Library Management: Too many projects?

Sorry if this has been talked about ( I couldn't find it by searching).

I've got a doc I'm working on and as it progresses, I've got about 27 versions of the cut now, the library takes forever to open. I'm on a late 2015 iMac. Library is local, media is on a separate drive.

Back in my doc days on FCP7 I separated my timelines into one project and my media into another. Today I just moved my archived timelines (projects) to a separate library and only keep the last 2-3 in my working library. My working library opens much faster now. Seems like FCPX wants to read every single project before it opens the library.

Curious to see if anyone else is experiencing this and how they are managing their cuts.

Thanks!

Brian

bcassin wrote: I've got about 27 versions of the cut now, the library takes forever to open.

bcassin wrote: Seems like FCPX wants to read every single project before it opens the library.

Can it be that you copied & pasted several selections, ranges, crosswise to other versions? If that was on FCP7, the app had to read many of the 27 projects (=timelines, not project archives) all at once (more if these were master projects than contain nested sequences from several timelines). Saved as projects were stand-alone and self-contained, and you could safely close older versions from which you stole the edits. You didn't do that, and rather sooner than later FCP7 had reached the limit of the 2,5 GB RAM it could use and would become slow and finally freeze or crash. Even worse if you went back to older versions and pasted edits from the newer ones to them, by which you created a logical conflict, a paradox.

FCP X avoids this by not allowing you to treat timelines or ranges as compound clips unless you deliberately choose so, and then you have to make up your mind if you want any changes to ripple through or archive the compounds as independent duplicates.

A "version" should therefore be an archive, a snapshot.

bcassin wrote: Today I just moved my archived timelines (projects) to a separate library and only keep the last 2-3 in my working library.

I don't understand that. If you "move" projects to other libraries, do you also copy the events then? Please explain. If the projects are all archived and if existing compounds are all independent, then there really should be no reason why FCP X would slow down, no matter how many projects exist.

Yes, FCPX is based on a database that has to be fully read and stored in RAM. Yes, the more Project timelines you have in a Library, the longer it will take to open. You should have your Library on the secondary drive along with your media.

I've never saved so many previous versions before. That seems like so many, I'd get confused and have no use for the much older ones. I keep a few versions, but not anything like 27. After 5 or so I start deleting them.

I move the projects not the events to an archive library.

Once the projects are archived, the leaner working Library is much snappier.

To FCPX.guru - I have many versions of the cut as it's a documentary and we have gone down rabbit holes as we pursue differnt story arcs. I want to make sure if we ever need to revisit some of these choices I can access them for the director.

Storing the Library on the media drive makes sense to me if one has a fast RAID (like a Pegasus)... we do not, so I keep the library on the desktop to not interfere with FCPX reading and writing media. Maybe I am missing something?

bcassin wrote: so I keep the library on the desktop to not interfere with FCPX reading and writing media

Out of curiosity, have you noticed any difference between having the Library on the desktop versus somewhere else on the local drive? There are OS issues if you have too many files on the desktop. I'm not sure whether a Library creates such issues, since it's basically a container and not an actual binary file. You might try moving the Library to the Movies or Documents folder and see if it changes anything.

Oliver

That too many things on the desktop issue is old and not valid any longer. I have more stuff on my desktop than you can shake a stick at sometimes, never makes a difference. Today's OS X and macOS ardent effected by that.

Your MEDIA is what slows a system down, not the Library so much. Keep your Libraries on the same drive as the Media, NOT on the system drive. FCPX is not FCPX7, putting the Library on a separate drive than your media buys you no advantages.

Well we haven't had any problems keeping the libraries on the system drive. Granted, they are either fusion drives or SSDs, so they are fast drives. Our media is on the RAIDs, and we run lean libraries locally in general. You can test this out yourself by connecting a drive over thunderbolt or USB3, and running the library off of there. In my experience it doesn't make a ton of difference as long as the connection is fast.

The real issue as the OP has discovered is if you start accumulating long sequences in the library. Since you're running lean libraries, it's not an issue to occasionally archive older versions of the library and make new libraries with just a couple of the latest sequences in them. You can always dig out the older library if you need to look at an earlier sequence. We do this routinely and it works well.