how to avoid chinese box in relation to resetting scratc disks

hello,

i just purchaes a new 2t external hard drive, which i will be using for several seperate fcp projects. i also have two other external hard drives 'all with their own unique names'.

my question is in relation to switching between hard drives and projects without creating a chinese box. should each external hard drive have only one folder entitled final cut pro documents where my scratch disk files are kept or should i have a seperate final cut pro documents folder inside of each specific project folder? when i am switching between hard drives the missing disks box pops up where it asks to reset scratch disks, check again or quit. does everytime i reset scratch disks create new video capture video render also and audio render file folders inside the final cut pro documents folder i initially create, thus creating the chinese box? my waveform cache , thumbnail cache, settings, where exactly should the be set?

i guess i am also asking do i only have one final cut pro document folder for each hard drive or each individual fcp project (hence, if for each project than does that go insde the specific fcp's project folder on my external hard drive?)

i am about ready to start injesting and have read my fcp 6.0 book, but i couldn't find anything about working with multiple projects, resetting scratch disks and having a work flow that avoids the chinese box.

so if i have thee film projects on one hd, two film projects on another, how do i avoid the chinese box of reset scratch disks with multiple capture scratch folders etc inside each other and also keeping specific fcp film projects not chinese boxing with other fcp film projects?

i have tied to make this as clear as possible. oh, my fcp program is installed on my macbook pro's hd and then my projects will be on the external hds'. switching between these hd's and projects and injesting new footage without getting strangled requires proper work flow and scratch disk settings and i am afraud to enter into the chinese box again.

bethany

prior to this i had a chinese box problem of multiple capture scratch folders inside of each other with several different projects in these same folders. if i am using different hard drives etc, will i always have ti reset the scratch disks and how to i avoid the multiple multiple capture scratch folders inside ny fcp documents folder ? i don't want to screw up everytime i have to open new projects either on the same hard drive or different hard drives. why? because fcp always opens or wants to open the last project i was working on, but sometimes i want to work on a different project in a different location ither than the last project worked on.

> should each external hard drive have only one folder entitled final cut pro documents where my
> scratch disk files are kept or should i have a seperate final cut pro documents folder inside of
> each specific project folder?

People always make this issue more complicated than it actually is.

When you set your Scratch Disk in FCP, you single-click to select a folder. WITHIN that folder, FCP will look for folders called "Audio Render Files", "Capture Scratch" and "Render Files". If any of them is missing, FCP will create them.

So, there is no reason you need to create a "Final Cut Pro Documents" folder. You can call your Scratch Disk anything you want. When I have multiple drives for one project, for example, this is what I do:

1TB Drive 01
- [Folder] Drive 01 Clips
--- [Folder] Audio Render Files
--- [Folder] Capture Scratch
--- [Folder] Render Files

When I set Scratch Disks, I single click on the folder "Drive 01 Clips". NOT "Capture Scratch". Under "Drive 01 Clips" FCP will look for those three folders, find them, and send the captures and renders to these three pre-existing folders.

That's all. No need to mess with "Final Cut Pro Documents".

You can create any alternate system that makes sense for you and the project as long as you understand the concept above.

The Waveform and Thumbnail Caches are a completely separate thing. Most editors I know set those to the computer's system drive and never change them. These files are pretty small, and utterly expendable, so there's no need to send them to the same location as important files like clip captures.


www.derekmok.com

bethany Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>will i always have ti reset the scratch disks

The brilliant Preference Manager overcomes this problem perfectly:

[www.digitalrebellion.com]

And it's free.

I can heartily reccomend the Preference Manager (PM) from Digital Rebellion. You set up one project, scratch disks, preferences, etc. Save it as a Project Back Up in PM. Do it for each project and make an individual back up in PM.
In PM set the preference to make PM the project handler. This makes the OS open PM with any project, change the settings to your stored setting and away you go.

The caveats:

• to switch projects and have the settings chance automagically you have to quit FCP and reopen by clicking the project
• You have to do it on a project by project basis. If you're always making new projects for the same film you'll have to make a new PM setting.

Personally I use a system similar to Derek's. On every drive I have a folder called (NameofDrive)Media. I always select that folder when assigning scratch disks.

