Duplicate Media Issue

Hey folks. Okay, sorry for this dumb/basic question but here goes. While often use EditReady to transcode footage to ProRes before ingest, sometime I use FCPX's native optimization process. Works great. The issue is that even if I select "leave files in place" it also make a copy of the original media in my storage folder. So, now I have two copies. I always keep a copy of the original media on an external portable field drive that it came in on. Don't need a copy of the original media in my project storage folder--I've got the transcoded pro res (and yes, I clone my external storage drives).

So I end up manually deleting the "original media" files on my storage drive.

What am I doing wrong? Just want the transcoded pro res, not the "original media" during the ingest process.

Thanks as always.

This usually happens when FCP sees the original media location as being in a camera card or camera archive or otherwise what looks like a camera file structure. It won't let you leave the files in place and will always copy them to the designated library media location. This is by design. The camera media is archived. The editor works with a separate set of media extracted from the camera archive. On completion the camera archives and the editorial material is stored. (Would be nice if the production media could be trimmed and consolidated when archived.)

Optimized media can be deleted after editing and be recreated at any point you wish.

A (yet to be released) new software from Marquis Broadcast will allow you to archive only the used production media with handles.

- Ronny

Thanks, Ronny. Appreciate everything you do for the X community.

Yes, I understand that. My preference is to KEEP the optimized (Pro Res) media and delete the "Original Media" that is unfortunately always copied over to my external storage along with the Optimized media.

I clone my storage drive and always keep the original field drive with the native cam original files so definitely do not need a 2nd copy of the Original Media (in fact, a copy) on my external drive.

I think that Pro Res is a more future proof format, plus it improves performance. Plus, when I open a two-year old project, I don't have to spend time waiting for new transcoding.

Is there a way to turn this 'copy original media' functionality off? I always thought that
"leaves files in place" should do that, but it actually seems to mean "leave files in place and make a second copy at the storage location with the optimized media."

My current solution is to manually delete the copied original media files but that takes time and is a real PITA.

I can't believe that I'm the only one who wants to be able to turn off/disable this automatic and unnecessary duplication.

Am I missing something?

Thanks as always!

Thanks for that.

Well, the way our work flow is 90% of the time, in the field we copy camera media to a small external hard drive. Back in the edit room, we ingest to a large storage volume from the external hard drive. We keep the external hard drive for a couple of years.

SO: definitely do not need to automatically copy the "original media" to another location .

The problem is it reduces our storage capacity by 50% until we manually duplicate the "original media."