Arctic

Before April 2024, Arctic was known as Final Cut Library Manager. Read more...

Arctic scans the volumes connected to your Mac and displays a list of Final Cut Pro (FCP) Libraries (.fcpbundle files) it detects on those volumes.

Arctic can help you inspect, filter, and search the contents of your Libraries.

Arctic can also generate media reports to help you track which media was used in a Library.

Finally, Arctic enables you to clean your Library safely for:

  • Preparing Libraries for archival purposes

  • Removing reproducible Library data in preparation for PostLab use

  • Reducing a Library’s size, recovering storage space

Getting Started

  1. Connect or mount any volumes containing FCP Libraries to your Mac.

  2. Launch Arctic to scan those volumes, called Sources.

  3. Locate the Library listed in Arctic, then inspect or clean that Library.

Sources

A Source can be any volume connected to your Mac, such as:

  • Direct-attached storage

  • Network-attached storage with a shared folder mounted over SMB, AFP, or NFS

  • FUSE-based volumes, such as a LucidLink Filespace

  • A subfolder from any of these eligible volumes

Your user must be able to read and write to a Source.

Click the ➕ in the lower-left corner to add a Source.

To remove a Source, Control-Click a volume in the list, then choose Remove from List.

You can temporarily remove the scan results from a Source by unchecking it in the list.

Inspecting

Arctic shows you how much storage these items use inside a Library .fcpbundle:

  • Original Media Files

  • Optimized Media Files

  • Proxy Media Files

  • Optical Flow Files & Stabilization Files ("Data")

  • Render Files

Click a Library in Arctic’s scan results to see a per-category breakout of what’s inside each Library and how much storage each category of items consumes.

Arctic also displays a color-coded bar graph for each category, which you can contextualize by clicking:

  1. Fixed - displays that bar at 100%, regardless of the storage space consumed

  2. Proportional - resizes a bar in proportion to the percentage of the storage used in that Library

Finally, you can inspect the contents of individual Events by clicking the disclosure arrow next to that Event.

Cleaning

Arctic allows you to safely clean any temporary, reproducible data stored in your Library, such as:

  • Optimized Media Files

  • Proxy Media Files

  • Optical Flow Files & Stabilization Files ("Data")

  • Render Files

To clean a Library:

  1. Select the desired Library from Arctic’s scan.

  2. Click the checkbox(es) under the column(s) for the items you wish to remove.

To remove the same category of data across multiple Events in a Library, click the multi-select checkbox under Arctic’s scan results.

  1. Once you complete your selections, click the broom 🧹, read the confirmation dialog, then complete your cleaning or Cancel.

Filtering

You can filter an Arctic scan by two categories: Library and Media Status.

Library

  • Show only libraries that are currently open in FCPX

  • Show only libraries that have alerts

  • Show other libraries items

  • Show cache items

  • Show external media folders

  • Show external media items

Media Status

  • Show online items

  • Show offline items

  • Show missing items

Enable/disable individual filters to include/exclude results from your Sources, or Option-Click an individual filter to display results based on that single filter.

Does a Library seem to be missing from Arctic’s scan? Make sure all filters are enabled by Option-Click-ing either set of filters until all are enabled (purple, not gray).

Searching

You can 🔍 Search Arctic’s results, then refine those results by:

  • Search library names

  • Search event names

  • Search project names

  • Search media filesnames and also their custom names, notes and keywords created in FCP

  • Search Finder comments for libraries and events and also the project notes created in FCP

  • Search exported projects

You can also enable/disable individual search parameters to include/exclude results.

Does a Library, or something in your Library, seem to be missing from Arctic’s results? Make sure the 🔍 Search field is clear and all search parameters are enabled (yellow, not gray).

Reporting

Arctic can generate reports for the media used in your Libraries. These media lists are exported as Comma Separated Values (CSV) files you can store along with the associated Library and media for archival purposes.

  1. Select the desired Library from Arctic’s scan.

  2. Control-Click that Library and choose Export Media List to CSV….

  3. Choose where to save your media list (the CSV), then Export To CSV.

Creating Library Templates

Do you have a Library with a frequently used set of Events, Keywords, media, etc.? Select that Library in the list, Control-Click it, and choose Create Template from Library….

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