Need A Simple Explanation For A Complicated Problem

[Phil Maker]

Ok, I'm going to try to explain my situation in the most simple way I can. My partner and I are both editing a feature film in two different locations on two different hard drives.

1) I have the "A" drive with the entire feature on it.

2) He has the "B" drive with an exact copy of what I have.

3) I need to be able to edit on my hard drive, copy what I've edited to his drive, and then be able to continue editing it ON HIS DRIVE.

4) He needs to be able to edit on his drive, copy what he's edited to my drive, and then be able to continue editing it ON MY DRIVE.

I have been running into all kinds of problems when attempting to copy each other's work to the other's drive. Mostly the clips are all just OFFLINE. I try copying the render files over when I copy the proxies, but sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Today when I copied a sequence I was working on over to his drive a dialogue box popped up and said basically that some of the clips durations don't match the source material and do I want to CONTINUE or TRY AGAIN. If I click CONTINUE it shortens some of the out points on some of the clips, if I click TRY AGAIN, nothing happens.

This problem has been driving me nuts for a month. Is there a simple, step by step explanation for how to do this properly? It would make my day if one of you FCP geniuses could give me a hand. Thank you so much.

[bigbossbmb]

if both hard drives have exact copies of all the media, all that either of you will need to take with you is the FCP project file.

[Ming]

If there's only one of you editing the project file at any given time, this isn't such a big deal. I think you'd be much better served just working off of one drive, swapping it between machines because what it sounds like you're talking about is both editing simultaneously on two different project files. If the partner lives a short distance away however (and it would be a pain to swap drives instead of just emailing a project file) read on.

First and most obvious make sure you set up identical directory structures on both drives. I'd recommend doing this by moving the source file folder and any other FCP folders as well as project files under one directory, so transferring between computers is a matter of moving one directory.

After you've got a copy of the directory on each machine you'll just need to move the project file between computers as needed since the source files never change. I'd also recommend you constantly save off a copy of the most current project file to say the desktop so you don't accidentally overwrite your current file. Save it outside of the drive, somewhere neutral ie desktop where it won't get touched, and then go back and work on the original current file.

The FCP project is telling you your clips are offline because it's aimed at a particular drive. When you switch over to the other drive it's still aimed at the original drive.

Drive A might look like this: Vol_A/project folder/source_files

So when you move the current project file to drive B the project file is still pointed at the above path, Vol_A\etc when it needs to be looking at Vol_B/.... etc.

So if you're constantly switching the project file across drives you'll have to reconnect the files to the current local directory. You can reconnect the files by just selecting all your offline clips, right clicking and reconnecting... takes but a few clicks.

Hope that helped. Keep it simple and don't end up with two different current project files (yours and your partners) if that was your plan because you can't easily merge your changes with his. Take turns in other words.

You could work on different parts of the same project at the same time of course, but you'd want to have a master project file and each work off of uniquely named project files. 3 files total. Then it's just a matter of pasting changes into the master.

[electricpig]

naming both the drives the same would solve the problem, as long as the files all live in the same directory structure on each drive.

my main RAID is called 'mutha', I also have a smaller G-RAID mini called 'mutha' which is my on-the-road disk. projects open up freely between drives, no re-linking.

I've used chronosync for years:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/13652

to sync between my drives in this way.
if a freelancer works for me and takes work away, he renames his drive mutha too, ad infinitum.

my other safenet is a simple job system.
all my jobs live at:

/Volumes/mutha/JOBS/newjob/SHOTS/etc

simple, and very effective.

'everyone has a mutha'

mike

[Ming]

Good to know you can do that. I'd assumed they had to have unique names.

[rfox]

It would make my day if one of you FCP geniuses could give me a hand. Thank you so much.

Hey Phil, I'm no FCP genius (or any other kind, for that matter) so judge these comments accordingly :)

I'm curious what others do with scratch disk settings.

We work in a similar fashion, between RAID, GDrive, and local hard drives on desktop and notebook computers. When we start FCP, the scratch disk is immediately set to the folder we want to work on, whether it's on the RAID, GDrive, etc. The folder may be off the root directory on one drive (.../project3), and it maybe nested on other drives (.../myprojects/new_stuff/project3). Then we open the project file. Of course, this assumes that all the assets for that project are in that directory. Assets that shared across projects are usually small files for us, and can be copied into the folder.

So each drive has the exact directory structure, *somewhere* on the disk. This puts the Render files in that directory structure, too. (Maybe that's a sacrilege, I don't know). To keep the drives up-to-date, we just need to copy the updated project file and (if we choose) the render files. This has worked well for us, and I've never encountered a problem with it.

electricpig mentioned that he named all his volumes the same, but we've never done this. All the drives are named differently. We've never had any linking issues or relative/absolute file name issue. I always assumed that the scratch disk settings pointed FCP in the right direction and kept everything straight. Maybe that's wishful thinking on my part?

Anyway, just my $.02. But I'm willing to learn more, if anyone see a problem with this methodology.

Regards,
Russell

[NoahK]

If you have the budget, you might want to consider Final Cut Server which can automate a lot of this sort of project sharing business and keep good track of how a project evolves.

http://www.apple.com/finalcutserver/

Noah