Media Management is Biggest Change in Final Cut Pro X 10.1

Posted on December 18, 2013 by Larry

Since I wrote this article, I’ve written more articles detailing media management in Final Cut Pro X. They include:

Manage Libraries
Manage Projects
Collaboration
Back-up and Restore
Apple Updates Media Management in FCP X v.10.1.2
A collection of all my FCP X Media Management articles, including when to use original, optimized or proxy media.

And here is a video webinar that illustrates these, and more, media management techniques for Final Cut Pro X.

Media Management drives editors nuts. Since the beginning of computer-based video editing, trying to remember where your media is stored is a never-ending battle between “getting it done,” and “doing it right.”

Somewhere toward the end of a project, along about the third or fourth sleepless night, file management and organization give way to “Please, just let this end…”

In Final Cut Pro 7, all media was stored in a single scratch disk. This scratch disk included your media, plus render files and a host of other work files that Final Cut needed. The biggest complaint from editors was that we wanted to set scratch disks by project to give us more control over media storage.

NOTE: We could also “link” media, by reference, into a project except that if we moved or renamed the media or the folders containing it, everything broke.

In Final Cut Pro X, Apple switched to Events and Projects. Events held media and projects described how that media was assembled; the “edit.” Events could be stored anywhere and projects could use media from any event. The biggest complaint from editors was that we needed to quit Final Cut in order to change events or projects.

NOTE: We could still “link” media, by reference, into a project except that if we moved or renamed the media or the folders containing, everything broke.

So, with this release, Apple replaced Events and Projects with Libraries. Libraries hold everything. Events are now folders within libraries, and projects are now stored in events. Media is stored in the library, which acts like a single, big container file. This makes backups, clones, or simple moves from one hard disk to another a lot easier.

NOTE: Even with this system, we can still “link” media, by reference, into a project but if we move or rename the media or the folders containing, everything breaks. Some things never change.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

With Final Cut, you now have the ability to copy media into any selected library, or simply point (“link”) to where that media is stored on your hard disk. If you are very organized, linking is faster. If you don’t want to worry about where your media is stored, copy the media into the Library and be done with it.

Media can be copied without optimizing, if you want to edit using the camera native video format.

Libraries make working with media MUCH easier. But they work best when you copy the media into the library. Linking media, as with past versions of Final Cut, requires that you not move, or rename, any of the media files or the folders that contain it.

HOW IT WORKS

Here’s the new Library pane in Final Cut Pro X 10.1. (The Library pane is on the left, the Browser is on the right.) There are two open libraries: “Dr. Vint Cerf” and “Glass Blowing.” You can have as many libraries open as you want.

Inside the Dr. Cerf library are four events: Audio, B-roll, Interview, and Projects. Events act as folders within a library and can be named anything. There is no limit to the number of events stored inside a library. I store all my projects in a separate event, just to make them easier to find. You can store projects in any event. Media from any event can be used in any project.

NOTE: In earlier versions of Final Cut Pro X, there was an internal limit of around 2,000 clips per event. That limit was essentially removed in this update.

The library file is stored on your hard disk. Because most of my libraries are small, I store them on a RAID in a folder called “Final Cut Libraries.” You can store libraries anywhere and call them anything. Libraries do not need to be stored in folders. However, I always recommend storing all libraries and media files on a second drive (not the boot drive) for performance reasons.

The library file is actually a bundle, similar to the way Keynote stores its files.

If you right-click on the Library name in the Finder, and select Show Package Contents…

Inside is a folder for each event, which stores the actual media, as well as projects and other Final Cut work files. My STRONG recommendation is to stay out of this folder and don’t move the elements inside it. However, I wanted to let you know how this storage system works in case you ever need to rescue a clip from a library or an event.

NOTE: When copying or moving libraries, ALWAYS!!! move the entire library folder. Never mess with the database files or other individual work files in this folder.

UPDATING EVENTS AND PROJECTS

The new version of Final Cut requires updating all events and projects before they can be used. If you are someone that prefers to learn by watching a video, watch this eight-minute tutorial covering what you need to know to update existing events and projects.

Otherwise, read on.

When you first start Final Cut, this warning will appear. Click Update Later. This allows you to open the program and take a look around without altering any of your existing events or projects.

Here’s what you need to know about updating:

Media files are NOT affected by this process. Media files are moved into the new library, but not altered or renamed in any way.
During the update, Final Cut moves media from the older events into the new libraries. This means that no additional hard disk space is needed during the update because files are not being copied.
When you update events and projects for this version, Final Cut creates a new library for each connected hard disk or RAID that contains either a Final Cut Events or Final Cut Projects folder. This new library is named after that hard disk, and all the media, events and projects from that hard disk are moved into it.
All compound and multicam clips that are stored on other volumes, but linked to these events or projects, are copied into this new library.
If you use project folders, any existing project folders are applied as keywords to the new, converted projects.
Media that is linked to an existing project or event is moved into an External Media folder.

