external drive for editing

Question

Level 1

4 points

external drive for editing

My FCPX is slow. I am editing 1080P footage stored on WD "My Book" drives. My projects are usually 1 or 2 hour long (conferences and interviews) so there's a lot of footage and I need speed for multi-clip editing. I'm told I can speed up the process by using a better Hard Drive. What are the determining factors in an exterior drive for editing and does anyone have suggestions ranging around $500 to $600 (Canadian) ?

I have a 2011 Imac.

Final Cut Pro X, Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Feb 20, 2016 1:47 AM

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Answer 1

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

152,816 points

Feb 20, 2016 3:21 AM in response to marcsoucie

UUse proxy files.

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Answer 2

marcsoucie Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 20, 2016 1:44 PM in response to Tom Wolsky

So a better external drive will not improve the speed of my work ?

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Answer 3

Alchroma

Level 7

23,918 points

Feb 20, 2016 10:54 PM in response to marcsoucie

Can you tell us exactly what type of external you currently have in use?

eg. USB 2, Firewire 400, Thunderbolt Raid 0.

Al

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Answer 4

Russ H

Level 7

22,432 points

Feb 21, 2016 4:50 AM in response to marcsoucie

What Al said. The limiting factor will be the physical connection between the Mac and the storage device. Need more details.

Russ

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Answer 5

Feb 21, 2016 6:27 AM in response to marcsoucie

marcsoucie wrote:

My FCPX is slow. I am editing 1080P footage stored on WD "My Book" drives. …

Some WD drives allow 'on the fly encryption' - be sure, if optional, to switch that off for video-editing.

usb3 has in theory ~600mbps - so, any single mechanical storage doesn't come close to that. To max out this connection, you have to staple harddrives as Raid, preferable Raid5.

or, super-fast, ext. SSD: in use here a tiny (matchbox size) Samsung SDD as 'working horse' (when project done, all files get transferred to some other drive), 250GB ~130€., awesome, Multicam done easy....

thunderbold for single HDD/SSD is imho nonsense; tb connected Raids are really fun but $$$$ league.

Depends on your needs and format of material ...

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