Now be honest. Who keeps getting the "Not Enough Disk Space" error in Final Cut Pro? It happens to the best of us! What tips or tricks do YOU have for keeping your Library sizes small? Do you edit off of your internal hard drive or an external?
I used to edit off of usb drives until the disk speed for longer projects or 4K made me sad. Now I edit off the internal SSD since getting my M1 MBA and have an external SSD on the way for my M1 iMac
I have an external ssd for 2tb, however, whenever I’m trying to edit my footage on it, it’s kinda shows me choppy images when I’m going through my timeline… idk what’s the issue. Thus, I edit off of my internal hard drive
Most likely it's a data rate issue. If the read/write speeds are low on that SSD in comparison to the footage you're editing (is it 10-bit 4K H.264?), that might be an issue. Especially if playback from your internal hard drive is smooth. Does your SSD connect via Thunderbolt? USB-C? If USB-C is it 3.0, 3.1 Gen 1, 3.1 Gen 2?
I use Omnidisksweeper and delete my render files to make more room. I am also editing on a SSD T5 external hard drive and tell FCPX to render on that hard drive in setting. I also sometimes select all the clips I do not want rendered and hit "V" turning them off those clips in the background until I'm ready to render those files. So if I need to walk away I select the clips I do not want rendered and turn them off until I'm ready to use them.
life saver! i bought a new macbook with higher storage and i was so confused why a video i was only 11 SECONDS into editing already stopped processing because my disk was "full." My one video barely edited was 350GB but after I deleted the renders and optimized versions (especially the optimized ones), I suddenly freed up 300GB. I can finally edit in peace thank you!
Just had my 14 tb hard drive maxed out to the point where it wouldn't let me open final cut pro projects without crashing. Once I deleted the render and optimized media it went to 1.1 GB instead of 12 TB!!! You just saved me
I just wanted to say thank you, Matthew! I’m a wheelchair-bound editor with cerebral palsy. I’ve edited on nothing but windows, my whole life until recently my windows computer completely stopped working, and I was gifted an iMac form my friend, who no longer needed his older one and a license for Final Cut Pro. I thought it would be so intimidating to learn a brand new editor on top of a brand new operating system after using the same one Vegas Pro for the last 12 years but you made it so e so easy to understand! I’ve been able to knock out 5 edits already. And the iMac I have is the last Intel one and I’m editing off an external hard drive to compensate for lack of internal power so this video in particular will just put everything over the top. My goal now is to find a way to get enough money to get an editing keyboard, because I think that will make things even better. Thanks again!
This is wonderful to hear. Excited for you and your experience with Apple/Final Cut Pro. Thanks for sharing this and fueling me to keep helping editors master FCP! ❤️🔪🥦
@@matthewTobrien You’re very welcome! Thank you for saying, so I’m excited as well! Sorry for that typo there in the comment. I didn’t catch it. Hope it wasn’t too confusing lol.
That's AWESOME, Anna! Repeat this process every time you're done with a video for every Final Cut Pro Library, and you'll keep your machine lean 'n mean. Thanks for watching!
Thank you thank you. I just downloaded Final Cut Pro and started my project and hard drive told me that was 34gb, I was like what the hack goin on my Mac. I was looking up around and finally found your video. I was about to cry, thank you so muchhhhh.
Matt….OUTSTANDING ALL THE WAY…. This is exactly what I was looking for and let me tell your brother you did one heck of a job explaining. Thank you, Matthew.
You have the best explanation of work organization in Final Cut, thank you so much! And another thing: you set up a great light for the shoot, congratulations! It's very unusual to see a high quality video in all aspects: theme, meaning, conversation and image!
Oh no! So sorry to hear about your frustration, Bryan. And I'm glad my video helped you to acquire the knowledge necessary to avoid any future frustration with large FCP libraries!
My god, this video has saved me from leaving FCP. I’ve been wracking my brain why my FCP libraries are nuts and I don’t have that issue with Resolve. Everyone kept telling me to make sure I leave my media in place, but I still had the issue. I just did some tests and this was definitely the problem!!
