Edit faster in Final Cut using proxy media

[Music] if this is a familiar situation for you and today's video might come in handy we're talking about proxy media and Final Cut Pro hey friends will here and today I want to talk to you about proxy media in Final Cut Pro if you've clicked on this video then you probably have some idea of what it is and you've probably found yourself in a similar situation that I have many times where your computer sounds like it's going to blow up you're trying to edit a project and it's all laggy and jumpy it becomes really hard to manage and proxy media is a massive helping hand in improving the performance of Final Cut and your laptop in general so that you can edit a project especially when you're working with the larger 4k files that a lot of cameras check out these days but not just for Kay actually it also is important if you're doing just lots of footage if you've got a really big project if you're working with multicam and syncing up or if you're doing split-screen editing where maybe you've got more than one video playing back at the same time these are all the sort of things that can really slow your computer down and unless you're lucky enough to have a really high-end computer which let's be honest even if you have in six months time it won't be any more then yeah then using proxy media is a really great way now it took me a while to realize that proxy media existed and how to use it so today I'm going to cover how you can start using proxy media what it is and how to get it set up and working in Final Cut Pro so let's jump into my screen and get on with this so what I've got here is a project from a few weeks ago not important which project is any project will do and I just want to show you a few things okay so when you are in Final Cut if you go to Final Cut and go to your preferences then you can see in import at the top here you've got transcoding now by default when you first install final cuts it will have create optimized media now what optimized media is is it takes all of the footage that you import and it converts it to the Apple ProRes codec which Final Cut prefers to use so this in itself will increase the performance slightly obviously some people recording pro res if that's the case then Final Cut doesn't need to touch that footage it's going to work nicely and edit quite well anyway if you're filming on most consumer grade cameras these days they won't record in Pro res so when you import it into Final Cut it's going to create that optimized media so that's what that is and generally that is ticked by default however what isn't ticked is this create proxy media so if you tick that what that's going to do is when you import footage it's gonna first optimize it and then it's gonna create a half resolution version of the clips and it's those clips which Final Cut will use whilst you're editing your timeline so instead of it needing to playback these enormous files and lots of them it will just work with these small proxy files and this is a real lifesaver if you've got a big project if I understand it in a quick video like this one today and I'm shooting in 1080p then actually my laptop will work perfectly fine I don't get into any issues editing just 1080 footage if however I'm doing something with multiple cameras even in 1080 my laptop will start to struggle and using proxy media in this way just means don't have a problem at all so that is how you turn it on okay so once you've ticked that that's all you need to do and then once you're in your project in the viewer here you can save you and you can switch to proxy media and what that's going to do is it's going to update your browser so now your your browser is going to be showing you proxy media instead of the full resolution and you will notice in the viewer you will notice a slight decrease in quality whilst you're editing normally this is absolutely fine and if there's ever any doubt as to whether what you're seeing is poor quality footage or just poor quality as a result of the proxy then you can switch back to see the full resolution at any time so that is how you then so now I've switched that over and I'm using proxy I'm now editing in proxy media now this particular project I've already generated all of the proxy files so that's why they show up but if you were to switch to work in proxy media as soon as you've imported footage then what you'll find is in this viewer window you will get the red missing clip on all of the footage in there because it won't show that until Final Cut has generated that proxy media so if you see that don't be alarmed your clips aren't missing they just probably haven't been generated yet okay that's all well and good if you are starting a new project and you want to start using proxy media if however you've got a library full of content you're halfway through editing a project and your laptop starts worrying away like a jet airplane then you can still transcode and create proxy media halfway through a project at any time and the way that you would do that is you would just select everything in your viewer so command a and then you would say file transcode media and it's going to bring up this box and you can see both of these options are greyed out for me because I've already created the proxy media but if I haven't created the proxy media I'd be able to tick create proxy media click ok and it would then start to transcode and create all of that proxy media for me a little side note with to the projects that I do I will use proxy media now however it does extend your import process so instead of grabbing your SD card out of your camera sticking it into your laptop and then importing it in getting editing creating the optimized media and the proxy media can be quite time-consuming process so I tend to now get all of the footage off my cameras set up my Final Cut library import all of my footage and then go and watch an episode of Game of Thrones or something because you know giving the laptop an hour just to get on and do its thing and then coming back when it's all done is much easier than trying to edit a timeline whilst it's still trying to render in the background and create that media so that's what I tend to do or sometimes you know I do it of an evening and come back to it the next day when I know it's all going to be done another cool thing is if you're looking to just run like if you're looking to export a draft of a project you can export using the proxy media so that'll keep the file size incredibly small and if you're in the proxy view like this if I were to say file and share this project then what it's going to do is it's going to come up like this and say to me that I'm using the proxy media and if I continue I'm going to be creating a very low quality export so if you've done that by mistake which I'll be honest I do nearly every single project that I'm editing I work in proxy and then I come to export it then it reminds me that I'm using proxy media so you can then cancel that change your view here back to optimized original and then you can then say file share and choose your export as you normally would so yeah that is proxy media really small versions of all of your clips which means that your laptop can handle much better the workload that you're putting at it really great for large projects with lots of clips essential if you're working in 4k you certainly on my laptop maybe as I say if you've got more high-performance computer than you might not find as much need for it but even if you don't need it you probably will see a performance increase in your computer if you start working with proxy media finally because you're creating proxy media it does obviously take more space on your hard drives so once you finish creating your project and you're completely done with it you can delete the proxy in the optimized files you can do that quite easily by just clicking on the library and saying file and then saying delete generated library files that's going to delete optimized media proxy media and all of the render files in the library and once you do that it's going to bring up this so you can actually choose what you want to delete so you can leave the render files if you wish or just delete the optimized media or adjust the proxy it's completely up to you when I'm finished with the project I delete all of that and if ever I open that project again in the future Final Cut can regenerate all of it so it's not gone forever so if you do need it so yeah that is it what is proxy media why you might want to use it and a few different ways in which you can use it so I hope you found that useful if you did give the video a thumbs up subscribe to the channel if you fancy that sort of thing and other than that I'll see you next time [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Will Chidlow

Views: 87,683

Keywords: proxy media, proxy media fcpx, create proxy media fcp, using proxy media in final cut, edit fatser in final cut, creating proxy media, 4k footage in fcpx, editing 4k in fcpx, editing 4k in final cut, what is proxy media, final cut proxy, proxy media final cut pro x, proxy media final cut pro, edit faster in final cut pro, fcpx proxy media workflow, will chidlow, final cut tutorials for beginners, final cut pro tutorials for beginners

Id: fBlwZ3jVEOI

Length: 10min 58sec (658 seconds)

Published: Sun May 05 2019