How do I reconnect rendered files after moving media to another drive?
I imported a large quicktime file to a portable drive to work on in FCE on the road. It took forever to render the file into the timeline, and now that I'm back at home I moved the rendered file to my normal drive. I reconnected all the media, but FCE isn't seeing the rendered file it made from the original imported quicktime on the new drive. How do I reconnect so I don't have to tie my computer up again for the better part of the day???
Are you trying to connect the rendered files from the external hard drive?
Try adding them to your main hard drive in your "Render Files" folder in your Final Cut Express Documents, then try reconnecting the media.
Are you using two different versions of FCE between your laptop and your main Mac?
What did you mean when you said you
moved the rendered file to my normal drive. Exactly what file did you move?
When you render a clip or sequence in FCE, FCE creates one or more render files in your Render Files folder. FCE gives these files its own names. Did you move one of those files, or some other file? Reconnecting media only reconnects clips/media used in FCE to the corresponding source media files on your HD. Rendering does not change the source media files.
Okay - I started with a DV-NTSC Quicktime File on "Drive A." I imported this file into FCE, and dropped it into a sequence. The file needed to be rendered (to DV Stream I assume), which took most of the day (18 minute movie). The render of course went into the "Render Files" folder on "Drive A."
Then, after finishing the project on the road, I moved the rendered file and the original Quicktime DV-NTSC File over to the drive I normally use for FCE Projects ("Drive B"). To be specific, the project name was called "RF-FINAL," so I took the folder named "RF-FINAL" out of the "Render Files" on "Drive A" and Moved it to the Render files on "Drive B."
I then reassigned my Media Drive in System settings from "Drive A" to "Drive B," opened the project, and relinked the media. The project had no problem relinking the music (aiff) files, but for picture and dialogue (rendered from the DV-NTSC Quicktime original) FCE asked to relink the media to the ORIGINAL QUICKTIME FILE, not the rendered (DV Stream) file that it had taken all day to create. I am unable to figure out how to make FCE point the Original Quicktime FIle to the rendered file it created. Does that make sense?
When I try to drag the rendered file from the "Render File" folder into the project, I get all sorts of error messages.
When you reconnect media, FCE reconnects your project to the original source media file(s) on your HD, however that action does not reconnect render files, as you discovered. I could be wrong about this but I suspect that at this point there is no way to 'reconnect' the render files.
The bigger questions are why an 18 min movie took most of the day to render in the first place, and why a DV-NTSC QT file required rendering at all. What was the source of the original QT file?
Well, I'm on an old 867 Powerbook G4 - that's why it took so long!
The DV-NTSC file was generated in an Avid Symphony Nitris from a High Def 1080-24P project for the composer to use in ProTools. I just took that file and imported it into FCE. It rendered because FCE requires media to be in the DV Stream format... I think...Right?
So there's no way to reconnect to the render file? Darn...
