Library contents split over 2 or 3 external drives?

[Jeremy Garchow]

What camcorders are you using?

The optimized media is what is taking up all the space.

I’d do away with the optimized, edit with original or proxy, and optimize at the end.

I wish FCPX would allow the storage to optimized media outside of the library.

[Brian Thomas]

AVCHD.

The more I think about it perhaps, I’m thinking, two or more Libraries would be the answer. I’d like to try it but we’ve got guests for lunch and I can’t get away for more than a message!

FCPX and PPro 6. iMac 24 + MBP 17″. Near Geneva, Switzerland

[Jeremy Garchow]

I think that you should do away with the Optimized media for now.

If you have multiple libraries, the media will need to be copied from one library to another once you start adding media to the project.

The Optimized media will nearly quintuple the size, while Proxy media will just over double it.

Jeremy

[Brian Thomas]

OK but I thought that with multicam projects based on AVCHD I was obliged to have both optimised and proxy files, no?

So could I do a multicam project with ONLY proxy files?

Just a bit of background in case it’s relevant: the eventual output will be a) DVDs and b) an HD ‘master’ for subsequent editing/archiving.

Soon it will be decided which individual performance will be the basis for the whole multicam project. Inevitably even in that performance there will be things that went gone wrong and for those moments I will switch to another multicam performance where it did go right.

My motto is “giving them the show they always wanted but never actually managed to achieve.”

FCPX and PPro 6. iMac 24 + MBP 17″. Near Geneva, Switzerland

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Brian Thomas] “OK but I thought that with multicam projects based on AVCHD I was obliged to have both optimised and proxy files, no?”

You don’t have to. Try using the original media first. If that isn’t working out, switch to Proxy.

Then switch back to original to make your masters.

[Brian Thomas]

I tried with just the original media and that was a bit jumpy and so I created the proxy files ONLY and that works incredibly well! And thanks for the tip about switching back to the original media before doing any ‘Shares’. My first ‘Share’ was still on proxy media and that was a bit of a shock!

I can’t think who told me/where I read that I always had to have Optimized media as well as Proxy but now I know – MANY thanks Jeremy.

FCPX and PPro 6. iMac 24 + MBP 17″. Near Geneva, Switzerland

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Brian Thomas] “I can’t think who told me/where I read that I always had to have Optimized media as well as Proxy but now I know “

If you have the drive space and throughput, it’s not bad advice. You, personally, have a lot of media and need to playback 5 streams at once.

ProRes Proxy is going to be much more efficient in terms of disk space and throughput.

You can always export a ProRes master from your original media, which will encode the media you need instead of transcoding every frame to ProRes before the edit.

Hope that makes sense.

Jeremy

[Brian Thomas]

It makes perfect sense, thanks. So I started from scratch and reimported everything, created my multicam clip and found that the fcpbundle had gone up to about a terabyte for just one performance! Over night I remembered seeing a parameter somewhere which said something about “creating optimised media for multicam clips”, found it in the Preferences, reimported yet again and now the fcpbundle is ‘only’ 187GB so I should be OK to have several performances on the one convenient 4TB drive.

I really appreciate all your help Jeremy – I’ll be back! 🙂

FCPX and PPro 6. iMac 24 + MBP 17″. Near Geneva, Switzerland