Questions about masterfile size, compression, and workflow

Getting back into FCP after a many year break, (used to use express, not a pro user) things are going mostly smoothly. Right now I'm editing off of an external drive with 315GB of source footage on it, shot over a 10 day period. I'm exporting masterfiles as I go in 422, and storing them on my computer HD. I've edited about 2 out of 10 days of footage and my hard drive is getting pretty full. So I checked out the master files and about 4 hrs of footage clocks in at about 220 GB.

Sooooo, my question is this, if the source media is 315 GB and I've edited about a fifth of that, and now I've used about 200GB ofd space making masterfiles, does that mean the files are getting bigger? I was thinking that exporting masterfiles would help me keep things organized as I went and be at least proportionally smaller to the amount I cut out.

Next question is? Should I be exporting at 422, or is there a smarter way to do this.

I'll be making a bunch of different types of videos with these files mixed and matched so it just seemed like the simplest thing to do was to export short chapters as I work, and then reimport only the ones I need for any specific project, export again, delete project. I'm trying to organize the media outsize of source files because I REALLY don't want to be chained to all of the cut footage every time I want to work with the files in the future. That was the idea at least. Also, it just seemed more sensible to make a few dozen 15-30 min master files, as opposed to a 12 hour long one. Totally open to suggestions on compression and workflow.

Conc. File sizes: your source is most probably h.264 = Highly compressed, a Master from FCPX is proRes, an edit codec = lil' compressed ut huge.

Conc. Your workflow: I strongly recommend to dig deeply into tagging (keywords, favorites,,smartlist etc). No need to ex-/import, just 'mark' your wanted material an reuse it over and over again (and keywords don't have ny file-size )

E.g. Search an episode of Macbreak about 're-favorizing' ...

Finally, why not just copy/paste edited clips from one project to another ....

Keywords look like a pain & waste of time, ' cause done BEFORE edit, but it IS the main part of editing.

Thanks for the response.

I started keywording, and it seemed like a great idea, but I found that the keywording and selecting footage was just as time consuming as just dropping the footage into the timeline and editing real time, then naming the file on export. That's all I need so I didn't want to add the complexity. Another reason for export was to unchain from hours of unused source video. I'd be fine to do that in FCPX, but to my understanding, until you export you are chained to the source media. So the whole export import thing was a workaround. but if I'm creating bigger files it's not much of a workaround. I'm trying to keep things simple, organized, and compact.

If I do stay connected to the source media, and copy and paste clips, my main concern is getting lost in a massive timeline. There will be hundreds of clips, and i need to be able to pull them all into a window where I can quickly reorder, and export. Would the way to do this be to create a library of projects, then use that library as my source?

But then we run back into the issue of master files, regardless of how I do this, I want master files anyways right? So if that is true, then why not simply make the master files and use them as the new source, and get rid of the original media. Just seems simpler and cleaner assuming I am dead sure I don't want to reedit the masters.


So that's my possibly flawed reasoning. But the size of the masters makes it seem less sensible. Not sure what the smartest thing is for my needs but I need to figure it out before I get any deeper. thanks

Brian S wrote: ...I'll be making a bunch of different types of videos with these files mixed and matched so it just seemed like the simplest thing to do was to export short chapters as I work, and then reimport only the ones I need for any specific project, export again, delete project....

Below is a series of very short videos showing how an experienced FCPX editor Thomas Grove Carter uses keyword tagging and rating to expedite his work:

www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/tutorials/1759-...-thomas-grove-carter

Rick Young has a series of short videos which also cover this. I recommend you watch these:

Organization: vimeo.com/111923701
The Magic of Skimming: vimeo.com/111922342
Show Used Media Ranges: vimeo.com/111930733
Working with Storylines: vimeo.com/111925571

Hi Brian
Welcome to the forums.
If you already have the media on an external drive, why are you importing at all? Leave files in place and work the media from the external, provided it is fast enough. Using an external drive for media is a recommended practice.
Have you tried editing using whatever native file format it is shot in? FCPX is quite fast handling native formats. If you are using very high resolution files or difficult formats, then you may need to transcode, but maybe not. More info here would help. As mentioned ProRes files can be quite large. If you don't experience spinning beach balls while editing, then you can most likely work in native format.
It is unlikely you need to break up into small separate projects and libraries, you are just creating extra work. Keep in one library, create events to separate and then use lots of keyword/smart collections.
FCPX is a whole new animal from legacy FCP; Pro/Express or otherwise. Forget everything you knew from those programs and treat FCPX as a new totally different way of editing, especially in regards to file structure and metadata. FCPX is very good about utilizing media and not growing in file size, if you let it.
Watch the videos, find what works for you.
Happy Editing
Greg

Hey Brian,

I see what you are doing there. Others have posted some helpful links (I think the Thomas Grove Carter will be the most eye opening).

Basically, you have a ton of footage and you want to put it into smaller, bit-sized chunks to deal with later. It's like you have a giant trash can full of legs and you don't want to dig around for hours and hours going through the whole trashcan every time you want to build. Yeah? Good analogy?

Thomas shows how FCPX is designed to make selects in the browser. Before, lots of people would make select string outs in the timeline. No more. Now all of your trimming, rejecting, favoriting—it's all done in the browser before you ever need to drop anything into a project.

If your system can play your media just fine, don't transcode to make ProRes 422 files. There's no reason for it and it will just take up more space. You could make proxy files. Maybe investigate that at some point.

Here's the bigger question to ask. Do you want all of your footage in a single library or broken up into multiple libraries. While you probably want to keep your media external, you might want to simplify what you see when you open FCPX. So in your 10 days of footage, you might want various libraries to group the footage. If you do decide on one library, you will probably want multiple events. Or, you can have everything in a single event with a ton of keyword collections to help separate it all. (decisions to make)

I would definitely hold off on making anymore master string outs and look at that Thomas example. You will get that "ah ha" moment and realize you just wasted a ton of time doing what you did. But, at least you'll get it before you've edited the full 10 days.

One more thing I'll point out here...

You have a render setting for projects. If you drop an hour's worth of footage in a project and the project is set to ProRes 422, it will render the project with that setting (if it needs to render). Then, when you export that hour-long project, you will have another ProRes 422 file. The export is what you are seeing as your master file, but FCPX also has a render of the project inside the library for playback purposes. So, that would end up doubling the size and taking up more space.

Audio waveforms and analysis files take up space, but no where near what a project could take up—especially if it's long. With that in mind, you may want to select the Event or even the Library and delete rendered media. Usually when I finish a project and I archive the library, I will delete all of the cached items and render files and make the library more lightweight. The downside is that if the client needs changes or another export, I'll have to render that project again. Oh well.