Importing Files

I currently have around 800gb of footage that im going through to edit, its currently all on my external harddrive. My question is if I want to edit this in FCPX, when i import these files will they make another copy of it on my computer? If so, is there a way to edit 800gb of footage at the same time as my computer has a limited amount of harddrive space.

You want to keep the media External. So in the Import window, do NOT make optimized or proxy media, and set it to keep files in place. As I have it set up in this image.

BenB,

I amy be having a senior moment, but why would you elect to not import Optimized media?

Jonathan

If the media can benefit from optimizing ( such as h.264 or some highly compressed codec) then normally you would optimize. But the OP indicated he had limited HD space and optimizing the original footage would create new and larger clips in addition to his originals, something he has no extra room to handle.

Thanks DGW