FCPX 10.1 Quick Tip

I finally upgraded to 10.1 yesterday, following the excellent tutorial at fcp.co, and in the process of upgrading I stumbled upon something really useful that I haven’t seen posted anywhere.

The big change in 10.1 is smarter media organization. Until now, for one project you’ve had to keep track of two folders, one in “Final Cut Events” and one in “Final Cut Projects.”

Using this system, the best workflow out there (and I’ll go through it in case others are still using the old version) has been to nest everything in your one Events folder and one Projects folder:

1) Create a New Event and a new Project folder (where you can create several projects inside the folder) using the same name –

2) In Finder, create a folder inside the Event folder, called something like “My Media” and drag all your movie clips in here. I’ve used the name “Raw Video Files” but it makes no difference, just something you know is the place for your original media.

3) In Final Cut, import your media as linked files (so, Final Cut will create small files that link to your full movie clips, rather than copying your media into its own Original Media folder).

4) Use the Event folder for EVERYTHING from now, including where you place your final renders, associated files and graphics, etc. This way, all of your project files will now be nested in one Event and one Projects folder, making it easy to back those up or move them around.

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Okay, so fast forward to 10.1. Now, your projects and events reside within one single Library file – woohoo! But, you’re still supposed to keep all of your raw media and export files and everything else in a seperate folder – which is better than before, but now you still have to keep track of one main folder and your library file seperately. *Sigh*

And in case you’re wondering, you cannot keep your media files inside the library file. You can right click on the library file and “Show Package Contents,” but if you put anything in there (and it’s highly discouraged), in Final Cut you cannot import or export files within the library file, as in it won’t let you show the package contents.

SO here’s the tip (thanks for being patient with this post). You can actually move the library file, the .fcpbundle file, into your main folder. At this point when you open FCPX 10.1 your project will no longer load, but all you have to do is double click on your library file – wherever you placed it – and it will load in Final Cut, now and forever. FCPX will remember to look for the library file in the place where you loaded it from.

So there you have it, now you only need to keep track of ONE folder for everything pertaining to your video.

BONUS TIP: In Mavericks, scroll bars disappear and only reappear when you start scrolling. This can be annoying while you’re editing, because you constantly have to scroll left and right, so go into System Preferences, General, and under “Show Scroll Bars” click Always.