In this video,
I’m going to go through and show you
my media management workflow, in other words,
where I store all my video footage,
how I organize it,
and my process for creating
and archiving my Final Cut Pro projects.
Hey guys, whats up.
This is Serge and welcome back to my channel.
The media management method I’m going to show you
in this video is how I currently deal with all my project media.
Now, this is always evolving,
and I’m always looking for better
and more efficient way to deal with my media,
so if you have any suggestions
on what I could be doing different,
I want to hear from you in the comments below.
If you want to follow this method,
what you’ll need is two external hard drives.
The ones I use and recommend are
2 TB Lacie Rugged Thunderbolt drives.
These aren’t solid state drives,
but since they’re only used for storing media and projects,
I can get away with using cheaper drives.
All the products mentioned in this video
will be linked in the description below.
You will also need an internal solid state drive
with sufficient space for your project,
or an external SSD.
My recommendation here is the Samsung T5 Solid State Drive.
They’re not cheap,
but since this is the drive you’ll be working on,
the higher speed of the drive will be necessary.
For all my demo videos, and non tutorial projects,
the first thing I do is move my media off the memory card
onto my first external drive which I call my media drive.
I simply drag and drop my media
from the memory card onto the drive.
To organize it, I create folders
and name them by the date the footage was shot,
with a very short description at the end.
I also tag to my individual clips, with the camera it was shot on.
For my tutorial videos,
I create a folder and name it whatever the tutorial is about.
Inside this folder, I create three separate folders,
named Audio, Video, and Other.
The Audio and Video folders are self explanatory,
and everything else, such as the video thumbnail,
YouTube description and so on, goes in the other folder.
Next, in Final Cut Pro, depending on the size,
I either have my library on my internal drive,
or on my external SSD.
This is my current library and only contains the projects
I currently work on.
What I find, is when the libraries get big,
they tend to slow Final Cut Pro down,
so I try to keep my current library size to a minimum.
What I like to do is have a separate event
for each one of my videos,
with the video projects inside them.
First, I select the media I need for my project
from my media drive, and import it into Final Cut Pro,
making sure to select
the copy to library checkbox in the import window.
This way, after my import is complete,
I can unplug my media drive and put it away.
The Current library is where I edit all my projects,
and once finished,
I always export as a master file using the Pro Res 422 codec.
I export my videos onto my media drive,
into a separate Finished Projects folder.
This master file can later be transcoded
or compressed for sharing on social media.
And finally, after my project is complete,
I archive it onto my second external drive,
which I call FCPX Project Archives.
On this drive, I have a library called Project Archives.
There’s two options when archiving your projects.
Option one is moving the entire event to the archive library,
which moves all the media
inside this event to your external drive.
Option two, is moving just the project.
What this does, is move only your project
and only the media used on your project
to your external drive.
Any media not used in your project does not get moved.
Moving only the project as opposed to the entire event
can save a significant amount of hard drive space.
To move my project,
I’ll select the project in the browser,
and from the menu bar, select File,
Move Project to Library, and select my archive library.
Next, I make sure both my optimized an proxy media
checkboxes are not selected, and hit OK.
This moves my project,
and any media used inside my project to my external drive.
If I wanted to move my entire event,
I would just have to select the event instead of my project,
and click file, and Move Event to Library.
Now, after my project or event is moved,
I can close my Project Archives library,
and start over again on my next project.
Theres a few benefits to this method.
One, is redundancy.
My media is stored in two places, on my media drive,
and since I copy all my media to library,
the same media is also stored on my Project Archives Drive.
And two, by keeping my current library on my internal drive,
and keeping the size to a minimum,
I maximize the speed of Final Cut Pro,
and if I need to edit my project while travelling,
I don’t have to worry about the external drives.
So, this is my current method
of media management in Final Cut Pro.
But, like I mentioned before it’s always evolving,
so I would love to hear some feedback from you
on how I can improve it.
Let me know how you manage your media in the comments below.
And, as always, if you found this video helpful,
hit the like button and make sure
to share with someone else who might like it.
And don’t forget to subscribe,
new videos released weekly.
Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next week.