Final Cut Library Manager Version 2.50 is here!
When Apple introduced their new media storage options in FCP 10.1.2 we didn’t immediately appreciate how profound the changes would be with regards to Final Cut Library Manager, changes that would take us over 2 months to design, code and test.
Final Cut Pro 10.1.2 now allows you to store your generated media (optimized, proxy and caches files) outside of your libraries. While this change seems quite small we soon realised that the need for a library manager has never been so great. Suddenly you can have media files strewn throughout your system, however you have no way of knowing which files are associated with which libraries. Furthermore, the generated optimized and proxy files can be shared between libraries – this is great for disk space, but a nightmare for management.
With Final Cut Library Manager 2.50 we set ourselves some difficult design challenges:
- We really wanted to maintain the simple and clear interface that that our users appreciate. We certainly didn’t want users who do not use external media to be bogged down with a more complicated interface.
- It was important that users could see which external media files were associated with each library.
- It was also important that users could see and clean external media files even when the associated library wasn’t visible. This would allow them to examine the space taken up on drives dedicated to generated media without having to include information from all the other disks attached to the system
- Since we were addressing the issue of external media we wanted to take into account one of the most popular requests – seeing how much space the external original files of a library were taking up. Version 2 would show the links to external files, but it didn’t allow you to see how big they were.
We believe that we’ve met all of our objectives. The main window now displays your libraries and any external media. When possible this media is now grouped with the libraries with which it’s associated so that you can see at a glance how your media files are distributed across the system for each library. Of course, you may prefer not to see all this information, so the new filter bar allows you to choose the media that you’d like to have displayed.
We’ve also included other user interface improvements such as an easy way to list the files used by a library or held inside a media folder.
We hope that you enjoy this new version, and as ever we look forward to hearing your feedback.