Just as IC8 was released my life turned upside-down and is just now starting to stabilize, so I'm just now starting in with IC8, and I've already run into a crazy issue.  I had been working on a project in IC7, a 43 second video whose iProject file is under 500 MB.  I loaded it into IC8, made no changes at all, and saved it again, the exact same project now in IC8 format.  This iProject file is over 5 GB!  Why is the IC8 project file about 12 times larger than the same project in IC7?  This will make backups a nightmare.  Does this happen to everybody, or is it perhaps just something unusual about my project?

That's one reason I'm still using IC7.
One of the other reasons is that a converted motion in CC4 is to big compared with 3DXchange. I got a 200 MB file for an exported motion that in 3DXchange is less than 20MB(!)

I'm also working with an older project and in my case the iClone 8 files are about 1.5 times those in iClone 7.

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Well, it just got even more insane.  I decided to try a different, slightly smaller project.  Its IC7 iProject file is 400 MB.  I loaded it into IC8, which took about ten minutes.  BTW, scrubbing the timeline is perfectly smooth in IC7, and crazy jerky in IC8.  I have a late-model i9 processor and RTX 3090, but IC8 brings it to its knees.  Anyhow, I saved that project, unchanged.  It took FIFTEEN MINUTES to save it, and the resulting iProject file is 33 GB!  That does it.  IC8 is simply unusable for me.  Unless and until they make it faster and smaller, I'm back to IC7.  I'm glad I saved it.

This doesn't sound like normal behavior. 

Could you try loading one of the sample projects that comes with IC8 and save it as a custom project? The file sizes should be about the same. If they are not something is not right.

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I will take the contrarian side on this one. I bought a 4 gig external hard drive last year for $104, so if you don't have hard drive space, it's a good investment. 

My poker room is 1.03 gig in IClone 8 with 7 tables and 6 characters. IClone 7 won't open with 5 tables and six players most of the time.

My biggest complaint though, is one of my projects had a long motion and IClone 8 tried to convert 13,000 motions and I had to kill the process with Task Manager or it would have taken hours.



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A Free Online Text Based Image Editor

The motion conversion is indeed something else...:unsure:

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I just loaded the Volumetric Light project that came with IC8.  Their iProject is about 18 MB.  When I saved it, unchanged, the saved file was over 60 MB.  I then exited IC8, restarted it, and loaded and then saved the file I had just saved.  It was the same size (a little over 60 MB).  So the blowup happens on the first save, apparently not on subsequent saves.

Using an external drive for backup is not an option at this scale.  I save incremental versions of my project, so if I seriously mess up I can easily go back to an earlier version.  Using 30-40 GB for each version, not to mention other projects I may be working on at the same time, would require an insane amount of storage space.  Plus, I don't want to wait 15 minutes every time I save a file; I save often when I work.

Apparently there's something about these two projects of mine that lets them save efficiently in IC7 but require insane size in IC8.  Maybe tech support will notice this thread.  If not, I may file it with support.  I can't see any logical reason that a project that produces a video well under one minute should require 33 GB of space for its iProject.

It would be a pity (and a waste of money) if you were not able to use iClone 8. Support seems to be your best bet at this point.

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I posted on this when IC8 was launched, here is the post and what I found out:
https://forum.reallusion.com/514808/IC8-Bloating-File-size-on-multi-character-projects



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