Moving clips to a different drive in FCP

My question was answered privately and I am posting it here for the benefit of all:

QUESTION: I stored FCP clips on my hard drive, which also runs my FCP program (a mistake, I know now). I ran into the inevitable memory problems and now need to move the clips to an external drive. The question was, how do I change the scratch disk for clips already captured to a drive I want to delete them from? The reply is below from Andrew Kines.

ANSWER FROM ANDREW: For the most part it should go like this. The FCP Application in the Application folder of your main system drive.
Your FCP Project should be in the documents folder of your main drive but in truth can be anywhere except your media/external drive.
In your project browser window where the clips that you moved are showing as offline, select those offline clips and choose reconnect media from the ctrl/click menu. in the window that opens up, direct it to look at the clips you moved on to the new external drive. As long as you haven't renamed clips it will try to match the clips by name.
In preferences change your scratch disk to be the new external drive so that all new clips go there. All the scratch disk setting means is that new clips will go there, it won't move old clips there in case that's what you were thinking.

If you're making a doc you are probably going to have tons of media to deal with. Take some time to read the manual and the phorum postings as you're not the only one in that situation and you can avoid beginner mistakes by letting others do them first and learning from their solutions.

If your external drive is connected via USB you might run into slowdowns as they tend to choke with FCP.
Back up your project file frequently and to external media that isn't stored on your computer (USB stick, Gmail etc)

Judging by the list you gave, in #3 you moved the media and then in #6 you did it again.
Step #1 was, as I said, going to have no affect on media already digitized. I don't know how long this took you or how much media we're talking about here but you probably have more than one copy of the media floating around now on your new drive.
Choosing Move is not something we/I would recommend on a regular basis. The Media Manager has never been FCPs strongest tool and having a freeze or crash during the move could result in data loss.

My suggestions via the Private Message were to get you out of your hole quickly but I think you need to do some research with the manual before you go back into another hole. It's impossible to discern all the problems you might have been having and to talk you through all the clicks in reconnecting media. You were flailing around and wasting your time with multiple moves.

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

OK. I hear you. I only moved one clip with the move option, because the reconnect media option was greyed out on my machine for some reason. That one experiment was with a nonessential clip and it was part of the research I am doing. I am reading the manual. Thanks

> because the reconnect media option was greyed out on my machine for some reason

Did you select a clip or Sequence before doing it?

You made a lot of assumptions, possibly panicked and jumped to a step which can cause more problems than it solves. Slow down, stop what you're doing, take it step by step.

The normal correct steps for moving media that's already been captured and used in editing:

1. If you already have a cut, render and export it as a self-contained, full-quality movie file. This is insurance against mistakes in media management that may result in losing editing decisions.
2. Backup the project file, date- and time-stamp it, copy it to a safe location.
3. Go into OS, copy one clip to the new location. Because the original clip still exists in the original location, it will not go off line. Disconnect the clip in FCP (SHIFT-D), then Reconnect Media to the new location. See if any edits have changed. If so, stop and find out why. If not, proceed.
4. Copy the media files to the new location. Don't erase, modify, rename, or otherwise tamper with the originals.. You may have to copy them a group at a time depending on how many there are and how stable your system is.
5. Now move the clips in the original location to the Trash. Do not empty the Trash. The clips in your project file will go offline. Reconnect them to the new location, and check to make sure editing decisions haven't changed. If not, take one last look at the new location in OS to spot any errors. Then you can empty the Trash.
6. If the clips don't reconnect properly to the new location, you can close the project file without saving, then go back into OS, use Undo to move the files back from the Trash to the original location, and get your media connections back by simply re-opening the project file.

I rarely use Media Manager's Move function because it can cause issues that cannot be undone. If you have to, use the Copy function. Even then, I don't consider it the most reliable of features (as Andrew mentions) and I prefer to move files by hand within OS, for maximum control.


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