okay i’ve never had to try this but this is the proper way to do it without cheating at final cut,
not sure if express has the same function either but here it goes
open your sequence and then go to the file–> menu and click on export, then on xml,
xml is a markup language it exports all the timeline, clip start and stop point in yopur project, transitions applied and even effects and colour grades, it only exports the calculations and not the actual footage. you can specify to only save the data for the footage in the sequence or the media in your library (bin)
save this xml file some where safe.
make a backup of your SD project just in case
Now,
close all projects in final cut
make sure your camera or deck is hooked up and turned on
go to file, import, xml and a dialogue box will come up asking where to save the new sequence, what codec to use, (ie hd, sd, anamorphic etc etc) what to call the sequence and wether or not to try to reconnect the media, turn off this option –>(reconnect media) as this searches your computer to find the clips from the old project
Make sure this option is also turned off in the sequence settings –>(use xml default) other wise the xml data will overwrite your decision to make this a HD project instead of an SD one.
Final cut will go ahead and create a new project, sequence and folder for your project, when you open the sequence you will see your complete time line with all effects, transition, colour grades, sound effect etc. but there will be no footage! Instead a red bar saying media offline on it.
This is when you do a batch capture on your original tape, make sure to specify that the media is hd footage.
this will save all the previos sequences as they were originally named and store them in a new folder.
Now you do a reconnect to media, and specify to search for all the footage from one folder, not outside this folder (otherwise it will find original footage and use this instead)
your sequece should fill in with the original footage (i think)
but there may still be some files missing, (eg, a sound effect you found on your harrd drive and stuck in, a still photo you got from you pictures folder, a livetype file, motion project, etc, etc.)
do a new reconnect and this time turn off the search in one folder option and it should find the remaining of the media used in the project, k if that dont work ….
i dunno 