If you have media stored across multiple hard disks, do the update first, then use File > Consolidate Events/Projects to combine all the media into one location. Consolidation is NOT required, but if it helps you to stay organized then go ahead.

To automatically update, select Update All.

“Update All” combines all events and projects on a single hard disk into one library per hard disk. Events and projects are still stored separately within that library, but, all those files will open at the same time in the library. If you don’t want everything combined, you will need to manually update.

To manually update:

Only events stored in the Final Cut Events folder, and projects stored in the Final Cut Projects folder, are updated. However, the entire contents of both these folders are updated at once.
If you only want to update a few events or projects, move only the events you want to update into the Final Cut Events folder. Move only the projects you want to update into the Final Cut Projects folder.
To prevent an event or project from updating, simply move it to any other location except the Final Cut Events or Final Cut Projects folder. NEVER separate the contents of an event or project folder.

Next, start FCP X and choose File > Update Events and Projects.

Next, click Update All. Only those events and projects you moved into the Events and Projects folders will be updated.

My hard disk is named “2nd Drive RAID.” The library that was created by the update is named “2nd Drive RAID’s projects and events.” You can rename this library to something more meaningful once the updating is complete.

When the update finishes, you have the option to save events and projects or trash them. My recommendation is to save them until you know that the update process was successful. At which point, they can be deleted.

NOTE: If you select “Move to Trash” and realize you made a mistake, all is not lost. Simply open the Trash and drag the folders back out.

Notice that a new folder was created on 2nd Drive RAID and named “2nd Drive RAID…Projects and Events.”

The events and projects folders and their contents are not changed in any way. The information they contain was simply copied and converted into Final Cut’s new Library media management system.

GET MORE INFORMATION

Apple has provided additional resources in two white papers:

FAQ about updating and working with libraries: support.apple.com/kb/HT5958
Media Management White Paper: images.apple.com/final-cut-pro/docs/Media_Management.pdf

I’ve also written more articles to help you figure this out:

Also, the folks at Intelligent Assistance have released a free version of Event Manager X, along with a white paper, which can simplify the process of moving and updating older events and projects.
Website: www.intelligentassistance.com.

I just completed all-new training on Final Cut Pro X 10.1. To see the first 15 movies – which will give you a Quick Start into the application – visit my YouTube channel.

To download your own copy of my Final Cut Pro X training, please visit our store.

SUMMARY

Updating isn’t difficult, but you need to understand how the process works. To be safe, if you have the hard disk space, I recommend creating a backup of all events and projects before updating… just in case.

Then, update one event and one project and watch what happens. This is what I did as I was learning the system. Once you understand how this works, updating is simple. And, as I mentioned above, media is moved but not altered by this process.

The key is to decide how you want events and projects organized before you start the update process. And remember that you are not updating specific events or projects, but all the events or projects stored in the Final Cut Events and Final Cut Projects folders on a single hard disk.

The good news is that once the updating is complete, you never have to do it again. And libraries are a LOT easier to work with than the old Events and Projects!

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125 Responses to Media Management is Biggest Change in Final Cut Pro X 10.1

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Alex says:

December 28, 2013 at 6:39 am

Disk management?

Im editing of a Macbook pro retina with limited hdd space, therefor i have a three disk strategy, fcpx running on the mac, and two 250GB ssd’s connected through USB 3. One that holds my media and the other my projects, with this setup reads/wrights where divided to give great performance, and I could make use of my two “small” external ssd’s and the limited USB 3 bandwidth.

What do I do now?

Cheers from an fcpx user that updated and went from happy to very sad 🙁

Reply
- Larry Jordan says:
  
  December 29, 2013 at 5:44 pm
  
  Alex:
  
  You can use the same setup. Your SSDs are plenty fast. Simply store the new libraries on your SSD drives – alternating libraries between drives.
  
  Larry
  
  Reply
Roberta says:

January 5, 2014 at 1:41 pm

Thank you this is was very helpful!

Reply
- RMarch says:
  
  January 6, 2014 at 6:18 am
  
  This has been a really tough one for me. I extensively used the grouping of Events by date. Long story short, it is gone in 10.1.
  
  The best alternative is to group by clips and select the library. This will give you a list of all clips in the library grouped by date. The events will still be visible alphabetically, but if you look at the clip browser you will see that all the clips are now grouped by date. For your situation this may be fine as you can see all the clips grouped by date. The issue is with this method you lose the event grouping. So if you had an event that you knew took place in August 2011 but can’t remember what it is named, you are kind of screwed. You just have to troll the events alphabetical list and hope for the best. I can’t imagine Apple does not fix this in an update.
  