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

Derek's answer:
When you set your Scratch Disk in FCP, you single-click to select a folder. WITHIN that folder, FCP will look for folders called "Audio Render Files", "Capture Scratch" and "Render Files". If any of them is missing, FCP will create them.

Bethany: New Question in relation to this:
Now, what if you have more than one project on a drive (hence, single folders for each projects materials). Shouldn't you set scratch disks in that specific projects folder on the drive?

Example below: So below shows the content for one external hard drive which has 3 seperate documentary projects (3 seperate subjects/movies). So when opening that specific project or creating it, should each of these seperate projects on the same drive have their own folder for the scratch disk settings? (this mock example depicts the scratch disk folder located inside each project folder and what it might look like if you opened up the hard drive)

documentary_1_folder (scratch disk folder_drive_1_documentary_1)
documentary_2_folder (scratch disk folder_drive_1_documentary_2)
documentary_3_folder (scratch disk folder_drive_1_documentary_3)

Or should their be a type of scratch disk folder (in your case 1TB drive 01 ) that would contain all the scratch disk contents for all these 3 seperate projects/documentarys on the one drive?
See below example: Is this what it would look like if you clicked on your external hard drive and saw the contents?

documentary_1_folder
documentary_2_folder
documentary_3_folder
scratch_disk_folder_drive_1 (Would this particular folder contain all the above seperate folder/projects scratch disk materials?)

So even if your external hard drive has more than one project there will always be only one scratch disk folder that contains all your capture scratch etc and that is located in its own folder not located in a project folder?????

Sorry, but I asked the same question in a few different ways, so I hope it is clear what I am now trying to understand.

Bethany

I asked this 3rd thread, because many people have more than one project on a hard drive.

FCP will create project folders in the capture scratch location. Kinda curious about pref manager. Will the same saved set of preferences work on machines on a shared storage environment?



www.strypesinpost.com

> So when opening that specific project or creating it, should each of these seperate projects on
> the same drive have their own folder for the scratch disk settings?

This is where personal preference comes into play.

FCP doesn't just create "Capture Scratch", but also creates sub-folders in there named after the project file.

I really don't like that system very much, because project-file names do evolve. I know editors who actually date-stamp their current project file, which means the project file is supposed to change names every day. This system completely falls apart in that case, because you'd have one new sub-folder every day, and that's silly business when managing media.

The system I use is this:

The active project file never changes names unless there's a corruption, and it's called:

[Project Name].proj

I back this file up three to six times per session, and whenever it's backed up, the archive copies get date- and time-stamped: [Project Name] MM-DD-YY 0000.proj. ("0000" is the time of day in army time, to avoid confusions about AM/PM) The time stamp is essential if you do multiple backups per day.

This way, I never wonder which project file is the latest. For editing, I always open the one with no date/time stamp. If you need to go to backups? Use the one with the latest date. Some huge professional companies even start that date/time stamp with the year so that archived files organize themselves first by year. Good system, but reading that type of file name confuses me, and you rarely change years more than once or twice on a project. So I prefer to gather up backups every year into year-specific subfolders.

If the project spans multiple drives, I'd have this system:

Indelible Drive 01 Master Folder
- [Folder] Indelible Drive 01 Clips
--- [Folder] Capture Scratch
----- [Folder] Indelible.proj
------- Captured clip files

Indelible Drive 02 Master Folder
- [Folder] Indelible Drive 02 Clips
--- [Folder] Capture Scratch

This system is based around this logic. If Drive 01 is running out of room, if I want to move everything associated with the film "Indelible" off Drive 01, I drag one folder -- "Indelible Drive 01 Master Folder" -- and I'm all set. No worrying about hunting down multiple locations on Drive 01 to try to find some file I missed.

Some people use a different system:

Drive 01
- [Folder] Capture Scratch
--- [Folder] Project #1 Name.proj
--- [Folder] Project #2 Name.proj
--- [Folder] Project #3 Name.proj

It's a valid system, and the advantage is that if you switch projects a lot, you don't have to reset Scratch Disks -- you single-click on Drive 01 and you're ready. The disadvantage is that it works better if you have the opposite situation from what I described. This second system works great if you have one huge drive as your media drive for, say, 24 projects, and you switch around a lot. So you never have to reset Scratch-Disk settings. That, however, can be a dangerous habit to get into. Theoretically every FCP editor should check Scratch-Disk settings afresh at the beginning of every session, and I know very experienced FCP editors who forget that step because they've been working with the same company for years, have their own station, and so the one time somebody borrows their station to do something and changes the setting, they get screwed.

