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Activity Forums Compression Techniques Compressing Reference Files

  • Compressing Reference Files

    Posted by Andrea Nesbitt on July 9, 2014 at 4:29 pm

    When exporting in FCP 7 and I un check “Make Movie Self Contained” (Make the video as a reference file) Is it possible to compress those files in Compressor (To make a DVD file) and get rid of those reference videos. Will my dvd files still work without those reference files?

    Since my entire project file is so large on my hard drive, I’m trying to save space. When I export movie as a reference file, I’m still getting those video files over 40 GB . I would like to delete those video files and just keep the dvd compressed files.

    Andrea Nesbitt replied 12 years, 1 month ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
  • 2 Replies
  • Craig Seeman

    July 9, 2014 at 4:49 pm

    Reference files do work as sources for compression but occasionally fail. Personally I don’t find it the most reliable way to work.
    Reference files, if they contain a lot of render files, can be nearly as large as self contained.
    Can it work? Yes.
    Can it fail? Yes, much more so than using a self contained master file.
    I’d seriously recommend you getting another hard drive.

    Note that Apple doesn’t use that technology any more (not using Quicktime frameworks) in FCPX or Compressor 4.

  • Andrea Nesbitt

    July 9, 2014 at 4:57 pm

    Thanks,

    That’s really useful. I do have a lot of render files in my sequence and it is very long (40 Min).
    And yes my file was still very large. But it did take about half the time.

    I am using compressor and so far no problems with compressing. Hoping to have no problems when creating the dvd.

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