What are libraries in Final Cut Pro for Mac?

In Final Cut Pro, you organize your work in libraries. A library can contain multiple events and projects in the same location. The first time you open Final Cut Pro, it creates a library file in the Movies folder. When you create a new project or event, it’s automatically included in the active library. The library tracks all your media files, your editing decisions, and the associated metadata.

A diagram of a library with three events that contain clips, projects, or both

You can have multiple libraries open at the same time, and you can easily copy events and projects between libraries. This makes it simple and quick to move media, metadata, and creative work to another system for mobile work, work with multiple editors, or archiving. You can open and close libraries as needed.

The following concepts are important to understand when you work with libraries.

Managed and external media

Media files are the raw materials you use to create your project. A media file is a video, audio, still-image, or graphics file on your Mac or storage device that contains footage transferred from a camcorder or recording device or created on a computer. Media files can contain multiple video and audio components. Because media files—especially video files—tend to be quite large, projects that use a lot of footage require one or more high-capacity storage devices.

Media that you import into a specific library is stored inside the library and is referred to as managed media. Media can also be imported or copied to any location on a connected storage device and linked to the library as external media. Multiple users can access this external media instantly on shared storage.

Managed media can be made external at any time if you want to share access, and external media can be collected as managed media inside the library for easy transport or archiving. See Consolidate projects and libraries.

Generated media

Render files, optimized files, proxy files, and analysis files are all considered generated media because the system creates them in the background after the original media has been imported. You can store generated media inside your Final Cut Pro library or in an external location you define. For example, to organize media in a large facility more efficiently, you can put generated media on a SAN or on a storage device outside the library. See Set storage locations.

To reduce a library’s size, and to move, copy, or archive a library more quickly, you can delete all the generated media (proxy, optimized, or render files) in one step. See Create optimized and proxy files and Manage render files.

Note: By default, copying a project between libraries does not copy the associated proxy, optimized, or render files because these files can be quickly regenerated. However, you can choose to include proxy or optimized media when you copy a project to another library.

Media files and clips

After you import media into events in your Final Cut Pro library, clips representing the source media files appear in the browser. A large event may contain many clips.

Clips represent your media, but they are not the media files themselves. The clips in a project simply point to (link to) the source media files on your Mac or storage device. When you modify a clip, you’re not modifying the media file, just the clip’s information in the project. This is known as nondestructive editing, because the changes you make to clips in Final Cut Pro never affect the media itself. Trimmed or deleted pieces of clips are removed from your project only, not from the clips in your library or the source media files on your Mac or storage device.

A diagram that shows a media file linking to a corresponding browser clip being used in three different projects

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Final Cut Pro User Guide for Mac

What are libraries in Final Cut Pro for Mac?

Managed and external media

Generated media

Media files and clips