Apple Final Cut Pro 6 - Manual (Page 1507)

24 Part I Media and Project Management
Depending on the duration of your original footage, the captured media files that you
used for your project are not necessarily worth archiving long-term, simply because
they are extraneous copies of your original videotapes. Also, backing up to inexpensive
formats, such as DVD-R, can be fairly time consuming. As long as you archive your
project file and you have the original videotapes available to recapture clips from, your
project is sufficiently archived.
 Project files: These are typically quite small, and many versions of a project file can be
archived on a Zip disk, CD-ROM, or similar storage media.
 Media files captured from tape or other timecoded sources: These require a lot of disk
space, so it can be impractical to back up these files. As long as your tapes have
timecode, you can simply store the original tapes along with the backed-up project
file. If you need to revisit your project later, you can use the timecode information in
the clips of your project file to recapture media from tape.
 Media files without timecode and files created on a computer: Graphics files, such as
still images, and motion graphics that originated on a computer should be
permanently archived on a hard disk, DVD-ROM, or similar storage media. You should
also save the original project files from the applications that you used to create these
media files. For example, if you created a motion graphics logo in Motion, you should
back up the Motion project file, as well as any non-timecoded media files associated
with that project. Non-timecoded video sources, such as video from VHS tape or
audio from an Audio CD, should also be backed up, because you can’t accurately
recapture this media later.
Updating Projects from Previous Versions of Final Cut Pro
Almost every version of Final Cut Pro has new features that require the project format to
change. The current version of Final Cut Pro can open projects from any previous version.
Choosing Project Update Options
If you open an older project file, most necessary updates happen automatically.
However, Final Cut Pro asks you to choose how you want to handle updating for
several improved features such as scaling quality and HD color fidelity.
The table below shows what features were updated in specific versions of Final Cut Pro.
All features that correspond to versions newer than your project must be updated. For
example, if you open a project saved in Final Cut Pro 2, you need to update your project’s
master-affiliate relationships (Final Cut Pro 4), scaling quality, HD color accuracy, and
effects aspect ratio handling (Final Cut Pro 6). However, because a Final Cut Pro 2 project
is newer than Final Cut Pro 1.2.5, DV color accuracy is not updated.