it also had thunderbolt (and no Firewire)

Reply

Answer 8

Oct 3, 2013 3:46 AM in response to ChrisFitzgerald

Look in the instruction manual (pamphlet!)

It doesn't really matter as USB 3.0 sockets can also use USB 2.0 and USB 1.0 hardware.

If you only have USB 2.0 sockets you can still use a USB 3.0 HDD but it will only work at USB 2.0 speed, which is plenty fast enough for most purposes.

Reply

Answer 9

Oct 3, 2013 3:50 AM in response to ChrisFitzgerald

ChrisFitzgerald wrote:

Very helpful, thanks! I have one of these for my backup drive: http://www.staples.com/WD-My-Book-Essential-2TB-External-Hard-Drive-USB-30/produ ct_906287#pr-header-back-to-top-link and like it very much so far. I may just get another for this.

One last question: how do I know if my 27" imac has usb 3.0, or does it even matter for this?

What is the model of this iMac? I think the late 2012 models (the thin ones without an optical drives) are the first to have USB3.

You can find it out for sure by running the System Profiler (Option-click on the Apple menu will show it instead of the usual "About this mac"); you may also download the free program Mactracker, which gives information about all mac models and more: just click on "this mac" on the left pane to see the relevant info for your mac.

Reply

Answer 10

Oct 3, 2013 3:58 AM in response to Ian R. Brown

My 2008 iMac doesn't have USB 3.0 but I have it on my Toshiba laptop.

It has a blue colour ........... I don't know whether Macs are the same.

Incidentally the photo makes the laptop appear as though it's just been dredged up from the bottom of the ocean but it's really smart and clean.😉

Reply

Answer 11

Oct 3, 2013 4:04 AM in response to Ian R. Brown

Thanks again. Got a WD 3TB drive, formatted it, it shows up fine through the USB 2.0 on the machine. Following the links in the Larry Jordan article, I copied all of the events folders onto the new drive, which took some time as they totalled about 301 GB. Haven't copied the Final Cut Projects folders yet, but will do that once I'm sure what I'm doing. Now that all of this stuff is on the new drive, I'm assuming I need to delete it from the old drive to make space, correct (otherwise, my internal HD is still full)? If I do that, will FCPX still know how to find everything on the new drive? I'm kind of afraid to delete this stuff until I know what will happen, but can't do any new FCP work on my latest project until I have more space on the internal drive.

Reply

Answer 12

Oct 3, 2013 4:07 AM in response to Ian R. Brown

Oh, Ian - just saw your last post: my tabs are white, so i'm assuming that mine is USB 2.0. Hoping this will still be fast enough to store the media on the (new) movie drive and let the internal drive run the program. And I wouldn't have said that your computer looks dirty at all!

Reply

Answer 13

Oct 3, 2013 7:47 AM in response to ChrisFitzgerald

I have just tested moving an Event and shortly after the move the original Event auto-deleted, so you shouldn't need to do any manual trashing.

I suppose the clue is in the title ....... MOVE Event ...... if it's moved it won't be in 2 places.

I have been using USB 2.0 HDDs exclusively for over 3 years with FCE 4, Final Cut Studio 3 and FCP X and never had any problems (due to the hard drives).

Reply

Answer 14

Oct 3, 2013 8:28 AM in response to ChrisFitzgerald

The usb ports in macs are never blue, whether they are usb2 or usb3

Reply

Answer 15

Oct 3, 2013 8:31 AM in response to Ian R. Brown

Will check when i get home from work. I did the "move" using Jordan's second advice, with FCP closed from the fidner, which is what he says he does. If the material didn't delete using this method, this might be a good reason to move the material from within FCP. When you did your test, you did it from within FCP, right? This kind of makes sense to me, as it seems the most likely way that FCP could keep track of where that material went so it can still access it.

My worry about doing it the seond way he described in his article would be that since using the finder with FCP closed and then deleting the files might be easier for the user, I don't get how FCP is going to find the files on the new drive asx it would be looking for them where they were before and then find only an empty folder.

Reply