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

How to run Final Cut Pro from an external hard drive and move your projects, events and library.

This video is your ultimate guide for how to fully run Final Cut Pro X from an external hard drive and how to move your projects, events and library. Allowing you to save storage on your Mac and edit your FCP library on different computers! First, what hard drive is best for this? Technically you can use any hard drive, having said that, it is best to get a hard drive with as much storage as possible that is also as fast as possible, all while not breaking the bank. A simple 4tb Hard drive like this is a great place to start, as it strikes a good balance between these attributes. Has plenty of storage for it’s size, uses USB 3 so in reasonably fast and costs around 100 dollars. Of course for maximum performance a portable SSD like the Samsung’s T5 drives are an excellent option. Now that you have your hard drive let’s prep it for final cut pro x. Like with any new hard drive it good to erase it before use, removing any factory data that is added. To do this open disk utility, select your hard drive and click on erase. Rename it, for example FCPX External, format as MAC OS Extended Journaled and select erase. This will only take a second, there we go the hard drive it now ready. Next let’s launch Final Cut Pro X. First, on the left of the screen you can the see list of Libraries, in my case we see the local library, as the name implies this library is stored on my Mac’s internal drive. Now we are going to create a new library for the external drive. To do this, under file select new, then library. From here we can choose the location for this new library, in this case we will choose our external drive. And let’s rename this to External, to make this easy to differentiate, then Press save. We have now created a new final cut library on our external drive. As you can see this appears listed on the left along with our local library. To confirm that all is correctly setup, go to file, then library properties. Find the Storage locations tab and click on Modify settings. A drop down menu will appear, and you want the storage locations of Media and Cache to be set at “In Library” (on the external drive), motion content can remain on the local drive as this takes up very little space and finally backups are currently set to be stored on the local drive, however can also be moved to the external drive to further save space on your local drive, in my case I am going to do this. Then press ok to save changes. Now that your library is all setup and ready, I am going to show you have to access it next time you launch final cut. First make sure your drive in connected then open final cut. Under file, select open library, other and select this specific file from the external hard drive. Let’s test this by importing some footage. As you can see the footage is displayed in our event under the external library. Let’s create a new project, we can now move the footage to the timeline and edit completely off the external hard drive. Finally, I am going to show you where and how this data is stored on the external drive. If we open a new finder window and select the external drive, you will see one file named External, this file represents the new final cut library. To access it, right click and select show package contents. Be careful not to move or rename any files, as this will damage the library (however viewing them is fine). In this event file you can see folders for Analysis files, Projects, Original media and Render files. In fact inside the Original media folder you will find the clip we just imported. Thus showing that the new Final Cut Pro library is running and completely stored on the external drive. Allowing you to save storage on you local drive.

Disclaimer: Links included in this description may be affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Thank you for watching, let me know if you have any questions.
Dion Schuddeboom
DionVideoProductions

(tags)
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[jrgenhansen]

This tutorial is brilliant. Precise, to the point and no unnecessary BS. I tip my hat to your clean cut presentation style as well as your ability to educate.
Whenever I encounter issues in my creative pursuits, I immediately scroll through YouTube's vast library of instructional videos in search of that eureka moment that will help absolve my frustrations. This video really helped me in a time of need! Thank you!

[addieangeles]

this just saved me, final cut libraries take up half the space of my laptop whenever i try to edit vids so this is a real lifesaver. thank you so much for the instructional video!! the pacing (and aesthetics) made it really easy to follow! ❤️

[FilmSmarts]

I wish there was a LOVE click for this video!! THANK YOU! After attempting a move/copy following the apple support youtube channel instructions - What a mess! Thank goodness for FCP experts like You! This video is so informative, yet very easy to follow. I have multiple external drives. One external drive is faulty but unfortunately has most of the media needed for my new project. I was able to copy everything to a New Library in a different external drive beautifully. Only 2 missing files afterwards, but I was able to easily relink them. As an ultimate test - I closed the original library and completely ejected the faulty drive that housed the original media and Voila! My new library was still intact with all of the copied media! THANK YOU!! 😊

[daveowen]

One of the best instructional video's I have watched. Concise, clear, and articulate instruction. Keep up the great work.

[FlorenceRobbiano]

Awesome! THIS IS EXACTLY what I was looking for! So many tutorials totally skip these important steps (I love that you show as well the files structures). THANK YOU ❤

[aerialsloweraustria]

Thanks for the tutorial! One small remark, since at the beginning you speak about formatting the external drive and say to format it HFS Extended-Journaled - especially (but not only) if you work with external SSDs. Above macOS Mojave or later, Apple recommends to use the APFS format. Thanks and keep doing what you're doing!

[carlosparraga]

Simply the BEST of all videos i have seen explaining how to do that. Extremely clear and easy to understand. THKS

[bykurt_is]

my god dude, other channels were so focused on milking the damn video to the point they didn't even explain how to do the damn thing. thank you for not being like them. thought I was gonna have a stroke lol

[temeculavalleychurch]

great simple and clear tutorial. no frills, just what you need to do. Thank you for sharing your expertise.

[thethriftyfawn]

Wow, this only came out 6 days ago??!! PERFECT timing for my current situation with regards to being in the market to purchase an external drive as well as learning how to set everything up properly.

Thank you SO MUCH Dion for posting this, and for your recommendations on portable drives! I will be returning to this video for instructions again once my purchase is complete.

I will also be casually binge watching your channel once I'm done editing my current video, as well as looking forward to your upcoming posts!

😊❤👍

[MikeB-spgp]

Thank you. So step by step. So easy to follow if you pay attention. You totally won this subscriber.

[adarkbeauty]

Awesome. Thanks for being straight to the point and clear. Giving this a thumbs up.

[danmcmahonfilms]

Dude! Thank you so much! This video saved my life when working on an hour long wedding film that wouldn't fit on my internal SSD. I thought I was going to have to go buy a new macbook just for extra storage. Now I can continue to use this pathetic (256G) SSD macbook from for the forseeable future. Cheers!

[speliotis]

thank you for making this tutorial... Subscribed... look forward to learning more.

[GwenFrosi]

Actually very helpful. It holds one's attention throughout the entire video, not much pizazz. Thank you!

[gmania]

I just picked up the Lacie Rugged SSD Pro 2 TB with Thunderbolt 4 cable to use on my 2023 MacBook M2 Pro 16”. Great tutorial to help me set it all up. Thx!

[waynechin]

Thank you for that tutorial, it was a great help as my mac was not behaving as it should😇

[bartthimbles]

great video and explanation Dion, I now feel confident to move over to an external SSD

[abigailparkerbrown]

Thank you so much for making this so simple and easy! You saved me so much time !

[merv]

Well done excellent video straight to the point I'll definitely use this on fcp.