Final Cut Pro X: Back up projects, events, and libraries

Back up projects, events, and libraries

Backing up your work and your media consistently is an essential part of your workflow. Some people back up daily or weekly; others back up when a project is complete. To protect your media, it’s recommended that you back up to a storage device or partition different from the one where you store the media files used with Final Cut Pro.

Final Cut Pro provides both automatic and manual tools that let you:

Important:   When you import media into Final Cut Pro, you can select the “Leave files in place” option to link to the files in their current location rather than copy them into the library. In that case, Final Cut Pro creates symbolic links (also known as symlinks), which are special files that point to the media files. When you copy or move clips between events, Final Cut Pro copies or moves the symbolic links only (not the source media files). To replace the symbolic links with the actual source media files, select the events and choose File > Consolidate Event Files. For more information about files and clips, see Media files and clips.
Note:   If you have customized any Final Cut Pro effects, transitions, titles, generators, or themes, you must manually back up and move the Motion Templates folder located in your Movies folder. Similarly, you must manually track and move any third-party effects, because they are not managed within the Final Cut Pro library.
Last Modified: Apr 25, 2016
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