Media Management

[andmill]

im working on a pretty major video project using final cut express right now.
So i just realized that i have assets scattered across 5 hard drives in many different folders and in different programs/formats (Aperture, Soundtrack, iPhoto, Livetype...)

Anyway, im wondering how you all store your media files for final cut projects (Folder structures etc...)

thanks

 

[-DH]

It's pretty much up to you (the editor) to insure that everything you import into your FCP project is in the right place. Good organization is the key to keeping things simple and running smoothly.

That said, it doesn't hurt to have items scattered across several drives. In fact, it can sometimes help. If all the media, photos, music clips, render files and everything else for a complex project were on one drive, that would be very taxing on that drive.

Many editors assign captures to more than one drive, renders to another and other assets (photos, graphics, music clips, etc) to another. For example, on my system I have two 500gb drive for capturing. FCP will spread the captures across both drives thereby lessening the load on each. I have another drive assigned for render, waveform cache and Autosave files. I do keep other media (graphics, photos, etc) in a separate folder on one of my capture drives. That makes it easy for me to perform regular backups on just those items that cannot be recaptured.

-DH