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Render files – a mess!
I was one of those who jumped forward and purchased FCPX form the beginning, but quickly found out that it couldn’t supply my needs – so I gave it to my wife, an artist who wants to begin working with video.
Since she quickly began working with several layers, and transfer modes, she experienced FCPX loosing performance, and I advised her to enable background rendering.Yes this made her editing life easier – but after a few weeks her Mac ran totally out of space. So, as every nice husband does, I tried to examine the problem. The result: two short projects were swallowing almost 50Gb of space – just for the Render files! And I was amazed with the large number of Render files receding in her Projects folder.
From the scope of the projects she was working on it seems crazy that the Render files should take up that much space. My guess is that FCPX does not delete the unneeded Render files. This could turn out to be a real problem for the non-professional editor, or anybody who doesn’t take a critical look at disc space consumption regularly.
– No Parking Production –
2 x Finalcut Studio3, 2 x MacPro, 2 x ioHD, Server w. X-Raid
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24 Replies
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Morten,
When hard drives were $1000 per gigabyte it paid to examine the problem and to deal with clearing space from the drives. However, now that hard drives can be acquired for $80 for 2 terabytes, or 4-cents per gigabyte, it makes little sense to spend time think about 50Gb of storage space. Your time has got to be worth more than $2.00 of storage you are concerned about. Right?
FCP X works with ProRes natively, and ProRes is approximately 75Gb per hour, so you’re going to have to learn to deal with it. So, buy that wonderful woman a big new hard drive and get back to work.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.comDon’t miss my new Creative Cow Podcast: Producing Episodic TV with “24” Producer Michael Klick:
https://library.creativecow.net/weiss_roth_david/Podcast-Series-1_Michael-Klick/1POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums.
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You are exactly proving my point here. Prores should ONLY be 75Gb/hour – so there is no logic in render files for two short 4-5 minute projects taking up 50Gb, unless FCPX is creating a mess – which I bet you is the problem here!
– No Parking Production –
2 x Finalcut Studio3, 2 x MacPro, 2 x ioHD, File Server w. X-Raid
…. and FCPX in the garbage bin -
No, it doesn’t auto delete render files for you. I’m not sure of any NLE that does.
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It’s not just the finished product that’s transcoded/rendered as ProRes, it’s everything in the project.
That being said, I’m not disagreeing with you about FCP X in general.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.comDon’t miss my new Creative Cow Podcast: Producing Episodic TV with “24” Producer Michael Klick:
https://library.creativecow.net/weiss_roth_david/Podcast-Series-1_Michael-Klick/1POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums.
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FCP does (in some cases). If you change a filter setting or so on a clip, it will override the old render file.
– No Parking Production –
2 x Finalcut Studio3, 2 x MacPro, 2 x ioHD, File Server w. X-Raid
…. and FCPX in the garbage bin -
I wasn’t counting in the transcoded media – just the render files!
– No Parking Production –
2 x Finalcut Studio3, 2 x MacPro, 2 x ioHD, File Server w. X-Raid
…. and FCPX in the garbage bin -
[Morten Ranmar] “FCP does (in some cases). If you change a filter setting or so on a clip, it will override the old render file.
“No, it leaves it there and makes a new one. This is really easy to track and watch while you do it.
If you’re wife is experimenting and constantly changing settings and such, the background render is always going to render, therefore adding up new render files.
An external disk will be better as it will add more space and speed as well, plus as David says, it’s pretty cheap these days.
Jeremy
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I thought it wasn’t possible to change the render file location for FCPX – doesn’t it just force itself upon your startup disc?
– No Parking Production –
2 x Finalcut Studio3, 2 x MacPro, 2 x ioHD, File Server w. X-Raid
…. and FCPX in the garbage bin -
[Morten Ranmar] “I thought it wasn’t possible to change the render file location for FCPX – doesn’t it just force itself upon your startup disc?”
There’s two places for render files, with your Event and with your Project.
You can put your Events/Projects on any OSX Extended disk.
Yes, it defaults to your startup disk, but so does FCP Legacy. You have to move it over to another disk by using the Finder or FCPX to move the Events/Projects.
Jeremy
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Simply select your project, go to File->Delete Project Render Files. Then choose if you want to delete all render files or just unused renderfiles.
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