Re: Moving projects between multiple computers with FCP X. Is it possible?

I teach at a university (we have a huge film-digital media department, with over 450 majors), and we run several computer labs. Students have their own drives (FireWire) and they use either FCP 7 or FCP X.

There is absolutely no problem having projects reside on students' external drives and having them plug into any workstation and editing flawlessly on either FCP 7 or X. (Of course, FCP 7 projects are edited on FCP 7, and X projects edited on FCP X respectively).

I simply don't understand the statement: "You can't simply hand off a project file to another editor who has the same media like you could with previous versions of FCP. All of your project organization is now globally contained in the application rather than in your project file. You would literally have to give that other editor your computer to open your project with all of your organization." As long as the project refers to an event or a group of events on the external drive, then that project is self contained--no need to hand off "your computer to open your project with all of your organization."

Each student can have their own projects on their own external drive. PERIOD!

If they want to collaborate, they can hand their drive to the collaborator, or simply make copies of the "Event" and "Project" folders and have other people edit. (But like in FCP 7, you would have to figure out how to reconcile different work being done simultaneously on the same project timeline by two different people at the same time). However, if different people work on different parts of the film/video, then there is no problem.