Hi - I just installed Final Cut Studio 5.1 on my Intel iMac and I don't know if I set up my scratch disk correctly. I had FCE HD installed before so I just want to make sure that FCP is good.

I have the main folder set up directly to my 500 GB Western Digital Mybook, without pointing to any subfolders.

Then, I set up the Waveform Cache, Thumbnail Cache and Autosave Cache to the individual subfolders of the same name inside the Mybook.

Is this the correct set up? Should I set the Waveform, Thumbnail and Autosave to the top level folder instead?

Any help will be appreciated!

You've got the most important part right. SO many people goof this up and point the "capture scratch disk" to their job folder. This goes against how FCP is set up to organize your media. The same people who complain about how bad the media management is goof this up constantly and end up having many, many "capture scratch" folders on their computer.

That said, I do the other files (Waveform, thumbnail, etc) exactly the same way. I point them all to the main disk. Just know when you are deleting media or moving media, to go into each one of these folders for the project you are wanting to move or delete.

Hope this helps.

Kevin

Gilbert,

You actually DON'T want to have the Waveform, thumbnail, etc folders on your media drive (Mybook). They should be in the OS X Documents folder of your system. These files are constantly being written to and over written during editing and will slow down the media drive and defragment it sooner.

These folders go on the Mybook:

Audio Render Files
Capture Scratch
Render Files

These folders go in Documents:

Autosave Vault
Thumbnail Cache Files
Waveform Cache Files

Thank you for clearing that up Dave!

Gilbert

I've done it this way since FCP 1.0 came out (all on scratch disk) and have never had problems. I wouldn't worry about it too much. Not saying the advice is bad...