Simple question but an urgent one

Have this annoying issue with dismounting my hard drive when final cut is open...

it's a firewire drive that I hook up btwn my powerbook and the editor's mac to transfer media, etc....it never lets me dismount saying "it's busy" and invariably I always need to close out of FCP to dismount the drive...even when I take off, or make offline, all the media...any ideas on a quick work around?

This takes up so much time since my project is enormous and I'm working with a titanium powerbook that is doing it's best to keep up...

many thanks for any help...

Chris

If FCP has a project open that is using media from that drive then you need to quit FCP in order to "release it." Even if you opened that project and then closed that project...it won't release the drive unless you quit FCP.

Also FCP is probably reading that as your scratch disk.

Try deleting, offlining the material. then saving, then try disconnecting the hard drive

> Try deleting, offlining the material. then saving, then try disconnecting the
> hard drive

Deleting items in your project just so you can unmount a drive? That makes no sense to me.

> it's a firewire drive that I hook up btwn my powerbook and the editor's mac
> to transfer media, etc....it never lets me dismount saying "it's busy" and
> invariably I always need to close out of FCP to dismount the drive...even
> when I take off, or make offline, all the media...any ideas on a quick work
> around?

You must make sure FCP is not referring to any files on the drive you're trying to dismount. Close the project file, making sure no active applications have files from that drive open. Then you should be able to dismount the drive. However, if you're copying large amounts of data while your project is open, with the data being from the same location as the project file, is a pretty dangerous thing to do.

Are you editing simultaneously? If so, you should just make sure both of you have the exact same set of media and only move project files back and forth. If you're just creating new media, for example effects and music, you shouldn't use the same project file you are using for the primary editing -- start a new project file with the same specs as the main one, then copy and paste the Browser items back and forth.