Final Cut Pro Working practices

[Andy N]

I recently upgraded my video editing software from ShotCut (a freebie) to Apples Final Cut Pro. After producing two pretty straight forward videos, I’m shocked at the amount of disk space it’s consuming.

86GBytes for two videos that roll out at 250 Mbytes together once rendered.
A quick search online revealed that a lot of temporary files are created and some space can be reclaimed deleting generated files.
My 86 GBytes above is AFTER doing that.

I can’t afford to use disk space at that rate on my Mac and wouldn’t want to anyway so I’ve deleted the library and having a rethink.

I’m wondering about getting an external 1TB SSD and dedicating it to Final Cut.
I could use an external NAS drive that has plenty of space but think that might slow Final Cut down too much.
I’m also thinking that maybe I create a library for each project and either burn it or archive it at the end of the project depending on whether I think it’s worth keeping.

Does anyone else use Final Cut and seen the same thing? If so what do you do to manage space?

[sunjamr]

Hi Andy – I’ve been using FCP for quite a few years, and I’ve done exactly what you suggested: I do keep a separate library for each project. I got a 4 TB external hard drive (not SSD) and all my FCP work is done on that. Problem solved, piece of cake. Once in a while I go through the hard drive folders and delete the old .fcpbundle files for my projects. They can be up to 100 GB or more for larger projects, and I don’t need to keep anything but the final movie file.

Sunjamr Steve

[Andy N]

Awesome! Many thanks Steve,

Good to know I’m thinking the right way.
I don’t mind using the Macs storage as working space, so to start with I might just use the Mac and then archive a completed project library (if I want to keep it) off to my network attached storage. The NAS is mirrored and backed up so it’s ideal for archiving stuff. If the Mac is getting short of space I’ll look at getting a storage device to boost the workspace.
With ShotCut there was only a tiny overhead above the raw video and audio files so keeping everything wasn’t costly but if I don’t go back to a completed project after a month or two I never do so keeping the raw inputs is a bit pointless.
Like you, I’m only interested in the final rendered video, so going forward I’ll be a bit more aggressive about deleting old, unwanted files.

[JoeD1]

I also got an external 2GB SSD and keep all my FCP files there. And I also make a separate library for each project.

Joe

The sight of a touch, or the scent of a sound,
Or the strength of an Oak with roots deep in the ground.
--Graeme Edge

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