Why is your FCPX library so LARGE and how to fix it

in today's video i want to try and answer a commonly asked question which is why the hell is my final cut library so big why is it taking up so much space on my hard drive and then we're going to try and work out a few tips to possibly remedy that situation so let's get into it [Music] hi friends will here yeah commonly asked question why is my final cut library so big so in order to answer that question and hopefully solve that problem for you we need to first understand why it happens and what the component parts are of a final cut pro library and then hopefully i can offer you a few tips that might just help to reduce the storage that your library is taking or it might just justify the workflow that you're using and why you do need that much storage for your particular workflow so let's take for example just like an imaginary project for a second right let's say that you go out and you shoot a load of footage for some sort of project could be whatever you're into a youtube video a wedding an event music video whatever it might be and let's say that you shoot 100 gigabytes of footage if you're like me the first thing you do when you get back from a shoot is you dump that that footage onto your hard drive so straight away we've got 100 gig sat in a folder on our computer now the next thing that we're going to do is we're going to create a final cut pro library and again for the sake of this example let's assume that you're importing that footage into the library so in the library you get the choice to leave files in place which doesn't bring the files into the library or import to library which duplicates the footage and stores it within the library so i think the default setting is import to library so that means that as soon as you put that 100 gig off your hard drive into final cut you've now got 200 gigabytes of footage and this is before we've even started editing the next thing is that it's quite possible that you might be creating your optimized media which is transcoding your footage from whatever codec it was shot in into the apple prores codec which final cut plays nicely with and it allows for smooth playback when you do this this also duplicates your footage so we've now got 100 gig on a hard drive 100 gig in our library and then another 100 gig in transcoded media so 300 gig now straight away so then let's then assume that say you're working in 4k maybe your mac is not quite up to playing it back or whatever so let's assume that you create proxy media which is a smaller version of your original clips which helps you edit quicker now there's a few different options with proxy media but let's go with the least invasive kind of version say the lowest quality proxy media that's going to duplicate your footage again at a much reduced and more compressed codec so let's say that our 100 gig that we've started with becomes 50 gig of proxy media now again these figures are just for illustrative purposes in certain instances it'll be more or less but it's just to give you an idea of why your library might be growing in size so we've now got 350 gigabytes of footage all generated from our initial 100 gig that we shot and we haven't even started editing yet so then let's assume that you create a timeline you start dropping clips in maybe playing with some effects color transitions text for example and as you create your edit every effect that you add to a clip needs to be rendered as the new version of the clip in order for final cut to play it back to you and show you what you've created if you're just doing like a quick video and you know what you're trying to create then the render files don't necessarily take up loads of room but if you're on a bit of a journey of creativity and you're exploring lots of different options trying lots of different effects maybe trying different grades on the footage making audio adjustments and lots of different trying different audio effects to maybe fix audio issues or whatever it might be everything that you add to the footage needs to create a render file so the render files can easily start to mount up it's not inconceivable that you might end up with a 500 gigabyte library file purely from your initial 100 gig of footage and this is why all of these factors are why your final cut library can end up being quite large my laptop is a great example i've got a 512 gigabyte ssd drive in my laptop so if i were working locally on my laptop storage just that one video is going to fill my laptop up and cause me problems now i don't edit on my laptop because it's not got storage and because it doesn't quite fit my workflow i use an external drive but you can still see how that can soon mount up so what can we do about that now this isn't gonna be a one-size-fits-all solution for everybody you're gonna have to ask yourself some questions about your workflow and work out what's important and what you could potentially sacrifice or change in order to reduce the amount of space that your library is taking up so let's look at a few of the possible solutions so the first one is a quick win instead of dumping your footage off your sd cards onto your computer and then importing them into the library which immediately doubles your footage import your footage directly from the sd card into the final cut library and you've now using our 100 gig footage example you've saved yourself 100 gig straight away because once you've imported the footage into your final cut pro library it's in the library and you do not need that footage sat on your hard drive elsewhere now i'm not getting into any kind of backup here you know you may want to have a backup of footage on a separate hard drive or whatever i'm not talking about anything to do with backup workflow today i'm just talking about minimizing the size of your final cut pro library the other thing to mention about that option is it's incredibly important that if you decide to do that you must be using the import to library setting within final cut and not the leave files in place option which you can find in your preferences in final cut because if you're leaving the files in place then they need to be on your computer somewhere where final cut can find them there's no good importing them to library and then deleting the originals because final cut will then not have that footage so if you're importing to library which i personally find is a nice nice way of doing things because it