Corrupt Project Takes All Media Offline?

[Robin S. kurz]

[Craig Alan] “a sparse bundle can be unmounted like any drive and cannot be mounted from a simple finder. Thus students cannot open other student’s projects and do any harm.”

Ah, okay. Well that’s a rather unique requirement, yes. So really what you’re doing is less media management, but rather more of a type of Xsan mock-up. 😉

[Craig Alan] “I had read that a library that gets too full is more likely to slow down and have other problems. “

That has nothing to do with the explicit size of the actual library. If anything that has to do with the amount of material in any one library/event/project. Regardless of where that material is located. It also has to do with memory issues (as in RAM/VRAM). FCP can simply get choked up after a period of time (as will any NLE I’ve ever worked with) and needs to be “flushed” via a restart. Again, regardless of where the footage is located.

But ironically, if anything, then working off a sparse bundle is in fact SLOWER due to the nature of what is happening under the hood. So to use it for the sake of improved performance would in fact be rather paradox.

[Craig Alan] “The only downside I see to the sparse bundle is if everything is inside it and it got corrupted then all would be lost.”

Not actually true. It’s a sparse BUNDLE. Meaning it consists of hundreds if not thousands of roughly 8MB sized “bands” and the likelihood that more than one should corrupt at a time is highly unlikely. The rest would still be usable/accessible. Much like e.g. an image sequence. If just one images becomes corrupt, that doesn’t mean you have to trash the entire animation. Also the reason why bundles allow for incremental backups and don’t need to be recopied entirely each time, as do regular images. Only the new/different bands need to be backed up. That’s also the main reasons why you want to be using a bundle and not just a regular image, IF in fact you feel you need to use images at all.

[Craig Alan] “this is true of a library that contained everything as well.”

Wrong again. Pretty much for the same reason. Only a library is a PACKAGE not a bundle. Same reasoning applies. 😉 If say a single clip were corrupted, that wouldn’t make for an unusable library as a whole. Aside from FCP (hopefully) making backups to another location.

[Craig Alan]

Thanks Robin. The main reason I switched to bundles was because they take up only as much drive space as the files in them, though I don’t think deleting files recovers the extra space, and they can be resized if you need more space. Happy to hear they are safer from corruption and if backed up can be updated rather than recopied. I once had an entire hard drive become corrupted so I never feel any single storage system is fool proof. I had another saved using disc warrior. Of course drive failure is much more common and by itself means the need to back up critical data.
Interesting you say that managed media is no more likely to have problems than large libraries referencing media stored outside the library. I remember reading otherwise. Not saying your wrong. And one or two less steps would be great because I’m setting up new projects throughout the week. I do notice that FC seems to eat up ram and will slow down. Quitting reopening does help. And it does this rather quickly.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.