Fcp On Macbook Pro

[TOM GALLAHUE]

I Have A New Macbook Pro With Fcp And It Works Great. As Expected A Second Hard Drive Is Mandatory For Media Files. When I Put The Scratch Disk To The External Drive Everything Works Fine Until I Take The Laptop Somewhere Else. Is There An Optimal Way To Set Up Fcp To Work With An External Drive And The Internal Drive When You Need To Go Portable?

Sometimes I Just Want To Take A Few Media Files And Work Remotely?

[ian hunter]

i would have to check, and i'm not infront of final cut, but.
i'm sure you can set-up 2 scratch disc's in your preference's.
have the external as 1, internal as 2, and if the mac can't see 1 it default's to 2.

mind you i would probably always take an external with you, and use it out on the road.
get an invertor fitted in your car, and always have main's power at your disposal

ian

[TOM GALLAHUE]

I see what you mean, the scratch disk can be several locations...I am going to try that and really appreciate the help.

[VaricamLife]

You can easily do what was mentioned above, having the 2 scratch disks. Remember, the first one you set is the first one it will write data to. So if you have the INT and EXT drives set, and the INT is set first, it'll ignore the EXT until the INT is full. So be careful with that.

Also, if you have 2 scratch disks set, then walk away to location without the EXT, when you load FCP it will still look for that missing scratch disk. On load it will pop up the screen saying that there is a missing scratch disk. At which point you'll need to reset the scratch disks and clear off the EXT one as its not available.

I think you can get pocket USB drives that can draw power through the USB interface. Might be something to consider using while "away." Though I'm not sure what kind of toll that puts on a laptop. I'm not a laptop guy at all, so I don't know how hard that USB power draw will be on the system power supply.

cheers.

[TOM GALLAHUE]

thanks...the laptop seemed like a great way to take a little work with me, but it isnt as easy as i thought...

[for_mlove]

I REALLY wish FCP would allow for the scratch disk to be project specific. That would allow you to have some projects on your internal drive and others externally without constantly resetting the scratch disks.

Tom, if you have a project with media on an external drive and want to go on the road with it, check out media manager. There is a way to make smaller versions of your files and put them on the internal drive for editing. This way you could shoot in 1080, put low-rez copies of the files on your internal drive, edit out your sequence on a plane train or automobile and when you get back to your external drive, you switch to the hi-rez versions and voila, you're golden. The section on media manager in the Apple manuals is a worthwhile read.

Matt

[BenB]

I think you can get pocket USB drives that can draw power through the USB interface. Might be something to consider using while "away." Though I'm not sure what kind of toll that puts on a laptop. I'm not a laptop guy at all, so I don't know how hard that USB power draw will be on the system power supply.

Laptops, PC or Mac, don't have enough juice flowing from the USB port to power portable USB drives. They're also way too slow for video editing. I learned all this the hard way, trust me.

I now use a self-powered Firewire drive when I travel to teach FCS seminars. Works great. But, only for limited, small projects. If you're doing serious heavy long form video editing, you really do want an AC powered large Firewire drive.

Personally, I hate editing on a laptop of any kind. There's just not nearly enough screen real estate for it. I hate editing tiny images you can't see well enough. It's a nice concept, but never works out well in practice. Just my two cents...

[Barry_Green]

There are pocket drives that derive all their power from USB bus power; I presume they would work equally well on Macs as they do on PCs? But yes they do exist. They're not the fastest, not really suitable for editing from, but they do work.

[BenB]

Mac portables do not put out enough power for self powered USB drives. I just went through this nightmare last week. I now use a Firewire version now. Anyone want to buy a portable USB pocket drive cheap? CompUSA won't refund it.

[DVX100Shooter]

I have been trying to come up with a workflow that works with my new Macbook pro. Here lately I have to do with just about everybody has to do and take my small external hard drive with me when I want to work on a project. I just capture all my footage straight to that drive.

Now I know its best to use the external for video editing but say I am working on a song in Soundtrack Pro or maybe using Motion or Livetype, if I save my projects to the system drive is that a bad thing? So far its been cool. The bulk of my work is done on my desktop anyway. I just needed the laptop so I could work on stuff on the go.

And yet one last question along the same thought. I just bought the Apple Training Series book "Getting Started with Motion" that has a tutorial DVD. Is it okay to load all those files up on the Macbook pro so I can start getting acquinted with using Motion or should I be saving those files to the external? It would be great not have to lug the external and FW cable and all that around but I do have to do what is best to get the best performance out of my machine.

[BenB]

The tutorial material is made to run off your laptops internal drive, it'll be fine.

[TOM GALLAHUE]

a project specific scratch disk would be great...Im going to work with the media manager too...and I think you guys may have saved me some $$$ on the external bus powered drive.....im going with a AC powered firewire...more to carry, but im rarely home. If we ever come up with an ideal workflow for a laptop...it would be a great addition to this forum...