keeps everything organized within the library file then once it's in the library you can delete stuff that isn't in the library once it's imported you can get rid of it so now you've saved 100 gig of space straight away so then the next tip is the optimized media and you have to ask yourself the question do i need to be using optimized media and to answer that question really the best thing to do is a little test now every camera will be shooting footage in different frame rates codecs compression color space so there isn't an easy answer to this but if you shoot some footage on your camera import it into final cut pro and you don't create optimized media does it play nicely with your computer does it play back smoothly because if it does then you don't really need the optimized media if you're shooting on a sony a7s3 in 10-bit color in the hevc codec then that does not play nice currently with final cut even with a high spec you know like mac pro for example you may run into some playback issues where it's a bit stuttery and in that instance creating the optimized media is important because by optimizing the media um it allows you for to have smooth playback so really you know it all comes down to what spec computer you've got and what sort of footage you're importing but as a test try not creating the optimized media and see how final cut handles it because if you don't need the optimized media it's a great way to immediately save a ton of potential space on your hard drive then the next tip is the proxy media so again this is something which you may or may not be using proxy media and if you're not using it then great that's fine but if you have found that your computer is struggling to play back footage and you've opted to go for proxy media then this again raises the question of well if i'm going to edit this project using my proxy media do i really need to generate the optimized media now your workflow will dictate the answer to that question and i there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution to that but it might be that you can just generate optimized media and that's fine for you to edit smoothly or it might be that you're better off not creating optimized media but creating proxies and working with those and again using one or the other or non is a great way to save loads of space the next thing to consider is when you've finished a project how do you minimize the amount of storage that this project is going to take on a basis that i'm assuming you may want to keep that library for future reference and and keep a reference of it if you're creating regular content and you're happy that once you've finished a video you're just going to dump and delete everything and you've just got your finished video then great you don't need to worry about this but if you want to keep that library and all of the assets in case you want to come back to that video for a future edit then you can still delete any optimized media you've created any uh render files that you've created in any proxy files that you've created and you can do this just simply by doing file delete generated media and by deleting that you're freeing up loads of space and if you open that project in the future final cut pro can generate all of those files you won't have lost anything this is also a good tip if you're halfway through a project it's getting bloated and taking up too much space you can use that same delete generated media to just delete the render files for your project you you wouldn't want to delete the optimized media or proxy if you're still in the midst of an edit but if you've done loads of experimenting you might find that you've built up a very large file value gigabytes of render files in which case you can just halfway through a project delete the render files and then let final cut regenerate the necessary render files for what's on your timeline at the time which will be obviously much less than loads of experimented versions and what's this transition like and what does this color grade look like once you've got a timeline it will just create render files for what's on the timeline of your projects i know this isn't like a clear definitive here's how you reduce your file size and your library size but hopefully that's just a few tips and a bit of insight into how you might be able to reduce your file size and what this really comes down to is understanding your workflow and what's important to your workflow in order to deliver a finished video if like many people that i speak to you don't fully understand final cut pro and that's fine i mean i don't fully understand final cut pro then often you might tick boxes and be generating things thinking that you're doing the right thing but if you can justify why you're doing it or if you think well maybe i don't need that stuff then a bit of exploration in that area could drastically reduce the amount of file size that your projects are taking up so yeah that is why your final cut library is so big and a few ideas of how you might be able to reduce it i hope that was helpful and a bit informative that's everything for today thank you very much for watching and i'll catch you next time [Music] you

Channel: Will Chidlow

Views: 4,802

Keywords: will chidlow, filmmaking, Why is your FCPX library so LARGE, why is final cut so big, understanding FCPX file size, fcpx reduce file size, reduce fcpx library size, fcpx takes up space, lib size fcpx, final cut proxy workflow, final cut pro workflow tips, final cut pro editing workflow, final cut pro tutorial, fcpx library too big, fcpx library on external drive, fcpx library, fcpx library huge, final cut pro library taking up space, final cut pro library storage location

Id: kO9qqaVIVcI

Length: 14min 7sec (847 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 28 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/cableguy316]

Good information that could have been covered in sixty seconds. Do this (File/Delete Generated Library Files/ check Unused Render Files) every so often while working on a project, and before you archive the Library, delete Proxy and Optimized files. That's it.

FCPX is obscenely bad about garbage collection. My wife had a library of short-form iphone-shot videos where the original media took up a few gigs, and after a few weeks the library was closing in on half a terabyte. Just unbelievable.

[u/houndashbeck]

I use a Final Cut Pro library manager app which makes it a lot easier too.