Help.. for the love of....

Hi, I have a major problem. The project file for my current edit has grown to an enormous size & I believe it is the cause of continuous crashing. The project file size is now at 507mb. I have tried dumping many sequences from the project to shrink the project file, but it has actually has gotten bigger! I don't know why it's so big, or how to get it down. I don't want to have to start over & relink everything etc etc. I was maybe 2 passes from completion. It's a multi-cam project in HDVCPRO 720. There is a large amount of media, and I thought perhaps there was a media file corruption until I checked the project file. If anyone has an idea on how to resolve this, please reply.

Thanks.

Yeah, 507MB for a project file is just asking for doom and destruction. There are some strategies for shrinking a project file's size:

- Store the raw media in a separate project file; edit only with a project file that has only sequences;
- Dump all old versions;
- Store the edit in portions;
- Get rid of all old render files;
- Collapse the multiclips that are done.


www.derekmok.com

another thing that can reduce project size is to copy it ALL,
and paste it into a new project.

hopefully this "mystery bloat" will be addressed in the new version.

the downside of a one-off copy-all is that you will lose master/affiliate relationships,
but if you are so close to the end that might not matter.

in which case, if the copy all doesn't get it down far enough,
you can simply copy your edit sequences into a fresh project, and work from there.

but you've got to put that 500MB monster down.


nick

Thanks Derek, I tried dumping all old versions , sequences, render files & editing in chunks . It got bigger - dont ask how. I'll try separating the media as well as Nick's ideas.

Thank you < A

How are you making the new versions?

Don't duplicate the old one or do a Save As. Make new project files as Nick says. The aforementioned two methods will retain whatever junk (?) might be bloating up your project file.


www.derekmok.com

do you have a lot of .psd files in your project?

We've been duplicating the current sequence, then cutting on that & renaming it. ie: Duplicate Sequence "Edit #4" & call it "edit #5", and continue cutting on the duplicate.

> We've been duplicating the current sequence, then cutting on that & renaming it. ie: Duplicate
> Sequence "Edit #4" & call it "edit #5", and continue cutting on the duplicate.

That could be part of the reason why your project file's blown up. Your new Sequences may have
data related to the old Sequence duplicated, which is retained somewhere in the project file's data even after you erase the contents of the copy (for example, render files made using one Sequence are also linked to a duplicate of that Sequence). Try creating new Sequences with APPLE-N instead. If I remember correctly, Multiclips also blow up project-file sizes to a disproportionate extent, and if your data is indeed being compounded, it may have exacerbated the problem.


www.derekmok.com

duplicating sequences within a project will really blow up the project file size FAST.

on longer/larger projects, i prefer to duplicate the PROJECT itself.
i re-name the copy and date-stamp it,
and continue working in the original project.

but you could easily do it the other way around.

alternatively,
copy your sequence,
paste it into a "Sequence Archive" project, date-stamp it if it hasn't gone unique name already,
and then go back to the original and keep on working, re-naming the sequences if necessary.


nick

actually, uwa, i'm wondering if you know that FCP can have MULTIPLE PROJECTS open at the same time?

there is no need to have everything in one monster project.

another thing that i've forgotten to mention, is that even if you do delete things from a project,
the project size wont always go down. (as you have discovered!)

as a test once, i deleted EVERYTHING from a project, leaving nothing more than an empty browser,
and still the file size stayed the same.


nick

> as a test once, i deleted EVERYTHING from a project, leaving nothing more than an empty
> browser, and still the file size stayed the same.

Conversely, something innocuous may do a number to your project-file size.

On the two-hour-plus instruction video I was working on two weeks ago, we were inserting subtitles and new voice dubs into the video, and adding metadata (IDs for the content of the subtitles), nothing else. Right before the last day, the project starting getting unstable, at about 75MB. I deleted all the master clips for the voice-overs and the file plopped right back down to 50MB. Small compared with your file sizes, but the difference in performance was substantial once those 500-odd master clips were deleted.

So it works both ways. Moral of the story is: Don't keep what you don't need. Backup regularly, and use date- and time-stamped project backups (rather than multiple sequences within your current project file) to store old versions.


www.derekmok.com

Thanks for all of your help. It seems I'm back on track with a 35mb file. Whew. I hope this is the last you hear about it.

A

That's great. What everyone has said.

Don't forget to try Save Project As...[itself] which in many apps besides FCP also trims down bloat by purging UNDO histories and other caches.

Also, you didn't answer Eddie's question about storing PSD (or large TIFF) files. At one time this was a recipe for bloat AND project corruption. If you have graphic files or rich photo scans, check to see that they are RGB colorspace, not CMYK or other.

- Loren
Today's FCP keytip:

Nudge a Canvas layer by subpixel with Command-Option-Arrows !

Final Cut Studio 2 KeyGuide? Power Pack.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

Hi Thanks again. There were no psd files or large tiffs. Just a couple of jpegs.

A

Multiclips Multiclips Multiclips.

I've been going on about this issue for a couple of years now, FCP5 and FCP 6. On a series with multiple editors those of us who used multiclips had this problem on 1 out of three or four episodes and the dude who cut old school with tracks stacked in timelines had no problems like this. But he was bogged down by directors asking for 4 AND 9 way splits and realtime switching.

On the last big Multicamera show I worked on I ended up dumping the latest sequence at the end of each day into a new empty project and saving that as ProjectNameMaster and the old project as ProjectNameDate. Always a fresh project with one sequence in it, a project for source files and a Automator workflow that threw it all into DropBox with a click.

I sure hope them peepuls down at Appul fixed this here problem on that there version 7. Sure wood be nice of them to get around to it.

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!