I’m currently editing a huge amount of video in Final Cut Pro X and thought I’d share some tips on my set-up and workflow.
1) Most important? A comfy chair, crucial in preventing you from ruining your back.
2) Backups –
I have all the raw, original video files backed up in multiple locations. Two separate physical backups in two different off-site locations, just in case. We’re talking in excess of 500GB of footage here, so we can’t afford to lose it. I have the third copy on a 3TB G-Drive here in my office and that’s the data I’ll be working with. I’m also running Crashplan+, this constantly backs up all my files to my online cloud storage (see review here). And finally I have Time Machine connected to a 1.5TB Western Digital My Book, backing up my whole system every hour.
3) Workflow –
I’m using a 27″ iMac (3.4GHz i7, 16GB RAM) which is really great for running Final Cut Pro X as you have such a large working area. Connected to the iMac is a G-Raid 8TB Thunderbolt drive and I have all my FCPX Events and Projects saving to this. This is necessary as I have set-up FCPX to optimise the footage when it is imported and this takes up a lot of disk space.
As there is such a massive amount of footage I take advantage of FCPX’s great shortcuts and Favourite (F) usable clips and Reject (Backspace) bad clips. I also Keyword (CMD + K) anything that I need to categorise or use later.