  Reply
A. Allen says:

January 5, 2014 at 11:18 pm

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone can help as I have been unable to find a solution to this. After upgrading to 10.1 I am unable to sort events by date. It’s now only sortable via alphabet. With previous version I was able to sort by year so that latest events are at the top. Is there a way to sort it differently? Or any clever solutions you can think of? All events are in one library. I create yearly compilation videos of the kids…without grouping by year it make it nearly impossible to ensure I have all the clips I require in the project.

Regards

Alan

Reply
- RMarch says:
  
  January 6, 2014 at 6:19 am
  
  This has been a really tough one for me. I extensively used the grouping of Events by date. Long story short, it is gone in 10.1.
  The best alternative is to group by clips and select the library. This will give you a list of all clips in the library grouped by date. The events will still be visible alphabetically, but if you look at the clip browser you will see that all the clips are now grouped by date. For your situation this may be fine as you can see all the clips grouped by date. The issue is with this method you lose the event grouping. So if you had an event that you knew took place in August 2011 but can’t remember what it is named, you are kind of screwed. You just have to troll the events alphabetical list and hope for the best. I can’t imagine Apple does not fix this in an update.
  
  Reply
  - John French says:
    
    January 6, 2014 at 9:46 am
    
    RMarch – You could name all your events something like “2014-01-06 Beach Shoot” They would appear alphabetically in the browser, but also of course, chronologically. It is how I keep all my photo folders in Lightroom – sometimes all you know is the date something was shot.
    
    That doesn’t help for the existing ones though.
    
    By the way, having got over the shock of the new, I really like the new Library model – more versatile and rational and easier to back up.
    
    Reply
    - John French says:
      
      January 6, 2014 at 9:56 am
      
      RMarch – having posted the above, I realise of course that you would have to use the UK/European method of writing dates. i.e. Year-Month-Day. I am in the UK so it comes naturally. If you are in the US then using the Year-Day-Month method which is common there would not work, eg, 2014-16-05 would come before 2014-22-01. Sorry if that is obvious, just thought I’d mention it.
      
      Reply
Diego Mesones says:

January 6, 2014 at 1:47 am

Hello Larry,
I appreciate you published such a good tutorial about the latest update for Final Cut Pro X. I got really confused with everything happening so fast. I had no idea things changed. So this is my problem. I cannot get my old events to show on Final Cut. When I try to update, the message says there is nothing to update. I have all my projects stored in my external drive but I can’t manage to open them.
I try moving the folders from projects to events but when I hit update, again it says “Final Cut Pro could not find any projects or events to update”
Please, I need help. I have some important material I need to work on.
Warm regards,
Diego Mesones.

Reply
- Larry Jordan says:
  
  January 6, 2014 at 12:58 pm
  
  Diego:
  
  Watch this video – you need to update all your older projects and events:
  
  http://www.larryjordan.biz/fcpx-101-updating-events/
  
  Larry
  
  Reply
Slim says:

January 6, 2014 at 8:07 am

I’m planning to put all my librairies, projects and events on 2 external HD setup as RAID 0.

But i wonder if i will get better performances if i copy manually all the ProRes from the SD card into that HD and say “Leave files in place” or should i let FCPX copy these files from the sd card to that HD? Or is the same?

Reply
- Larry Jordan says:
  
  January 6, 2014 at 1:36 pm
  
  Slim:
  
  ahh… your RAID setup makes me VERY uncomfortable. it will work, but having two different devices setup as a RAID 0 is a recipe for losing data. If one drive isn’t turned on, or become disconnected or where one loses power, you could lose all your data. RAID 0s are fine when all the drives are in one box. Having them as separate boxes is risky.
  
  That being said, if you copy the files into a folder and import them saying “Leave files in place,” FCP will link to the files. If you let FCP copy the files, they will be copied into the Library as managed media. In ALL cases, they should be moved from the SD care, but whether you want linked or managed media, is up to you.
  
  here’s an article that explains more:
  
  http://www.larryjordan.biz/fcp-x-10-1-collaboration/
  
  Larry
  
  Reply
Michael says:

January 6, 2014 at 8:57 pm

This has been very helpful. Thanks Larry and everyone.

Reply
Ross says:

January 9, 2014 at 5:19 am

Hi Larry

I have an issue where I have video files which are linked to the wrong event folder. They are all within the new fcpbundle but when I go to relink the files in FCP the drop down finder window cannot access the package contents to link them up. Right click in finder show package contents works but not when accessing finder via FCP. Any thoughts on a workaround?

Cheers

Ross

Reply
- Larry Jordan says:
  
  January 9, 2014 at 9:26 am
  
  Ross:
  
  The easiest thing is to copy, not move, the files from the event folder and store them in their own folder outside that library.
  
