OT - dynamic scratch disc...

here is an "out of left field" question. is it possible (maybe in v6?) to have the scratch volume "follow" a specific opened project? i like to keep ALL my FCP data in the same volume (folder) as its associated project. it would be super cool if FCP just changed the specific scratch folder to the appropriate one for the opened project.

if this is already a core feature that i just dont know about, im happy to take all the ridicule you can throw at me

NO - this is set staticlly in FCP. Once you set up FCP with the default capture scratch and render file locations, FCP goes there next time. It is not a project oriented item.

That is not to say this might be a "future" request but those of us working with a RAID would rather have one of each (capture scratch, render, etc) place to look for multiple project files.

Isn?t it just so much fun when you try to open an old project just to see that an audio file deleted a month ago was actually used in that project??? I can totally feel your need for dynamic scratch.

I am getting around the problem by using a program called Chronosync. For every work I do I have two different folders; scratch and project folder (containing music, graphics files, Motion and Livetype docs etc. ). Every night, Chronosync automatically mirrors these to my Raid for backup and archival. When the project is done I can delete folders from my media drive knowing that I actually DO have everything in need in my RAID (contained in one big project folder). It?s not a perfect solution but works pretty well for me.

However .. if you set your scratch disk to the top level of the drive, that is, if you have an extra dive called, say, MEDIA, and you just selct this drive as the scratch disk, FCP will do all the rest of the work in keeping track of the project elements. It will make a folder that contains all the elements of each project in it. No need for you to cahnge or remember anything.

The only time that this becomes convoluted is when you have more than one drive that you are saving to (we do this all the time), but FCP will still sort each project on each drive and as long as they are connected to the system (I prefer interanls anyway) then it will always know where everything is.

So the rule is : Don't try to help too much. Just tell FCP what drive to put stuff on.