Apple's penchant for libraries

[v-600]

I got around to using imovie in a serious way for the first time to make a video for a training session at work. I don't think I can pass up the opportunity to have a dig at Apple's typically unintuitive controls, but when you get it, it works well (and far better than something like Windows movie maker).

Anyway. I filmed and imported approx 8GB of video onto my computer. Now having finished the imovie library is 12GB.

I understand that importing everything into a single library makes it easier to ensure all the files are always easily accessible, and not easily accidentally deletable.

On the other hand, with the originals, I am now using 20GB of storage (17%) on a 120GB SSD for a 4 minute video. I could be using 10-ish GB (allowing for clips,sounds and samples).

So - wasteful (?) disc usage vs convenience and control of content within the video editing software.

I also found out that itunes tries to create a huge local library of all my networked music unless you untick the default setting (what's the point of network storage if you cache a copy locally???rarg).

Is this just the apple way that I'm still learning to love or does it strike anyone else as awkward?

 

[Rakehellion]

Are the movies converted to another format like DV?

Personally, I'd prefer to have everything cached and optimized for speed. Disk space isn't that expensive.

 

[Childs]

You can move the library to some other volume.

 

[TuxDave]

When I had to move a movie project onto a flash drive to go work on it at a different site w/ a different computer, I wished it made a library to make it easier to grab everything and resume at the new location. I eventually started making local copies manually.

 

[v-600]

I don't think the movies were converted. There were a few .mov and 3 big .mp4 fils.

TBH I hadn't thought of the portability aspect. I guess I could leave the library on our server when in work.

There are pros and cons to most things, I guess with just 120GB it seemed the con was larger than most of the pros.