Run Final Cut Pro From An External Hard Drive and Move Projects, Events and Library (2021)

hello everyone i'm dion from dion video productions in this video i'm going to be showing you how to run final cut pro from an external hard drive and how to move your projects events and library let's get started all right so editing off an external hard drive is a great way to save space and clear storage on your mac it will also allow you to take your final cut library and edit off different computers this video will cover everything you need to know first we'll look at what hard drive is best then i'll be showing you how to prep the drive and from there we'll take a look at how to set up and create a new library on that drive and finally i'll be showing you how to carry over any existing projects events and libraries from your mac so that you can edit and run final cut pro straight from the external hard drive let's get started alright so first what hard drive is best well what this comes down to is a balance between speed and price if you're looking for best possible performance and highest possible read and write speeds i recommend a solid state drive or an external ssd though bear in mind along with its high performance and high speed comes a pretty high price tag alternatively if you're looking for medium to high speed as well as a far lower price i recommend getting an external hd from a value perspective external hard drives are a great place to start there are many great hard drives out there but from experience i can recommend western digital for example the 4 terabyte drive i'll be using in this video today which costs less than 100 now that you've chosen your drive it's time to prep it for final cut pro the first thing we're going to do is format it click on the magnifying glass found in the top right of your screen then we're going to open an application called disk utility from here a window like this will appear along the left here we have a column of all the drives that your mac has detected under external you'll find your external hard drive from here we'll click on erase and we can change the name let's go ahead and call this fcp external and then as format you're going to want to make sure that mac os extended journaled is selected then press erase there we go the drive is now formatted and ready now that the drive is prepped and properly formatted for final cut pro it's now time to launch it taking a look at final cut pro you'll see here on the left you'll find a list of libraries events and projects now you see that in my case i have only one library named macbook pro and as the name implies this is a library that is stored locally on my mac what we're going to do now is create a new library that will be stored on your external hard drive to do this go in the menu bar click on file new and then select library from here we have to choose our destination for this library let's scroll down and find our external hard drive and then we can go ahead and rename this now when renaming the library take care not to edit the dot fcp bundle section of the title as this is the file type and you want to make sure this remains as is the word untitled however can be changed to whatever you like in my case let's call this external and once you're done you can press save now taking a look at the same menu bar in the top left of the screen you'll now see the new library has been created and has been named external this way we can clearly differentiate between which is the external library as well as the one that's stored locally on our mac now that we've created the new library on our external drive it's time to confirm or change some of the associated settings now on the right of the screen you'll see a window titled library properties if you don't already see this go under file and click on library properties let's go ahead and modify the settings alright so as you can see this window allows us to modify the storage locations for the media motion content cache and backups now in most cases we can leave this to in library as the library is now stored on the external hard drive this means all imported media will also be stored on the external hard drive within the library the motion content folder however i suggest leaving locally as this will mean that any of your existing plugins that you may have installed on your mac will also be accessible on this external library so i like to keep this as in motion template folder as for the cache this definitely takes up a lot of space over time so you're going to want to make sure that this too is stored on the library on your external hard drive and finally your final cut backups these don't take up a lot of storage so i keep these locally from here we can press ok great now to test that this works let's go ahead and import some footage i'm just going to close the inspector window and then we'll import some footage as normal from here we are going to go ahead and create a new event let's call this fashion to ensure that the event will be stored on the correct library make sure that external is selected in your list of libraries from here we have the option to copy the files to library or to leave them in place now which you choose will come down to personal preference however i personally recommend copying them to the library allowing you to then take this and edit off different machines without having to worry about missing media so i always like to carry this over from here we can go ahead and click on import and there we go taking a look at our new library we now have our new event let's go ahead and create a new project go into file click new project and we'll use automatic settings and let's call this fashion as well we can go ahead and click and drag all of our clips in and as you can see we're now editing completely off the external hard drive now before i show you how to carry over other existing events projects and libraries i just want to quickly show you the file structure so we're going to go ahead and open up the hard drive and you'll see we have this one folder labeled external and this is the final cut library now to access these subfolders right click on it and select show package content and this right here is where you'll find your list of events as well as all other associated media with your final cut library this includes the fashion event that we just created as well as the original media that we just imported so you'll see that everything is now entirely stored on the external hard drive allowing you to fully run final cut pro off this drive alright so now i'm going to be showing you how to copy or move your projects events or library to the new external hard drive first i'm going to show you how to carry over a project let's go ahead and find a project now in this case of course we're going to go back to our local library as of course we'll carry over from the local to the external and we'll click on this event here and right here let's say i want to use this project right here now this is actually a tick tock and instagram formatted version of the fashion film we just saw if you want to learn how to correctly format and export your final cut projects for instagram or tick tock i have a full tutorial on this which i will leave linked in the description alright so let's say i want to carry this project over to the new library to do this make sure the project is selected as highlighted in yellow and then under file we can either copy the project or move the project as the names imply copying the project will copy the project as well as all the media used within that project straight over to the external hard drive moving the project of course will move this over freeing up storage on your mac while bringing everything over to the external hard drive now the steps for moving or copying a project are identical in this case i'll be copying this project from here we have a list of libraries for where we want to copy this to in this case it's already detected the external library that we created earlier go ahead and click it and from here we have a few options you're going to want to make sure that you copy and include all the media used in the project and make sure that original media is selected optimized media and proxy media can be left off unless of course you're using them in your original project you also have the option to copy any media that may be stored in external locations this means any media used in this project that may be stored outside of your final cut library i always like to check it just in case from here press ok so final cut is now copying and pasting all of the media used in that project and bringing it over entirely to the external hard drive once the transfer is complete you'll now find the new project listed under a new event that final cut has created under the external library final cut requires each library to have at least one event and therefore has automatically created one using today's date within this event you'll find the new project we just carried over as you can see this will now play back smoothly and will play back entirely from the external hard drive let me now show you how to carry over a full event if we go back to our local library the one on the macbook pro and click on the same event you'll see that i actually have two projects i have the instagram version of the project we just carried over as well as the full version which is longer and uses the 16x9 aspect ratio let's say i want to carry over this full event in order to have both projects on the external drive to do this is a very similar process as before in this case instead of selecting the project we want to carry over we select the event once it's highlighted in blue go up into the menu bar and under file click on copy event or move event to library in this case let's copy the event to the library and just like before we'll select external then a similar window will appear in this case i'll use the same settings as before then press ok the transfer is now complete as you can see in our events list we now have the event listed twice once under the external drive as well as once under the local drive and you'll see that if i click between them they are identical containing both projects as well as all their associated media and lastly if you wanted to carry over an entire library you can simply repeat the previous step by selecting multiple events in your library clicking on file and then again going to copy or move events to the new library this will effectively allow you to transfer an entire library worth of events and projects to your external drive and that's it that's how you run final cut pro from an external hard drive and how to move your projects events and libraries to that new drive thank you very much for watching hope you enjoyed this video if you did be sure to leave a like down below and subscribe for more content like this thank you for watching

Channel: Dion Schuddeboom

Views: 9,498

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Id: mMWfVjFdgKw

Length: 9min 50sec (590 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 19 2021