Hi all!

I use LRTimeLapse on macOS Monterey 12.7 and I have a bunch of SSD drives. Within LRTimeLapse preferences there is a setting for changing the temporary files it creates. What would be the best location for this folder in order to maximise performance?

Right now I have my sequences on a SSD drive (correct me if I'm wrong: this drive is used only for reading the raw files), then LightRoom exports to a different SSD drive, and the final video gets rendered to another SSD drive.

So, long story short: best location for LRTimeLapse's temporary files? I don't like using the system drive for these... would be better using yet another for this usage? Any special storage requirements (aka do these temporary files take up a lot of space)?

Thanks in advance and cheers from Spain!

This post was last modified: 2023-10-01, 13:15 by Gunther.

Set it to the fastest drive you have. Yes, they might take up some space, but only temporarily until for example the renders are moved to the final place.

Thanks Gunther, makes perfect sense.

My fastest drive is the system drive (1Tb WD Black SSD NVMe). I'm somewhat reluctant to use the system drive for such tasks, given the fact that SSDs tend to lose performance and lifespan with write/delete operations, so now I'm wondering... the system drive is usually half empty/half full (around 550Gb taken). If my sequences usually take around 300Gb (raw files stored on a different drive), how much space would take the temporary files? Any rule of thumb to calculate?

Sincerely I would prefer putting temp files on a slower drive than stressing the system drive for such operation.

Thanks again!

I wouldn't worry about that. The OS and all applications by default use the system drive for temporary files. It's just that most of them don't offer the option to change that, but it's fine.
The reason that LRTimelapse gives that option is for users that are short on space because the rendered video files will be generated there in the first place before being moved to the final destination.
The demand in space will therefore depend on the codec and settings you use for video rendering. Of course, if you render uncompressed prores in original size, this will take a huge amount of space, but usually you wouldn't do that, so personally, I wouldn't bother changing anything here. The read/write cycles that LRT does to the SSD are usually negligible in comparison to what the OS and other applications like video editors, Lightroom etc. do with all the caching etc.