Backing up and sharing projects is a constant concern for the professional editor. It's especially important for us freelancers who maintain our own suites.
My preferred solution when using FCP7 is to keep all my .FCP files in Dropbox.
Dropbox acts like a normal folder on your hard drive so you can open and save as normal, but it's also continuously backed up to the cloud as well as all your other computers.
This means you can edit on your studio Mac Pro, then go home to your loved ones safe in the knowledge that you have a copy of the edit on your laptop*.
If you client has all the media you can also log in to DropBox online and get the .fcp file anywhere in the world.
Plus .fcp files are only ever a few meg so you are pretty safe with a free DropBox account.
For me it is a great way of working for backup reasons alone.
So how does this all work with FCPX? What about all those stupid events and project folders? What's with the new library files in 10.1? Can you store them in DropBox? Or are there too many associated files hidden inside?
I have no fucking idea.
But I'm going to find out.
*Providing you have all the relevant media on you of course!
In FCP7 we had Projects and Sequences, which made sense.
In FCPX we have Events and Projects....which...doesn't make sense. No, I don't care what you say, it doesn't.
To make matters worse the equivalents are deliberately confusing:
Projects are now called Events
Sequences are now called Projects
It's a fucking stupid and pointless nomenclature change, but there you go. Get used to it. FCPX also creates separate events and projects folder on your hard drive, which I find immensely irritating and messy, but there you go, get used to it.
Larry Jordan provides some great tutorials on his youtube channel. They are often a little wordy and sometimes you do want to yell at him to 'get on with it', but stick with him. He knows what he's talking about.
In this video Larry explains the importance of Events and Projects.
Soon after the release of FCPX Evan Schechtman gave a talk at a Tekserve event in New York. The main thrust of his talk was simple: Do not fear change.
Evan gives a very passionate and direct speech about how the industry has changed over the past 10 years and how we, as professionals, have had to embrace new ideas and new ways of working. FCPX is just another one of these changes and it won't be the last.
It's a very convincing display of faith in FCPX. Watching this hour long video will certainly reassure you as well as give you all the skills you need to get up and running with FCPX.
If you've been using for FCP for a long time and you're a bit scared of FCPX then you should watch this video.
One of the things I really like about this lecture is the timeline of all the key moments in video edit history over the past ten years. I've recreated it here with a few of my own additions:
- 1998 -
Sony vx1000 [first prosumer camera with firewire].
G3 Powermac Desktop
Hard drive size - 37gig
Targa dv2000 rtx video card
- 1999 -
FCP v1.0 released [v1.2.5 allows 16.9]
G4 Powermac desktop
This was when I did my first editing [using premiere on a pc]
- 2000 -
Pinnicle cinewave card.
This is when I first used FCP v1.0 on a G4 desktop and fell in love.
- 2001 -
OSX
FCP v2
DVD Studio Pro
FCP v3 - Finally FCP works on OSX!
- 2003 -
DVCPro HD
HDV
Lumiere HD allows HDV editing in FCP
FCP v4 - 32 bit processing - xml interchange
Livetype, Soundtrack, Compressor
Extreme RT
- 2004 -
FCP HD - Native DVCPro HD editing
Broadcast quality HD export over firewire.
Motion
- 2005 -
Xsan
Hard Drive size - 120 gig
FCP5 - Native HDV. Multicam.
Final Cut Studio released
Please do watch the video. It's very interesting and there are some great tutorials on the basics of how FCPX works.
At the end of Evan's speech he nonchalantly asks, 'does anyone feel any better about fcpx?'. There is a resounding and intensely heart-felt 'yes' from the crowd.
