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Workflow on 2 Macs, File managment and few other things | Beginner
Hi everyone, this is my first post.
Well I’m starting a YouTube channel and decide to make everything in FCP X and have few questions. Normally I choose to have all files in fcp x library – it’s more safe for now I guess. I shoot on DSLR camera – I read a lot about optimized media and I know now I should use it, but it takes a few times more space on hard drive. So I decide to buy external drive and store everything/almost everything on it – this is how I plan to manage things:
1. Import original media and create optimize media in FCP library.
2. Work on optimized media and render from it – is it always choose optimized media to render from when there are original and optimized media? Because you can’t choose specific “optimized” in view, there’s only “optimized/original.
3. When I want to continue work on Macbook I just create proxy media and work with it to make it lighter to handle for hardware.
4. After everything is done – render master file/render file for youtube, I delete rendered files and optimized/proxy to keep original file in case I will need it in future and save a lot of space. Is it right?And two other things:
5. What is in “render files” folder and why It occupies so much space?
6. Where should I place cache folder – on internal ssd to make fcp works quicker? -
3 Replies
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For 1080p H264 content, you normally don’t need to use optimized or proxy media. Most decently-equipped contemporary Macs are fast enough to edit that natively. You don’t even need to import it to the library — you can normally import it with “leave files in place”. Exceptions are AVCHD and XAVC content which are in the original folder structure.
If you have already created proxy or optimized media, this can be deleted by selecting the even or library, then File>Delete Generated Library Files, and selecting all the checkboxes. This will only delete scratch and temp material, never the original content.
Since you have already imported media to the library, that can either be left there or moved outside the library using the Consolidate function. You can Google various instructional videos about this. Or you can leave that content inside the library and import subsequent additional content using “leave files in place”.
Normally even a MacBook Air is fast enough to edit 1080p H264 content natively. If you are editing multicam, you might need proxy files in that case.
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Thank you for answers! Well my iMac is a little beast, so there’s no problem with work on original files – I just think to make optimized media from it, because how Larry Jordan says “For all editing where you are adding effects, color grading, or just want the best performance, optimize all camera native media.”
As I read about it on multiple sites, everyone agrees that convert files to optimized is good for quality in post process, which I’m going to do in my movies. BUT I’m still learning, so I’m open to all advices from You 🙂
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So to get best quality from DSLR source files should I optimize media or not?
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