Hey Guys!

I am about to embark on a new and larger project. Right now I have an apple ibook G4 with Final Cut Express and a Maxtor Hard disk with a whopping 300Gb.

Can I set it up so that I can store everything I capture and edit on the ext.hardisk (which will more or less remain attached to my laptop)? I heard something about FCE needing to be moved onto the ext. Harddisk as well, is it just to drag and drop?

The reason i am asking is that sometimes imported files didn't remain 'online' on my last project so most of my those files needed to remain on the desktop for easy access.

This project is going to be much bigger and therefore I won't have that space on my desktop.

Thanks for any help!

I use FCP, so not completely sure if FCE is different. But you should be able to set your external drive as your scratch disk in the preferences. This will cause all render and capture files to be stored there. However, if you try to open a project and the external drive isn't connected (or isn't turned on) then FCP will ask you to choose a different disk, which would probably be the internal drive. That would also cause some files to be stored on the internal drive. Careful with this, especially if you move the hard drive to different computers. You can end up not having some files that you need since they would be on the laptop's drive.

But if you always have the external drive connected, and if you set it as your scratch disk, then everything should be fine. I'd be surprised if FCE also needs to be installed on the external drive. With FCP you can have it on the internal drive.

Thanks Boyd!
That sounds very logical as does most everything with Mac. However, very confusing at first if one is used to PC's (and bad at those as well!)

At any rate, where in the preferences do I set my external hard drive as a scratch disk?

thanks

In FCP you would go to "preferences" under the Final Cut Pro menu. There are a number of tabs there and one of them lets you choose a scratch disk. Have never used FCE, but I suspect there's something similar.

thanks again! It is now set!