How to set up a Final Cut Pro X project on the Jellyfish creative collaboration server

This video shows how to set up a new Final Cut Pro X project on a LumaForge Jellyfish creative collaboration server. What folders to create, how to set up the library so you can collaborate on your edits and make the most of the storage.

This video was made by Jonathan Morrison, who is a YouTuber with 2.3 million subscribers and over 300 million views. In it he explains the needs his studio has – sharing space and technology with other YouTubers.

Before you say ‘they are only YouTubers’ – he describes how how one of his forthcoming videos – which is likely to get millions of views – already has 8TB of media. Enough media and audience for many TV shows or feature films. As well as size of project and audience, they also have very high turnover. They make new films every few days – the kind of output you might expect from TV news documentary teams. With the Jellyfish they are able to work on five films at the same time off the same storage device.

Jonathan showed how to set up a Final Cut project on a Jellyfish:

1. Create a new project folder on a Jellyfish share. In this case in the ‘December 2018 Projects’ folder, he created a folder named ‘2019 Gaming Predictions’
2. In that new folder create a media folder. ‘Gaming Predictions A Roll’
3. Copy the your camera card folders to the media folder.
4. Copy any separate audio media folders to the media folder.
5. Start Final Cut Pro X. Use the ‘File:New:Library…’ command to create a new library in your project folder. A library named ‘2019 Gaming Predictions’ in the ‘2019 Gaming Predictions’ folder.
6. Rename the default event. ‘Gaming Predictions’
7. Select the library. In the inspector to modify settings.
8. For Storage Locations click the ‘Modify Settings’ button.
9. For ‘Media’ use the popup menu to change the setting from ‘In Library’ to a new folder you will create. Go to the ‘Choose…’ option and create a new folder in your project folder. ‘2019 Gaming Predictions MEDIA’ in the ‘2019 Gaming Predictions’ folder.
10. For ‘Motion Content’ change the popup menu setting from ‘In Motion Templates Folder’ to ‘In Library’ – useful if the project needs motion graphics content created in Motion 5.
11. For ‘Cache’ use the popup menu to change the setting from ‘In Library’ to a new folder you will create. Go to the ‘Choose…’ option and create a new folder in your project folder. ‘2019 Gaming Predictions CACHE’ in the ‘2019 Gaming Predictions’ folder.
12. Choose ‘File:Import:Media….’ Before choosing the media, in the Import dialog, make sure the setting for ‘Files’ is set to ‘Leave Files in Place’ and the setting for ‘Keywords’ is ‘from Folders’
13. Select the first media folder you created. Click the ‘Import Selected’ button. ‘Gaming Predictions A Roll’

You are now ready to edit. Once you finish editing on that workstation, you can close the library. At that point someone else on a different Mac connected to the Jellyfish will be able to open the library and work on their machine.

More from Jonathan Morrison. LumaForge’s Jellyfish creative collaboration server.