Bill…How do you personally manage project library and the file size?

[Jeffrey Carter]

The only ability on the project side is to ‘delete render files’ which will make it smaller, but way to big to easily back up constantly to another drive or disk.

To copy the project to another disk, just drag that project in FCPX to another drive in the project library. You can also move the project from the file menu.

[Bill Davis]

In short I don’t have “a” project library. I have several.

X is installed on my laptop and on my desktop.

I keep a few small projects on each – mostly simple “motion graphics” or “move on stills” projects since these take up little space and are easy to load and work with.

I keep my primary editing repository on a Firewire 800 drive. This stores the past half dozen to ten or so projects I’m currently cutting or that are “hot” projects that will require revision. These drives not only have the projects, they also house disk images of the clips used to create the edits – or if the project needs to be”on deck” – I might have X copy the clips into the event library directly. Depends on how “hot” the project is.

The way X works, the moment that Firewire drive is “mounted” X sees it and loads the projects up immediately. Any self contained with media copied directly into them are totally “live” immediately. So as not to clog up my RAM, I keep other projects on this drive as “reference” projects where the project is seen and skimmable – but not “loaded” by virtue of keeping the clips in Disk Image archives. These will only fully “populate’ if I open the images into the desktop via double clicking their disk images in the finder.

The next group is my “second tier” projects. They reside on Backup Drives. Those might be USB-2/3 or eSata drives. (I use whatever is cheapest at Costco or Frys.)

All of these drives have their own Project and Event Libraries. They also have disk images of the source files that were captured to create the projects.

I typically mirror this “second tier” project group across two drives for safety.

Anything I need to work with TODAY pops up ready to edit the moment I attach my primary storage FW800 drive. If it’s clips are in disk images, I can group select and double click them – and they open fast and the event browser re-populates with the content, ready to go. Not quite as fast as the projects with clips copied directly into the events, but fast enough to launch during a phone meeting to make real-time changes.

If I have to work with the second tier projects, I just plug those drives in. The project library and timelines load up – but I might have to “open” the disk images if I need to make changes – a process that can take maybe 10 to 20 minutes if I have a dozen 16 gig CF cards of source footage that have been imaged for the project.

I generally do not keep any large projects on my laptop or desktop’s “root” drive. I keep them on outboard drives. Firewire 800 portables for the projects that require active work. Less costly desktop standalone drives via USB or eSata for archiving.

That’s it in a nutshell.

(I’m also a bit obsessive and usually use the “Duplicate” command to mirror projects onto tertiary drives if they are particularly valuable or complex.

But that’s essentially what I’m doing as of now.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Tony Brittan]

Wouldn’t you wanna use te eSATA drives fir primary work rather tan FW800? Seems like old wan to since eSATA is so much faster. I just got my LaCie thunderbolt eSATA hub and now I can use all of my current drives with the MacBook pro that I’ve been using for small jobs and learning FCPX, Avid, and Adobe and it’s many times faster than any of my FW800 drives. Just sayin.

[Bill Davis]

[Tony Brittan] “and it’s many times faster than any of my FW800 drives. Just sayin.
“

Quite possibly faster, but at least for my work, not sure its meaningfully so.

My MacBook Pro has a FW800 port. My stock of little Seagate Free Agent GoFlex Pro drives are cheap, small, light, have been quite reliable so far, and work beautifully with X. If my next laptop has an eSata port, I’d convert, maybe. But this works fine for now with no need to change.

Faster is nice. Easy, cheap and bulletproof is a bit higher on my list. And so far, this rig has been precisely that.

FWIW.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Jeff Kirkland]

So as not to clog up my RAM, I keep other projects on this drive as “reference” projects where the project is seen and skimmable – but not “loaded” by virtue of keeping the clips in Disk Image archives. These will only fully “populate’ if I open the images into the desktop via double clicking their disk images in the finder.

