Event vs. new 10.1 Library - what about memory and CPU usage? help

I'm working on a Behind The Scenes documentary about the production of a feature film. I have tons of clips, almost 3TB of 1080p material. Loading all those events in one time was really heavy on my MacBook, Apple suggested to split it into many events, it ended up being about 20 events with an average of more than 500 clips in each event. My projects using clips from multiple events. I used to use Event Manager X to only load the events I needed in order to keep the process as light as possible. Now, with the new system, how heavy would it be for my MacBook to have just one library with all the events? Would it be the same as opening all the events at once? Because that takes a lot of time and it's heavy on my system. What would you recommend for a situation like mine? (buying a new MacPro is not an option now hehe..)

This is an excellent question. From my experience 10.1 seems to handle multiple large events much better than before, but what you are describing is a nightmare for any mid-level system.

For this particular project I would suggest dealing with your Libraries as you did with your Events: create a Library for each of your 20 Events. Then you create a separate Library and Event for all your Projects and every time you start working on a Project you only activate the Libraries from which you will need media for the specific edit you are working on.

If the media you use in your current Events is external (i.e. not copied into the Original Media folders) this will be easy: just drag clips from any open Library onto your Project Timeline and the clips will be added to your Project Library. As the files are external there will be no actual copying of media involved, only the simlinks will be copied over.

If the media you use in your current Events is managed (i.e. the actual media files reside inside the Event's Original Media folder) tis could be problematic because every time you use a clip from a different Library the media would be copied over into your Project Library. To avoid this you can first create a Library for each current Event, then use the Consolidate command to move all the media used in your Events to an external location. Consolidating a library to an external location moves or copies all media referenced by the library to a single location. All media that was already external to the library file is copied to the new external location.

If you have any further questions about this I will be happy to assist.

- Ronny