  Then, relink media to those now external files.
  
  Larry
  
  Reply
  - Ross says:
    
    January 9, 2014 at 9:47 am
    
    Thanks Larry, if for completeness I wanted to get those files back into the FCP managed library event is there a way to do that?
    
    Reply
    - Larry Jordan says:
      
      January 9, 2014 at 9:57 am
      
      Ross:
      
      Yes, but it does not involve relinking. To have FCP manage the assets, create a new event and reimport the media you copied into that event.
      
      However, you’ll then need to replace the clips in the project with the new clips from the new event.
      
      Larry
      
      Reply
      - Ross says:
        
        January 10, 2014 at 5:41 am
        
        Thanks, Larry thought this might be the only way. I left some feedback with Apple. Maybe they might change that.
Tangier Clarke says:

January 9, 2014 at 10:09 am

I realize media management is the biggest change and I am not personally a fan of bundled data as FCP is now, but I’ll live. I still like the new workflow, but I like having clear and direct access to my file/folder structures to get to my Quicktimes and other media. That said, Larry do you have any speculation as to why up to this point Apple has not addressed (to my knowledge) these points below which (at least the first two) should have been rolled into this release?

Some things I really want and hoped to see in this release:
1 – Media management that can truncate clips to just what we need for archiving (a la FCP 7).
2 – Reimport from folders as reels (as in the case of a card backup) rather than being forced to create camera archives first.
3 – Color marker for duplicate clips in the storyline (a la FCP 7)
4 – Search dialogue for words or phrases by typing it in (wishful thinking)

Thanks Larry.

Reply
- Larry Jordan says:
  
  January 9, 2014 at 10:45 am
  
  Tangier:
  
  #3 exists in the new version – its in the View menu.
  
  #1 would require transcoding the clips to create just the truncated clips for all but a very few codecs. Apple decided they didn’t want to touch the source media.
  
  #2 I’m not sure this is a true statement, I’ll need to do some research.
  
  #4 is because, currently, speech to text conversion is highly inaccurate, as Adobe discovered.
  
  Larry
  
  Reply
  - Tangier Clarke says:
    
    January 9, 2014 at 11:12 am
    
    I believe #3 is only for the browser and only tells us if that portion of the clip is used in the project. What I mean is something more like FCP 7 whereas on the sequence itself you could now (by color marker) if you’ve used a clip twice (whether on purpose or by accident) in the same sequence.
    
    Re #2
    We backup our cards to hard drives and then clone that/those drives.
    If we want to restore an old project where the media is offline, FCP X has never been able to reimport the media from the backed up folder. You only have two choices: a) turn your backed up folders into camera archives so that FCP X will recognize them b) import your backed up card(s) into the old or a new event simply for the purpose of creating Quicktimes that you can then point your old project to to rebuild the offline files.
    
    For storage/cost sake after a project is complete we do not backup all of the original media and transcoded media that we shot because we have the reels from which to recreate that media.
    
    It’s very cumbersome really. For a project that has many reels this is horrid; being forced to create camera archives (and not in a batch fashion) takes a lot of time. Once media for a project is offline, you cannot rebuild that project using the reimport feature without the camera archive data type or a connected camera.
    
    It’d be nice for Apple to release that and bring back the FCP 7 method where you can have a completely offline project and use log and transfer to just point FCP 7 to the reel folders. FCP X does not let you reimport from the original card structure (represented as a folder in the Finder) from which we made our initial import to begin with.
    
    This is very strange and has never been addressed.
    
    Reply
Rodney says:

January 13, 2014 at 2:31 pm

Is there a way to only ingest the Optimized Media? In my Library/Events if I right click and “Reveal in Finder” I am taken to “Original Media” folder in the bundle for my library. I want it to go to the Prores version which is in the “Transcoded Media/High Quality Media” folder. I’d prefer not to have the original media copied, I already have it backed up. And why is it pointing the the Original Media anyway?

Thanks, Rod

Reply
- Larry Jordan says:
  
  January 13, 2014 at 2:48 pm
  
  Rod:
  
  Anything you want to link to must be stored OUTSIDE the Library folder. And the reason it finds source media is that optimized media may, or may not, exist.
  
  Larry
  
  Reply
Edmond says:

January 14, 2014 at 7:41 pm

Hello, I am wondering how the Time Machine treats the libraries when doing backup. My concern is that if Time Machine creates a backup of the entire library every time even just the projects within has been changed. With all the media reside inside the library will fill up the backup drive very quickly.

Reply
- Larry Jordan says:
  
  January 14, 2014 at 10:41 pm
  
  Edmond:
  
  Time Machine treats the bundle like a folder and only backs up the files that are new or changed.
  
  Larry
  
  Reply