Antia and her husband, thanks for the email. Anita asked:

We are professional video photographers and I want to handle the editing of the work as well.
We got a new macbook pro and external 120gb hard drive
Right now final cut pro, shake, etc. is installed in computer.
We are wondering since we will run business for different clients what is best way to set this up.

Thinking of putting fcp and peripherals on hard drive and then putting work editing on on, yet another hard drive separate for each client.
Good idea/bad idea…any suggestions

Great question. There are many ways to configure FCP for your new Macbook Pro (I’m Jealous) but here is a fool proof way to do it. One question I have for you is your 120gb hard drive one that needs AC power or is it a 2.5″ external bus powered hard drive? I’ll answer the difference later in this post but for now I’ll get to your question.

That is a good setup you have. With the costs of external hard drives getting ridiculously low it is now affordable to use one per client and store it away after the project is finished. The difficult thing to grasp is making sure that you set your Scratch Disks to the external hard drive each time when you are working on that project. Every time you render or capture footage it will store the files in the correct folders so you won?t have a mess.

Here is an example of how to set your Scratch Disks.

Go to Final Cut Pro on the top menu and select System Settings…

Make sure that Scratch Disks tab is selected and hit the Set button. This is where you tell FCP what folder to place the video files when your are Logging and Capturing. Your audio and video rendered files will also be located in the same folder.

When you hit the set button FCP is asking you where would you like these files placed. I suggest you select your external hard drive and click the New Folder button and name it FCP Media.

So now you have your new folder select it and hit the Choose button.

Go ahead and click the Set Button for the remaining items… Waveform Cache, Thumbnail Cache, and Auto Save Vault and choose the folder you just created. That way all your files will be in the same place.

I also suggest you create an additional folder on your external hard drive called FCP Projects… in case you choose to do multiple projects on the hard drive. Then you can create folders inside the FCP Projects such as:

• Media-This is where you can store any file that you export from your project or anything that you import into your project that is not captured through the Log and Capture.
• Audio-You can place all your audio files in this folder and if you need to clean up any audio files with Soundtrack Pro you can select this folder for that.
• Motion-In case you create anything in motion you can save all the projects and exported video clips in here.
  Pics-Do I have to explain that?

This is just a method to the madness that I use to keep my projects organized and it helps so much. Sometimes I get lazy and I pay for it big time trying to reconnect all my missing media files, but I?m pretty good at sticking to it.

Back to your question… Keep FCP and peripherals on your laptop hard drive it works best this way, I know I tried that before. Also save your project files onto your laptop. Create a folder and save your projects in there. Here is the reason. If by any chance one of your external hard drives fail you will lose everything associated with that project. If you have the project file saved on your laptop you can always open the project file and can recapture the media clips again… I know I?d hate to do that all over again but at least you will have the reference files for the clips.

I also suggest that you never daisy chain your external hard drives together. You can read an older post where I described my failings.

What to watch out for Mac Laptop users. I?ve tested a few USB 2.0 external 2.5? hard drives that stated they were bus powered. It seems to work for PC laptops but not the Powerbooks or the first generation of the Macbook Pro. I guess the USB ports do not produce enough power for those. On the flip side I have also test a couple of firewire external 2.5? hard drives and the firewire seems to work just fine. I guess the firewire ports kick back enough power for those. Just something to think about when you purchase a 2.5? external hard drive.

Related posts:

1. Final Cut Pro Email Question: External Hard Drive
2. Email Question: External Hard Drives
3. How To Organize a Final Cut Pro Project
4. Make Chapter Markers For DVD Studio Pro in Final Cut Pro
5. Make A Final Cut Pro Movie Into MPEG-2 For DVD Studio Pro
6. How to Configure a Final Cut Pro System for Jackson
7. Final Cut Pro Tip: Favorite Motion Effect
8. To The Rescue