Q: Running out of room

You have a couple options. You can either move your bundle to new storage and then modify the path on your existing edit proxy device or create a new contentbase device and assign it as your edit proxy device moving forward. The new-device method works because each assets' proxy link is recorded individually in the database, so even if you move new proxy creation to a new device, any proxies created on your original device will still be linked to their respective assets. The move-bundle method works because an asset's link to a proxy is relative to the device's root path.

Thanks, that would be my solution then, to move new proxy creation elsewhere going forward. In this case I have a second internal 2T Raid 1 that I have been using for other purposes. That volume could be cleared and used for this. I have several large capacity projects that are popping up at the same time, once they are completed the material will get archived to an external device. The key is being able to maintain the old links.

A larger question is the saving of old media. The majority of my original video footage is HDV. This I now understand is a near complete duplication of edit proxies in ProRes 422(Proxy). I really don't need both. If I archive (which only saves the original media to the archive device correct?) Is there a way to delete the Edit Proxies but leave the thumbnails and small viewing proxies in the database and then regenerate the edit proxies or edit with original media should I need to unearth a project?

The ProRes (Proxy) is lower quality than your HDV original. They are very much NOT the same thing. Keep your HDV originals.

Thanks for your input, but I really can't see much difference between the HDV and the ProRes422 edit proxy, same frame size, marginally higher bit rate on the edit proxy, side by side comparison looks pretty much the same....

Qualitative opinions aside, it would be possible to systematically remove edit proxies but it would take custom scripting with the fcsvr_client tool to do it.

I realize that FCSvr is primarily used in larger facilities than ours that are usually shooting in professional formats and that the original media is going to be a lot better quality-wise than a transcoded ProRes edit proxy at all but the highest bandwidth transcodes. Our system is more in the realm of "industrial video". We trancode HDV to the ProRes422 (Proxy) setting so we have a convenient, good quality image that renders quickly (if necessary at all) and produces excellent quality Flash internet video at 640x360 @ 500K-1500K. We do all our work over gigabit ethernet, so larger files would grow unwieldy very quickly. The occaisional use on big screens at a trade show (when we render out to ProRes HQ) might challenge the above scenario, but our clients seem happy with it so far, and the critical areas in that usage are generally graphics & type rather than the live video footage, so we are careful to render to higher standards to keep graphic elements clean & crisp in that circumstance. What FCSvr does for us is keep track of years of footage shot for our major client, keeping b-roll and older projects accessible at a moments notice, or maybe a few moments notice if in the archive. I guess that's why I ask so many dumb or weird questions on this forum, I am not really using FCSvr for it's most common, intended purposes, therefore I need to know a bit of how it works to mold it to my operation. I do thank everyone who answers for their input and help. It has been invaluable.

Though I have not done any direct qualitative analysis of HDV vs the various flavors of ProRes, off the cuff I would tend to agree with your approach and your assessment that ProRes Proxy is near-as-makes-no-difference the same quality as HDV. Let's not forget that HDV is roughly 25Mbps 8-bit 4:2:0 MPEG-2 and it isn't full raster. ProRes Proxy is a higher bitrate, 10-bit 4:2:2 codec. Granted, it doesn't get the bandwidth efficiencies of long-GOP compression, but all things considered I'd bet anyone on here lunch that they couldn't spot the difference between HDV and ProRes Proxy in a Pepsi Challenge.

Off Topic:

I'm just sorry that so often the answer to the "can I do that?" questions like yours is, "you need a custom script." For the relative few of us equipped to build upon FCSvr's versatile scripting capabilities, they are a boon. For everyone else it must be very frustrating to keep bumping into that glass ceiling. I read a lot of posts from users with good ideas for automating their workflow, but without the know-how to execute. Unfortunately it isn't at all practical to build and freely distribute highly custom scripts in a forum like this.

If the FCSvr user community were larger, I might think an experts exchange marketplace could exist online where people could come and bid out automation/integration challenges that others could accept and solve for an agreed-upon price. But I don't think we have the critical mass for that to thrive.

I tried it and all that would happen is that if you went to download the Edit Proxies, you'd get an error. The asset would still claim to have one in the Resources tab. To regenerate it, just right-click on the asset and choose "Regenerate Proxies".