So glad to hear that, Mike! This is one of my favorite things about FCP...WHEN you understand how it works. And without help, it can be hard to figure it out. So glad you found my video to save you from ditching FCP. Hit me up if anything else is causing you serious frustration. 🧲🎞️
@@matthewTobrien much appreciated! Watching a bunch of your videos today and I do have a few questions if you have time. I run a small RU-vid channel and mainly shoot wildlife video. I was drawn to resolve because it’s free, and I like the media manager option. I own Final Cut though, my camera shoots internal ProRes and 6k (Fuji xh2s) and I recently learned that I can make and name compound clips In FCP and then export them anyways. I don’t do any serious colour work and don’t expect to. I’ll never want to learn fusion. I mostly am trying to tell stories through cuts and edits. I was going to hit the Resolve speed editor to upgrade to Studio and get noise reduction, but I don’t know if there’s any reason. The huge FCP libraries had really turned me off, but now that you’ve fixed that issue there’s no reason. So as I choose between these programs, does one or the other make more sense? The magnetic timeline seems perplexing but you had a comment about how it lets you immerse more in the edit process than resolve once you get used to it. I like quick, easy and painless. Resolve seems great and has been my go-to but I don’t want to pay to upgrade it. I don’t know if I’ll buy an atmos and get into ProRes raw, or maybe keep shooting h.265. Lastly, any thoughts on prores raw Vs braw? Or FCP native noise reduction Vs resolve’s? Or neat video noise reduction?
I'd give a serious go at Final Cut Pro, making sure you really discipline yourself to learn all the tricks for working with the Magnetic Timeline instead of against it. There are quite a few keyboard shortcuts and keyboard modifiers that really open up the magic of the Magnetic Timeline, but you have to make sure that you're seeking out the solution every time the Magnetic Timeline is frustrating you. That's the only way I was able to have that moment where I said to myself, "Ohhhhhh, I get it. This feature is AMAZING." And it's made it so that working in track-based NLEs is so incredibly painful - FOR ME - that I can't fathom going back. And yes, I can disappear into the Creative Flow for very long stretches because of the Magnetic Timeline (I can edit at the speed of thought) and the stability of Final Cut. I've never been too happy with ProRes RAW in my workflow because on the client videos where I've wanted to hire a colorist, ProRes RAW does me no good. BRAW, on the other hand, does a lot of good because my colorist can grade that footage no problem in Resolve. FCP, of course, can't play back BRAW footage, so we always used a workflow where we made ProRes 422 LT dailies with a show LUT applied and I edited using that footage and then we went back to the original camera files in the color grading session. Chris Hocking is in beta right now on a BRAW Toolbox app for FCP that will allow you to play BRAW in FCP no problem. That might help your decision.
The Magic Trackpad definitely, but I've recently been using Monogram's Video Console and I can program the orbiter modules to scrub, jog a single frame at a time, and jog 10 frames at a time. It's awesome. Vid I made about it here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-p7iyAvGk0lk.html
dude you're amazing. i would duplicate my content, never delete renders, and had everything in one big library all messy. it drove me insane, this definitely helped me understand how to avoid it all and have an organized library. God bless you brother
I've been editing via vllo in phone and recently used final cut pro and amazed at how waaaay better editing in fcp but is sufferring from storage space bec I am using only a macbook air base model. With your help I was able to efficiently edit and manage my limited capacity computer for editing. Many thanks!
Thank you for making this. I just got final cut and noticed massive disk space being used and this was it. Doubling my footage by mistake and bogging down my computer.
Really useful .. thank you. Have made every one of those mistakes and had a hellova runaround.. our local South African Mac people had no idea how to help. Eventually the edit would freeze, and the only way to get it back was to quit FCP and reopen again. It still does that on a busy complex edit.
Great Video again , but today i have paused the video in the middle , just to give a small feedback : The Content is superb, it's just that during your screen recording zooms and pans there are lots of , 'whoosh' kind of transition sound fx , they are just not adding anything instead i found them very distracting . (maybe it's just me and my hearing and my studio monitors) Love your channel just wanted to make it even more tactile. :) And one thing i have been wanting to request . A video on 'How to put transitions on a Top video layer, specially in Picture in picture mode' most of the transitions get applied to the lower layers as well. i tried making compound clips of top layer , but even then sometimes the transition takes over the whole scene, the bottom most layers as well. hope you'll find this topic interesting , cause i literally couldn't find an in-depth tutorial on this . Regards , Thank you .
Great appreciate the constructive criticism. I keep playing around with my tutorial vids - sound effects, score vs. no score - trying to find the sweet spot that keeps them engaging. Definitely don’t want elements of the video to be annoying, though. I will think on your video suggestion. I have encountered the same thing myself and can definitely get frustrated by it. Thanks for watching!
An amazing and essential video for anyone who uses FCPX. I mean, why do they not make these things by default so we don't have to first suffer for multiple months before finding a solution. Thanks!
At first this frustrated me to no end, but now that I know how to manage data in final cut I actually like the way it deals with data. I tried all the big editing softwares and landed on final cut about 2 months ago.
