23 Minutes FCP Log and Transfer = 23GB?

[e-steve]

Wow, I just noticed a file I transferred in FCP via Log and Transfer was a whopping 23GB for 23 minutes. At this rate my new RAID will be full in no time!

Anyone have any tips for workflow that I'm missing? Seeing that I'll probably want to keep original files even though I may downconvert to edit, 1GB per minute is pretty high...am I doing something wrong?

This is before any pulldown removal...

[Ben_B]

Sounds about right. For ProRes.

Fun times. 23 minutes is a lot of footage. Used to get about a minute a gig shooting 1080/24pa to DVCPRO HD on HVX. Yeah keep the original card files, they're small, and it's a great backup as if you keep your scratch disk organized and just backup the card data and your final cut file you should be able to easily re-log and then reconnect the footage if a drive goes, without having to backup the huge logged and transfered files. We do this with P2...I assume the SDHC card data is as stable.

[Peter J. DeCrescenzo]

ProRes creates relatively large files, and ProRes video quality can be very high, too.

If you haven't already seen it, there's lots of good ProRes-related info in this article, including a table comparing its data rates to other popular editing codecs:
http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/apple/story/prores_a_closer_look/

[e-steve]

Thanks guys! Just checking that I wasn't doing something wrong... I'm going to have to downconvert and offline it...since I am shooting a doc and can't afford to have such big files.

[J Davis]

I have an approach that will save you a lot of disk space ... its for Final Cut users tho.

First try to consider the PRIVATE folder as a digital negative .. or a master and make backups of it.

Then when you are in the Log & Transfer window highlight a clip and it will appear in the preview window on the right. In this preview window you can play it and hear audio.
**** make your decisions here, make notes about which clips to use here ****

Then, when you have decided which clips you will use, mark in and out points on the preview window using the letters I and O. Now when you add it to the transfer queue only the selection you want will be transcoded. Note, if you have one long take and it show up as 'clip #1', you can repeatedly make in out points on it and resend it to the queue so one long clip will come out as several shorter prores clips.

In this way you will only transcode the media that you need. If you miss something, go back to the PRIVATE folder and retreive more media.

Hope this helps!