Help: Native Log and Transfer eating up hard drive space?

[Shirley Films]

(I am sort of a newb here, so I apologize in advance for being annoying.)

When I am ingesting RED quicktime files using Log And Transfer (native) in FCP, why is it eating up my hard drive space? Is it creating a new copy of the clip? Why does it need to do that?

Would it use less space if I transcode to ProRes422(HQ) instead?

I would like to be able to edit using the best possible image from the 2k .mov, but if its going to double my disk space usage, I might reconsider.

For the record, I have an 8-Core 2.26 GHz MAC PRO with 16GB of RAM and I am just in the preliminary testing/playing around stages with the workfow.

Thanks for any help!

[Tom West]

Hey Shirley Films,

When you use the log and transfer (native), what is happening is that it is wrapping the R3D files in a quicktime wrapper and making a copy on your FCP scratch disk.

When you are editing with ingested files, there will be more of a processor hit on your system, working with these files as well.

The other alternative is to transcode the footage to prores HQ and edit with these on an offline/online workflow. These will play back and edit much smoother and save you scratch drive space.

Take a look at the FCP Whitepaper available on the RED site, under support, this should answer a lot of questions you have.

Tom