How many projects/events can you keep open?

[Oliver Peters]

You’re going to have to define “sluggish”. I’ve been using X on a 12-core with 32GB on a volume-based SAN. “Add SAN locations” doesn’t work in this set-up. We run media from the SAN, but Events/Projects locally (media linked). When we tried to run it all on the SAN, I had lots of short beach balls with every UI action. Moving Events/Projects locally fixed that. As far as Projects, I’ve had plenty loaded into the folder (accessible from the Project Library), but only a handful seem to stay loaded in the timeline window. I frequently have to reload projects that I had loaded earlier. And yes, new iMacs will likely outperform the Mac Pros.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Jeremy Garchow]

I don’t have a number. I usually don’t have more than a few locations open which will have one or two events and usually a mass of Projects (20-50 per Location).

I try and keep things tidy as fcpx always saves, so having a bunch of events working and activated is a lot of work, especially when writing smaller files to the SAN.

What kind of SAN are you running?

[Jeremy Garchow]

By the way, usually use one Location per ‘project’ (not fcpx Project).

I can mount and dismount anything at any time that way, it’s very useful.

Jeremy

[Keith Koby]

Xsan. We are trying to have one san location for one particular type of monthly promos.

So we might have a couple dozen clips that are in the event. Those are cleaned up and compounded with mix and split audio, slates removed and some edits made in the compound. They are heavily “rolled” out up there in the event. In the same san location we want to keep the timelines “projects” for the variants of each promo. Some variants of graphic overlays are controlled by rolls, so those can go in the same project. Others get timed out differently, so they nee their own. A total of maybe 80 timelines for 20 some sources. Lots of sub folders keeps it nice and tidy.

There is a separate san location that contains the standard graphics event.

I have to get the exact number today from the editor. We hit a wall where everything slowed down. Particularly the process of jumping back and forth between projects.

Moving a couple of projects to a new san location helped. It would be nice if fcpx would let you move folders of projects at the same time instead of just individuals.

Keith Koby
Sr. Director Post-Production Engineering
iNDEMAND
Howard TV!/Movies On Demand/iNDEMAND Pay-Per-View/iNDEMAND 3D

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Keith Koby] “Particularly the process of jumping back and forth between projects. “

Yes. FCPX seems to ‘cache’ about 6 or so Projects at a time in the little browser style “back and forth” Project window. There is certainly some sort of limit there, I don’t know what it is, I’m not sure anyone knows what it is. I’m sure it’s some sort of RAM situation.

What I have been trying to do is keep Timelines/Projects in Compounds in the Event.

This allows almost instant access to timelines, it allows TImeline scrubbing, and it allows near instantaneous versioning, and it allows you to look at one timline in an Event while looking at a different version in a Project now that FCPX has tow viewers. It also avoids the clunky Project Browser.

The Compound Clip bloat problem seems to have been drastically reduced from earlier versions of FCPX.

You can either output directly from the Compounds or create more finished Projects for output in the Project Browser.

[Keith Koby] “Moving a couple of projects to a new san location helped. It would be nice if fcpx would let you move folders of projects at the same time instead of just individuals.”

Totally. Batch exporting would be nice from the Project Browser as well.

This is a case where using the Finder is perfect. Quit FCPX (or dismount the SAN Location), move the Projects that you want to move to a “Final Cut Projects” folder in a new encompassing folder. Then mount that encompassing folder as a SAN Location and it should just work.

Hope that makes sense.

Jeremy

[Keith Koby]

Yes. It makes sense. We’ll try the finder route. I’m hoping that intelligent assistant could be updated to recognize san locations to help in the following scenarios:

1.) San Location with lots of projects…

It would be nice to hide some of the projects with a GUI (because I don’t want editors digging in the finder in an fcpx folder structure.)

2.) San Locations without projects…

So if we have San Locations with Events that contain our graphic builds and elements as compound clips and whatnot, but don’t have any projects associated with that San Location, I could hide the San Location icon in the project browser area as to not pollute it with what equates to an icon of an empty drive…

One of my editors is in favor of compounding but I wasn’t quite ready for the scenario when he brought it up. I’ll have to revisit it with him. Being able to export directly from the compounds is helpful though.

Thanks,
Keith

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Keith Koby] “I’m hoping that intelligent assistant could be updated to recognize san locations to help in the following scenarios:

1.) San Location with lots of projects…

It would be nice to hide some of the projects with a GUI (because I don’t want editors digging in the finder in an fcpx folder structure.)

2.) San Locations without projects…”

I hear you.

I thought the same thing, but then I realized that SAN Locations are EVM, but built in to the app and no GUI.

It has been a while since I have talked to the intelligent assistance folks about it.

Our san (metaSAN) has something called Project Store which does add a GUI layer on top. It essentially becomes a check in/check out system that even has lockout capability. Any user on any machine can see what’s available to them or not.

[Keith Koby] “So if we have San Locations with Events that contain our graphic builds and elements as compound clips and whatnot, but don’t have any projects associated with that San Location, I could hide the San Location icon in the project browser area as to not pollute it with what equates to an icon of an empty drive…”

I think this is an FCPX thing because if the SAN Location is mounted, won’t FCPX simply keep the file system in place? If an Event is in a SAN Location, I’m not sure if you can ‘hide’ the Project side of that as FCPX will simply make the San Location Available in the Project Browser.. You can do this in the Event browser, though, if you uncheck “Group Events by Disk”.

[Keith Koby] “One of my editors is in favor of compounding but I wasn’t quite ready for the scenario when he brought it up. I’ll have to revisit it with him. Being able to export directly from the compounds is helpful though.”

It basically start to store timelines in Events. This could be a good thing, or a bad thing. At any point, though, you can simply copy/paste a compounds content in to a Project if you need to separate the Project from the Event.

Just open the compound “… in timeline” (or double click from the Event) to export from it.

Jeremy

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Our san (metaSAN) has something called Project Store which does add a GUI layer on top.”

*I should add it’s not a GUI layer in FCPX, the GUI is available in any web browser. Sorry if that sounded misleading.

It looks like this (old screengrab):

0_projectstore.png

[Jeremy Garchow]

I also forgot to add yesterday, that since 10.0.7, if you have a compound in a timeline, there’s a new command called “reference new parent clip” which will dupe the compound clip, which also makes a dupe in the Event. You can change the name in the Event or in the info panel of the compound clip on the timeline, and that name change will ripple.

Very handy for versioning.

Jeremy