Hi Bill,

Not quite sure I get this bit… are we talking about the media used in the project? In that case, wouldn’t the project just show the red missing media clip? Not sure how you can take the media away from a project and still keep it skimmable…

Cheers
Jeff K

Jeff Kirkland | Southern Creative Media
video * audio * post * production
Melbourne, Australia

[Bill Davis]

[Jeff Kirkland] “Hi Bill,

Not quite sure I get this bit… are we talking about the media used in the project? In that case, wouldn’t the project just show the red missing media clip? Not sure how you can take the media away from a project and still keep it skimmable…”

It’s another one of those things that only make sense once you stop seeing X as only a video editing program and start to approach it as a database and asset organization tool.

If you keep in mind that literally everything in X is expressed as metadata, then it makes sense that the reason that anything would go off line is that the program just doesn’t have a record of a place to “lookup” the resource to make it visible. But unlike Legacy where the Capture Scratch or specific linked default location were the ONLY place where the software would ever look for assets, X can look anywhere.

So with that in mind. Just take your project and use the Share Menu to Export an iPhone clip for your project. That’s going to generate a small file to be stored in the Sharing folder – but the moment you do that – your project library has a “new” place to reference the clip – so BINGO – that new persistent reference clip becomes what “populates” your project library if the original media is not available.

This is what Phil and Greg at Intelligent media have finally started to successfully drum through to my all too often cotton-filled head.

I have to stop thinking of a clip as “a thing in a Capture Scratch” as I did for the past 10 years – and start seeing them as “references to a thing’s location that the database is happy to alter and track for me if I let it.”

In X literally EVERYTHING is expressed as metadata. And metadata is infinitely flexible. And until you shift your thinking about that – it’s hard to understand the rest of the underlying concepts that the software is built around.

So it’s absolutely possible to have your “media offline” yet still have skimmable clips. The software just needs a pointer to another usable reference place to generate the skimmable data from.

Hope that helps.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Jeff Kirkland]

Thanks for that. I think I’m starting to see the light – and a whole new aspect of X that I just hadn’t thought through enough. Time for some experimenting I think.

Jeff Kirkland | Southern Creative Media
video * audio * post * production
Melbourne, Australia

[Richard Herd]

[Bill Davis] “That’s going to generate a small file to be stored in the Sharing folder”

What’s the sharing folder? I mean, is that a folder you create for just this purpose? Or is it something that X has done, of which I’m not yet aware?

I really like icon that shows whether or not the last export made reflects or not the current state of the project.

Thanks!

[Bill Davis]

[Richard Herd] “What’s the sharing folder? I mean, is that a folder you create for just this purpose? Or is it something that X has done, of which I’m not yet aware?”

The latter.

Go to any Project Library. Select a project. Go to the “Share Menu” and take the first choice “Media Browser” – you’ll get a choice of export options. No matter which one you select, X will create and save a copy of your project (at the resolution you specify) in your Final Cut Pro Projects Folder in a sub folder called Shared Items. Once a copy is in there, the X database can use it to populate your Project Library with images and allow you to skim projects even if the source clips or evens are offline.

One thing I’m noticing quite a bit here is that so many people coming from Legacy are so “Timeline focused” that they don’t really spend much time looking around and exploring the other menus that aren’t directly related to editing functions in the Timelines.

This is an example of how the Share menu can help you manage your work and allow new thinking about storing project copies and links that can really make things easier for you once you understand the new structure.

So my advice is to take time and explore the hidden corners of the software she you have time. For instance, The Share function is primarily in it’s global menu up top, but it’s also reflected in a tab in the Inspector when you’re in the Project Library right next to Properties and there’s interesting functions built into both.

FWIW.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Richard Herd]

You rock! One more issue: I’ve exported many versions of the short story I’m editing, then I send it to Tom for review. The latest issue was audio. He wanted “this” instead of “that.” Do you know of a way the project library’s metadata will also track these kinds of changes?

(I’m all in favor of the database model, by the way. I hope for a few more advances to it too with regard to Color Decision Lists and LUTs, on importing footage. That is, I would love to have footage import into X and before it even hits the timeline there is an adjustment layer added that I define, so all the footage looks the way I want it to look BEFORE I edit.)