> Or should their be a type of scratch disk folder (in your case 1TB drive 01) that would contain
> all the scratch disk contents for all these 3 seperate projects/documentarys on the one drive?

That depends. Does each separate project fit onto one drive? You always want to have the lowest number of drives possible doing a project. Spreading things around several drives is to be avoided if possible, because it creates confusion.

File management is an evolving thing. You have to adapt to changing situations, and change your system to fit. I start with one naming system when I first start the assistant work, creating a system that I feel fits the current situation. Later, your needs may change, and you have to adapt.

For example, that film "Indelible" started life on a 1TB RAID0 drive (backups exist). That's all they could afford at the beginning of post. So that drive had folders called "Indelible Master Folder" and "Indelible Clips". The drive gradually ran out of space, so we added a 2TB drive. My file system then had to be changed so that "Indelible Master Folder" became "Indelible Drive 01 Master Folder", and all the subfolders had to be "Indelible Drive 01 Clips" and "Indelible Drive 02 Clips" rather than "Indelible Clips", because now you had two drives, two media locations that needed different suffices.

As we progressed and the media topped out, the total media came to only about 1.5TB, so when I had some time off with no deadlines on that project, I migrated everything to Drive 02. Once everything connected properly, I took Drive 01 out of active duty (but with its contents still present for the next few months). And then when all the media reconnected successfully to Drive 02, I went back to the system of "Indelible Clips" instead of "Indelible Drive 02 Clips". The reason is that I didn't want to confuse anybody (say, another editor taking over later on) into thinking there's a "Drive 01" somewhere with things they need.

Moving media after you start editing entails some knowledge and careful work habits to make sure you don't lose work accidentally. It also entails good assistant-editor work -- when I combined Drive 01 and Drive 02, it only worked if I made sure from the beginning that every clip had a unique name, files were organized well (eg. graphics in one location, audio in another, project-file manual backups in another) that something from Drive 01 wouldn't overwrite something different on Drive 02. This was ascertained from the beginning of post, so I had no problems at all. But that extra bit of safeguarding (retaining Drive 01's contents) helps prevent potential problems. And in addition, when I archived Drive 01, I changed the folders there to reflect that Drive 01 was now out of date. (Added the suffix BACKUP MM-DD-YY) It's very dangerous to think an outdated backup is the current version. For tasks like this, a software like R-Name (a batch-renaming software) comes in very handy.


www.derekmok.com

If you are working with multiple editors and AEs, you can't. It's a fact of life, like growing up and getting drunk. You can't fight it.

On a more serious note, you could check out the link under shane's sig. He has a DVD in getting organized in FCP.



www.strypesinpost.com

I would recommend not reinventing the wheel. Just select the drive you want media routed to in the Scratch Disks pane-- and DO NOT click anything else, like folder names, or you embed a Capture Scratch within a Capture Scratch-- your so-called Chinese Box syndrome, or what I call the Russian Egg Syndrome.

And as Derek and others point out, that single Capture Scratch folder on each media drive contains separate media folders named after all your Project file names, such as Documentary_1, Documentary_2, etc. depending on which drives you select in the Scratch Disks pane.

Anyone who renames a project file in the middle of a project is asking for trouble, IMHO. Use a general catch-all name and stick to it. The only times to generate a new project based on it?

1) The project file is getting too big (over 250 MB is I think getting there-- I don't have anything over 150 MB) and you need to split off to a fresh project;

2) When you consolidate your media, trimming only to what's used, which generates a new project.

- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytip:
Play from Playhead to Out Mark with Shift-P !

Your Final Cut Studio KeyGuide? Power Pack.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

Thanks for all the help. I now feel I have a good understanding and an organized system "for now!"

Cheers,
Bethany

Unless I missed it, don't forget to save and name the project as you create it.

------------------------
Dean

"When I see you floating down the gutter I'll give you a bottle of wine."
Captain Beefheart, Trout Mask Replica.