Congrats! It does take a minute to wrap your head around it, and although I have a video from last year that goes over this (and other things), I felt a dedicated video might be helpful. Good on you for trying all the others. I’ve used them all but not extensively. I’m ride or die Final Cut Pro… 🙌🏻🤘🏻
Wow, you saved me brother. Thank you so much..I had no idea why my external hard drive was so full. I deleted generated library files and it erased 600GB. You saved me. Much love
I use to do a bunch of these things before I learned how to store my library cache file outside of the FCP library I was working with. Now I just delete the cache file when I'm done with a project to store it long term or if I run out of space. I like doing it that way so everything gets copied to the library, and I don't have to worry about moving, deleting or losing the external files. Also I like just letting it BG render so I can see exactly how each element will look rendered, and to keep my export time down. Especially if a client needs something cut out or changed quickly, I can get them a revision a lot faster. Great video though, I use to struggle bad with running out of space constantly, and had no clue why. It can become the most stressful part about working on a project, if you don't know how to manage your storage correctly with final cut pro.
I've watched so many videos about this topic! Turning off background render was not new to me. I never liked doing it because of the choppy playback for certain parts of my project! This is the 1st time I've heard that I can select portions to render which is mind blowing! New subscriber!
I have been working on a project for two weeks and had a library size of 989gb (my Mac is only 1TB), so it was chugging and I wasn't finished. I followed the rendering tip and the delete optimized media tip....with fingers crossed, and I'm back to having 900gb available again.....and my project is still there. Thanks!!
really really wished I had found your helpful video last night. The dreaded message appeared (for the 100th time) whilst we were working (4 days) on vid footage, we thought we had saved tried to an external hard drive. We eventually were forced to delete a completed video file from the FCP library and re-upload it from HDD, (except we couldn't, it wasn't there, ) Restarted this morning and after a horrid nights sleep, but now I am feeling more confident about disk space
This was by far the best help I’ve seen! Definitely learned a good amount. One thing that I sometimes see is that FCPX, when importing files, it won’t let me choose, “leave files in place”. Not sure why. Thanks again for this. 8:17
You're welcome, Danilo! Thanks so much for watching and leaving a thoughtful comment. The reason you may not have the "leave files in place" option is because you're importing from an SD card or camera card that isn't compatible with FCP leaving those files in place. If that isn't the case with your import workflow, let me know!
@@matthewTobrien Thanks for the help. I actually don't import from my memory card. I always import from my hard drive. But what I have done in the past is save all my video files in a folder on my desktop. And I do have include backup set up for my desktop. So not sure if that has anything todo with it. So when I go to import the files, I'm trying to import files that are saved to my desktop that have been uploaded to the cloud. If this doesn't make sense I totally understand haha
Tip 6 - Final Cut also lets you reallocate where those specific library files are stored. If I’m working with a lot of footage but I want to have my timeline rendered, I could essentially quarantine my render file to a large hard drive and let it take up as much space as it wants. As long as the hard drive is fast enough, which all the ones I’ve used seem to be
Excellent point! I do have that tip in another video of mine that has done really well on the channel - a Top 10 Mistakes in FCP vid I made a while back. Definitely could have included that in this video to help editors understand that they can store their render files in a custom location outside of their FCP Library. Great input!
Let's assume that storage is no issue. You're working with massive drives, infinite space, whatever. Is it better to maintain all the footage in the library (even with a duplicate copy in finder) for library maintenance and consistency? I feel most people get in trouble when they move their finder footage between drives or replace a drive and it disconnects in Final Cut
@@davetriesthis I keep all my stuff inside of the library because when I’m done with the project, if it’s something I want to keep, I can drag the whole library to a hard drive. I don’t have to worry about files going missing later on if I want to access it
Another Great Learn: Today's Takeaway "the gray dotted line"... choosing render selections in modify!! Awesome & Perfectly Instructed Thanks Again Rhonda
What's really wild, is I do drag and drop into my events, with the selection "leave files in place" and fcpx still stored it in the original file folder. My project file was 1.8tb! Although, it is a large project of 4k media, it still was confusingly large, and that has been happening for all of my projects. I really just like dragging and dropping, but it seems that I need to do the import function now. Thanks for the information. I have watched a few vids on this, but you are the first to help me drill down and find the issue! Thanks champ!
Yes, if you drag and drop media between Final Cut Pro libraries, it may copy that footage/media INTO the destination Final Cut Pro Library... Glad this video helped you figure everything out!
I don't doubt it. I moved a bunch of footage over from Premiere - most of which is 4k 60fps and I did it on a brand new Macbook Pro M2, so it started rendering away. Thanks again!@@matthewTobrien
this video is a LIFESAVER!!!! thank you so much for explaining, I was getting so much anxiety bc every time I edit my macbook keeps running out of storage. THANK YOU SO SO MUCH :)
I learned a little trick from another RU-vidr Tyler Stallworth. Move the cache file from the being stored in the library to a folder in your external drive. Render all the way to the bank if you want to.
Thank you so much for this! It helped me with my last video. We spent 37 days on a cruise, and we have LOTS of clips. We only needed a few seconds, but the files were huge. This video helped me clean up my library.
