Media management question. My library is huge

[Bret Williams]

Use the consolidate command. It will move the media out of the library to a location of your choosing.

[David Powell]

That would be consolidating the project though no? I’d like for the library to just point to the original media with the events in place. I guess I thought the library would function similar to the way fcp 7 projects did.

[Bret Williams]

Not completely clear on what you’re saying. A library consists of events and projects. Projects reside inside events now. The media can live anywhere. But not in some external event if that’s what you mean. So, even if it’s media that must be rewrapped to QT, it can live in an external place of your choosing.

If you didn’t choose an external folder, or accidentally had it copy to the event, then you can move that media out of the event and into an external folder with the consolidate command. Use consolidate on the event or library. It will move the media to the selected location, and replace those files with aliases in the event. Now the library will be small, and portable. Someone else could open up a copy of the library on their system and access the same media. So, media sharing, but not yet project sharing.

Consolidate works like the “organize” function pre-10.1.

[David Powell]

I was hoping to keep the same folder structures instead of piling everything into one big folder. I have two hard drives with identical media copies and I have a library that 250gigs big. If I consolidate, it copies all the media into a different folder. I just wanted to retain the pointers, copy the library over so that it links to the original folder structure, rather than copying media that I already have and creating new links to that media.

[Bret Williams]

Well, I’ve converted a number of projects and events and not one single file was moved into my library folder. I have a folder for each “job” (can’t call it project, that gets confusing) that contains my camera originals, AE files, psd files, motion projects, jpegs from the client, etc. And now, I also keep the library file for that job in there too. But the library links externally to the camera originals and to the pads, and the AE renders, etc. Nothing has been copied to the library. However, if it needs to rewrap something as QT, like AVCHD media, I’m letting it copy it to the library. So media in the library is eventually disposable.

[Claude Lyneis]

If you use consolidate to move the media somewhere else, is that somewhere else a library or just a folder? When you then look into the library with 10.1, how do you know where the media really is? Did Apple write this up in a white paper? Learning this by experiment makes me nervous.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Claude Lyneis] “If you use consolidate to move the media somewhere else, is that somewhere else a library or just a folder?”

It’s a folder of your choosing.

[Claude Lyneis] “When you then look into the library with 10.1, how do you know where the media really is? “

It’s just like 10.0. If the media is in the library, you’ll see full movies. If the media is external, you’ll see small alias files that link to the hard media. Right click on any alias and choose to ‘show original file’.

[Claude Lyneis] “Did Apple write this up in a white paper? “

Apple had resources to read , Intelligent Assistance has a resource to read with the now free Event Manager X, and Ripple Training has an in depth look at 10.1.

[Claude Lyneis] “Learning this by experiment makes me nervous.”

Apple has done a nice job in the sense that you can push or pull your original media out of a library at any time.

Event manager X helps you convert the 10.0 system to the 10.1 Library system in bite size chicks instead of converting the whole drive.

Jeremy

[Bret Williams]

That’s the biggest problem with this update is that Apple has addressed how most people work with libraries, so you don’t have all your events and projects online, yet the update just lops all your events and projects into one big library per drive, giving the false impression that a library replaces the event and project folders on each drive. Giving the default library the name of the hard drive it’s on further influences this reaction. It appears that the library is more akin to the scratch disk folder of yore at first glance if you haven’t read the white paper or Hodgetts article.

Apple could have done a better job of explaining the need to group events and projects together into multiple libraries and possibly even included a routine or piece of software to group them into libraries without using event manager and relaunching over and over.

[Craig Alan]

I’m new to this too. But when I converted my first project, FC asked if I wanted to save the old version. Is it possible you are saving two versions (the new library and the old projects and events folders)?

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Camcorders: Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV30/40, Sony Z7U, VX2000, PD170; FCP 6 certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Michael Hadley]

Could use a little help/advice as I gingerly update projects and events to 10.1.

A number of my projects use media from events on multiple drives. So let’s say project “Sunshine v2” uses interviews and brill from my LaCie Quadra on two events but also uses broll from 3 events on my older OWC Raid.

Now there are also projects not the LaCie that use media from the the Lacie.

What should my approach be?

I don’t want to copy all of the media from one drive to the next (waste of space) but if I update “”Sunshine v2” FCPX wants me to update the event on the OWC Raid.

A little confusing. Thoughts? Advice? Step by step instructions? Thanks as always.