SSD Thunderbolt Drive Elgato 240 Gb / Proxy Media - Newbie question -

Hello experts!

I am a total newbie to FCPX and NL video editing, maybe this helps to explain the following "stupid" question?


I have a macbook air 2011 with a measly 120Gb / 4gb Ram and would like to edit a couple of hours (about 140 GB) of Sony EX - 1 footage. (XDCAM MP4)- Because of a sale here I could still get either a 120gb elgato Thunderbolt SSD external drive (or its 24OGb cousin) for a rather cheap 99/199 €. Since my macbook does NOT support USB 3.0 and I would otherwise be stuck with USB 2.0 I reckoned it wouldn't harm to get a fast drive?

Do you think it makes sense to get one of those drives at all and use it as an external disk? All I want is to get 20 minute of film out of the material (not much of effects, just simple editing). Will 240 G disk space be enough for this, when I use proxy media?

As a matter o fact, I don't really understand the Proxy media concept of Final Cut. Does that mean that I can import my native material as proxy media (and hence use a smaller drive) while keeping the original files on another (slower drive) which I then use only later again for exporting? Or does Final Cut ALWAYS have to have access to the original (larger) files?


To cut a long story short, will the rather small 240 GB elgato ssd drive (or maybe even the 120 GB one) suffice for what I want to do (and make the editing experience better because of the speed) - or I am better off getting a slower USB 2.0 disk but with a larger, say 1TB capacity?

Thank you all in advance!

S.

Much depends on how large your footage is. It's a while since I shot with an EX so can't quite remember. But here's a quick breakdown of the proxy scenario….

1) Import your footage to FCPX. The footage is kept within the project folder, and original media is placed within the "Original Media" sub folder. If you don't have either optimised or proxy media, this needs to stay there or you won't be able to view it.

2) If you create optimised media, this is placed (by FCPX) in the Transcoded/High Quality Media folder and (if present) is used instead of your original media when your settings are "not" to use Proxy.

3) If you transcode to Proxy then the proxy files are placed (by FCPX) in the Transcoded/Proxy Media folder. This is used instead of the original media when ever you have the preferences set to "Proxy".

You can, at any time, delete the proxy and optimised media and go back to using the original media. This is what we do when a project is completed, to save space for archiving. You can always recreate the proxy / optimised files again if needed.

You don't have to create either optimised or proxy. It's your choice.

If your preferences are set to use proxy then you could technically delete any original media to save space, but you'd need to have a full copy of this folder somewhere else so that you can restore it prior to final export. Without it you're not going to be able to do your final export.

Proxy is used to help slower machines edit footage smoothly. I recommend it's use for slower machines and my MacMini can handle large multi cam projects quite easily using Proxy if my MacPro is doing other things.

120GB is small by today's standards. What are you going to export to? Think of how large that file will be.

You may find you're having to delete render files from time to time if you're running out of space.

You won't need Optimized, but you may need Proxy on that Mac Air. And those drives a really small. I don't know if they'll hold that many hours of footage. I forget what EX-1 file's bit rate are.