Why are my projects balooning in size?

Sequences, size of the sequences and clips most certainly add to the file size...and what REALLY does are titles. Anything created with Boris Title 3D or the Title tool...there isn't media that is created with those, those are part of the project file. So if you have a lot of titles, that can make a project huge.

Shane

Buzzika

Its worth doing a search for “project size issues” as there have be a few posts on this.

First up, fcs isn’t like an avid in that if you delete old copy edits then the project size isn’t always going to get smaller. Weird but true. What you need to do is create a new project and drag the folders you want into the new project. Edits should be copied into new sequences in the new project. On a long running edit keep a separate project for the dailies/rushes also helps.

Also, sound sync/merge/multi clip can make a project size balloon.

Having just finished a feature which cut over 10 months, I found that a number of seperat projects worked well. My rushes were synched in one project then the merged clips copied into a new project. Sound fx and music were also in a separate project. Edits were in their own project and every couple of weeks I made a new project and copied only the most resent version of the film into it. This kept the project down to a very small 10 mb or so. Loads up fast and backups are fast. No crashes. I would have all the various projects open so I could cut rushes/music/titles/vfx directly into the new edit project.

Worked well for me and almost totally removed the crashes.

John

First of all, 300Mb is not "large" for a project. My projects are frequently about 100 TIMES larger - 30GBytes.

But, are you talking about the entire project, or just about the *project file*, the .fcp file? I have not seen larger .fcp files than a couple of Mbytes, say 4 or so.

We are talking PROJECT FILES here. And mine range from 10MB to 80MB.

Shane

Project File

It's no secret that Media Management in FCP still needs lots of work. But you have to get out of your AVID mindset, know what these weaknesses are and know how to work around them. That will come from experience and from reading issues raised on the forums.

Shane

I'm talking about the the project file ie the .fcp file. I had been getting files in the 250-300MB range, with lots of crashes. Thanks to Shane’s advise, I began splitting up projects as I described above. Now I keep project files below 50MB, bye bye crashes.

All the material captured still takes up over 4TB and FCS has no problem finding/moving/using that amount of material, unlike an avid which can get very lost with much smaller quantities of video files.

John

I agree, Avid v FCS isn’t the issue, both are good tools which I like and use. However, some jobs are better on avid, others on FCS. Producers, and editors should understand that and select the right tool for the job.

John

Buzzika

Don’t drag or copy large edits from one project into the new one. Load the edit into the viewer and edit into a new empty sequence in the new project. Quicker and safer.

John

John
love the idea on workflow for the longer/larger projects. I have everything from 64k through to 300mb plus projects and olnly to well know how slow the large ones are to load.

Tony

Just curious, how much edit actions do you do to make such a large project file? I have done hundreds of edits in a single project file, and stacked up to ~100 videos on top of each other without ever seeing larger project files than 4Mb.

Its a good question and I wish I could answer it fully, but I think its related to multiclips. I use them to sync up audio and editing with them seems to make edits much bigger. As I copy edits things get even bigger. What is really odd is if I delete large numbers of old edits or multiclips from my project it remains huge. I have even gone as far as deleting everything from the project and it still has a 250MB file size.

Again, following advise from the forum, I am trying out a workflow where I make new exported QT's of the sync multiclips and that seems to make life much better.

FCS is so good at having many projects open at the same time that I now keep a close eye on project size and any that go over 50MB get split into 2 or more new projects. It takes a bit of time front or end of the day but keeps the system stable and fast.

As to my projects, they are typical features. About 120hrs of HD dailies then Assembly edits all broken down into 20min film reels. Total running 120-140 mins. Most of the time its 2 video tracks and 8 or 10 sound tracks. Nothing complex.

John