[John Burgan]

Not everyone here seems to agree that project file size is an issue, but all I can say is that the following workflow has proved to be rock solid for several high-ratio long-form documentaries I have edited in FCP over the last few years. Put simply: it can’t do any harm to try it out, and it may well solve the problems you’ve been experiencing.

Break the original project down into separate projects ie. Media/Edits, then further down as necessary into chapters/acts/interviews, whatever seems most logical. Also weed out redundant edits by archiving them, keeping the project with your main edit up to date and as lean as possible.

There’s no problem for FCP to have multiple projects open simultaneously, you can copy, cut and paste between them.

Also, make sure that you regularly save your projects using the “Save As…” dialogue, forcing the whole file to be re-written from the ground up on a regular basis. Apparently months of saving to the same file is a recipe for corruption, and simply backing up a buggy file is no insurance against losing your work.

[John Burgan]

[Peter Wiggins] “I think I’ve guessed the event 🙂
“

Hmmm…what odds are you offering on July 2nd?

[John Burgan]

FCP Project file is 270Mb? Far too large!

Check out my recent (and recurring) post:

https://www.creativecow.net/forum/read_post.php?postid=111685199432800&forumid=8

[John Burgan]

This article might help:

https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/restore_corrupted_project.html

[John Burgan]

Kaspar – please see my post lower in this thread on the danger of oversized project files!!!! Don’t want you to lose all that work…

[John Burgan]

Glad to hear it’s working better, Bob. It’s surprising how many people using FCP for long-form projects still don’t know about this issue, at least until they hit major problems.

It does seem that Avid still has a better track record on media management, although a huge project will push most NLEs to the limits. Probably one of those areas where the software can only really be tested out in the field over several months rather than the beta lab.

[John Burgan]

Photos/stills are also often a cause of sluggishness in the timeline, particularly when they are way oversized for your project. If you’re not zooming into them or panning there’s no need for them to be larger than the video image. Also – though there is occasionally disagreement on this on the boards – avoid jpegs and go for tiffs/PSD format.

[John Burgan]

97Mb project file? There’s your problem. I’ve now edited several feature-length docs on FCP, also using PhotoJPEG in the initial rough cut stages. Basically if a project file gets above 10-12Mb (easily achieved on docs with multiple versions), FCP can get flaky, so you need to slim things down and adopt a different workflow.

Break the original project down into separate projects ie. Media/Edits, then further down as necessary into chapters/acts/interviews, whatever seems most logical. Also weed out redundant edits by archiving them, keeping the project with your main edit up to date and as lean as possible.

There’s no problem for FCP to have multiple projects open simultaneously, you can copy, cut and paste between them.

Also, make sure that you regularly save your projects using the “Save As…” dialogue, forcing the whole file to be re-written from the ground up on a regular basis. Apparently months of saving to the same file is a recipe for corruption, and simply backing up a buggy file is no insurance against losing your work.

[John Burgan]

A Powerbook will handle it fine, as long as you follow all the usual provisos about keeping your system running smoothly. I’ve been editing a feature-length doc this way.

If the shooting ratio is particularly high, you may consider converting the rushes down to the offline Photo JPEG codec to save space (approx 40mins/Gb instead of 4.5mins/Gb).

[John Burgan]

All sounds great. Only sour note for us over here in Europe is the one-to-one Euros to dollars price which in effect represents a whopping 30% markup.