Splitting huge FCP project doesn’t reduce size

[David Roth weiss]

[Joe Bender] ” I can’t copy anything into a new project without FCP crashing. “

That is odd, and furthermore, it’s precisely how to achieve the goal you’re trying to achieve. In other words, the advice I would normally give you would be to open one or more new projects, then move only the bins and/or sequences you need into the new project, rather than copying the entire project and whittling it down.

I would suggest that you repair permissions and run Disk Warrior on all hard drives, then open a new project and try copying items from your older big project.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Jeremy Garchow]

What is your project made up of? Lots of stills, multiclips, days and weeks of footage?

[Shane Ross]

Don’t duplicate the project. Rather, make a NEW project, and drag the items you want into that. Then save the new project.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
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[Joe Bender]

Thanks everybody for your responses. The project is about 100 hours of HDV footage, edited in ProRes 422 HQ, with some additional footage and audio material and way too many sequences.

I’m trying to achieve a workable situation for the project, which has gotten so bloated that FCP crashes all the time. After realizing that my project file size is the problem, I’ve tried to copy the most necessary content into a new project (or several), but when I try to copy any content FCP hangs (beach ball of death) and crashes. I thought that by deleting some of the material from a copy of the project I could shrink the project file down enough that FCP would run properly and I could reorganize the project into several FCP project files. That’s where the strangeness comes up. I thought I could delete a bunch of old sequences and cut the file size down, but no matter how much content I remove from the project, the file stays the same size (or in a tight range).

Not sure if that sheds any further light on the problem, but there you have it.

Thanks again,

Joe

[David Roth weiss]

We understand exactly what your logic is, but unfortunately it’s precisely bassakwards Joe. As I mentioned, whittling down from a copy of the full project doesn’t do the trick, primarily because the database in that project is cluttered to Hell. Opening a new project and moving only what you need starts with a clean database, and that’s what will save you.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Matt Lyon]

I’ve had the exact same problem, and like several folks pointed out already, simply copying the project and deleting bins/sequences doesn’t do the trick.

And you can’t copy and paste from your project into an empty project without crashing. My solution would be to try loading the project file with the media offline (in other words, unmount the media drives, then launch the project). Move only your essential sequences and bins into a brand new, empty project. Save, close all open projects, and quit. Plug in your media drive, launch FCP and open the new project. Relink media if necessary. Also a good habit is to copy and paste using keyboard shortcuts, not via drag and drop.

FWIW, it is the sequences that eat up the most room, not the bins. I try to keep my projects around 50-80 megs. At over 100 megs, I start to notice performance hits and less stability (Okay, that’s a BIG generalization … but it’s still a rule of thumb for me).
HTH,

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Neil Sadwelkar]

We work on entire feature films. And our features are as long as 3 hours long. So we see this problem all the time. What we do is to keep the number of sequences to the minimum. As others have noted, we’ve found that its not master clips, or subclips that take up space. Its the sequences.

And when the project swells up to this size, even doing a copy and paste of sequences into a fresh project is difficult and frequently crashes the system.

So, initially, the method would be to open the project, then save as with different name. And this new project, delete old sequences and then save. You will find the project size will shrink. After that, make a new project and copy and paste sequences into that. Use keyboard shortcuts to copy and paste. Drag and drop is flaky sometimes.

Also, opening the project in a different system may help as the media will be offline.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Emanuel Batalha]

Hi there!

Sorry to pick up this old thread! I’m currently questioning the same but in other form! I’ve a FCP7 project, where I log and capture every day, where I make multiclips and one sequence-a-day and every day I clean up project, deleting everything. The project file size stills growing up… Any clues where I can delete something associated to the file? There’s no Show Package Contents… I know I can create a new one, but I love my project… 🙂

TIA