Aperture Library on Internal HDD with Managed Video Files
After spending quite a few hours reading through the discussions on how to set up Aperture Libraries and the best practices on where to import files and how to treat them (managed/referenced), i'm finally about to dive in, but there's still one unresolved question which i hope someone can shed some light on ...
From what i can gather:
1. It's best to keep the main Aperture Library on your Internal Startup Drive
2. Use a mix of Managed and Referenced files
3. Keep Highly rated Photos and Recent Ones as Managed
4. Relocate older Managed Photos to an External HD to limit the size of the main Library
5. Managed and Referenced files are not fixed, they can be changed at any time
6. If possible, it's best to keep everything on one big Library so that all files can be found in one place, instead of using multiple libraries
My Internal HD is only 212GB and there's only about 100GB free at the moment. I've got a 2TB and another 1TB (USB connected) External HDD as well.
If i am just working with photos, i could probably juggle things around with the 70+GB avail space on my Internal Drive (assuming 10-15% is left free), but even then, it will be quite a tight setup that doesn't leave much room for growth. The thing is, i've got lots of large video files which are taking up most of the space, and there doesn't appear to be much option to keep them as managed files within the main Aperture Library.
As it is, my iPhoto library (which i've just moved from the Internal HD to the External HDD) is already about 90+GB (over half must be from videos). And i've got 200+GB more photos and videos to import into Aperture too. Before starting, i really want to make sure i've got a suitable infrastructure and system, but the rather limited space i've got on my internal Drive and the large storage requirements for my video files has got me stumped on how to proceed.
For users who have quite a fair bit of videos, what's the best way to use Aperture with managed files on the Internal drive? Is it just a matter of getting as large a Startup drive as possible, getting a Firewire connected external drive (that's faster than the USB connected ones), or is there some better work around?
One option is to keep the videos as referenced files, but (i think i read) that they won't be visible in Media Browser (and iMovie?) unless they are managed. After importing and cataloguing the videos in Aperture, i would like to access and edit them in iMovie, which is why i thought it would be essential to keep them as managed files.
Thanks for any advice and thoughts shared. It's been a long journey over the last few days to do backups, upgrade to Mountain Lion, buy Aperture, upgrade iPhoto, and read through countless discussions in these amazing forums. Hopefully, that first import is only around the corner.
Message was edited by: Paddy99
Aperture 3, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4)