Documents Folder

[mercuryzap]

Hi
I am trying to teach myself Final Cut Express v1.0 and have run into difficulties at the first hurdle. I have attempted to designate my external vst firewire hard-drive as my scratch disk but the program isn't writing the full Final Cut Express Documents folder to the drive just some individual files. It had already written a copy of said folder to my internal drive before I deleted it from the scratch disk list - and I have copied this file to the vst drive. Will this work - what am I doing wrong?

While on the subject, do you just set the waveform cache, thumbnail cache and auto-save vault to just the Final Cut Express Documents folder or do you have to go even further and specify Final Cut Express Documents/Waveform cache etc?

I am using a 300Mhz blue and white Power PC G3 running OS X V.10.3.2

Any help would be very appreciated.

 

[DerekEastham]

Ok,
with any higher-end editing software, you have to tell it everything. Having only told it to use your External Drive as a "Scratch Disk" only means that you told it to digitize your video and audio to that drive as it's imported.

If you want everything to save to that drive, you have to go through all of FCE's settings and re-assign everything to the External Drive. Your waveform, thumbnails, etc, etc, etc.

HOWEVER!-!->>
I would recommend that you DO NOT use your external drive as a "Scratch Disk." You will likely find yourself experiencing terribly digitized video in the near future. (ie - Digital Garble) External drives, with the exception of Scsi & Fibre linked drives do not transfer information fast enough to write the information properly. If possible, I would recommend buying a large internal harddrive to digitize to as a Scratch Disk, and use your external drive for rendering effects/waveform cache, etc...

But please note, that Final Cut works best if everything runs from inside your computer. An external drive makes a great place to safely store your program files and final cut movies of your projects.

Hope this helps.

 

[mercuryzap]

Thanks for your speedy reply and help, Derek.

 

[MarkG]

External drives, with the exception of Scsi & Fibre linked drives do not transfer information fast enough to write the information properly.

Firewire goes up to 50MB/s, AFAIR, which is more than 10x what you need for DV. I use internal drives myself, but the last short I edited was mostly a tidying-up job of an original edit by a guy on a Mac with FCP using a Firewire drive, and they didn't seem to have any problems... if you're just doing basic editing, rather than realtime effects with multiple video streams, a decent Firewire drive should be fine.

 

[DerekEastham]

You're right Mark...
a firewire drive can handle the firewire stream...
Basic editing should be no problem there... in-fact... I've done that several times.

However, I was making that suggestion and observation based on the times I've had to re-digitize things... and from my experience with program lag due to the slower communication with the external drive.

Basically, my suggestions come down to the following:

... while the firewire connection runs at an appropriate speed... the communication between the drive and the computer is delayed. There is no direct link to the processor from the drive, it's all routed through the firewire hardware, and then moves around the computers hardware based on the hardwired programing... this causes a general lag... and allows the computer to make mistakes now and then when writing and reading information...
Usually it's just fine... but now and then there's a mistake... and that's when you have to re-digitize.


Also, a system that is working hard on running the editing software, and importing a firewire signal... has to work just that much harder (durring the digitize session and export session especially)... and when it's then supposed to turn all of that information around, and spit it back out through another fire-wire port and write the information to a drive... the number of twists, turns, and connection jumps the information makes is another reason for communications lag and the potential to develope some errors.

Here's my last suggestion... if it's just not cost-effective... or just happens to make more sense for you to work only from a firewire drive... do the following:

Split up your capturing sessions... capture many clips... try not to exceed 5 minutes at a time.
> this will allow the system to write the information, and create a decent file... and will also help to lower the possibility of a glitch & the necessity to then re-import everything.

Dis-able or disconnect any network cables, or other peripheral components when capturing, editing, and exporting.
>this will help ease the processing load on the computer... and allow the system to focus on the firewire communications job that you'd like it to focus on.

If you do decide to do any major editing... effects... or compositing... Do them in one timeline, then have the computer create a full-quality movie of that timeline, and import that movie back into the project for use in your final timeline...
>while this will lengthen the editing time... it will help to ease the processing load for your computer... especially when or if you export the project back out to a camera...
>it would also be a good idea, if you have the space, to render your final timeline as a movie and then import that into the project and put that file on a new timeline... then export that timeline to tape... as playing one large file is going to be an easier task on the processor, than playing multiple files, or jumping from place to place in another file to play the edited program.


Anyways...
Thanks for bringing that up Mark... I had forgotten to clarify that earlier.

Happy editing!