David Esp Video Technical Blog

From [http://support.apple.com/kb/TA27694?viewlocale=en_US] and own experiences, my own advice to myself is as follows.  Note however:

• It is not guaranteed to be correct or complete!  Just my own best-practice, so far.
• It will only delete from scratch areas it actually knows about i.e. as defined in FCP’s System Settings.
•  Even then, it doesn’t seem to delete everything.  After allegedly deleting all render files of all projects, I went through afterwards and found (and deleted) a number of files under [Render Files/Constant Frames].  Maybe a result of my messy initial novice practices – who knows!

My process:

• Open the project in Final Cut Pro
• Delete Project’s Render-Files:
  • Tools > Render Manager.
  • Use checkbox in the Remove column next to the name of the project whose render-files you wish to remove.
    • Warning: Do not check other projects or those projects’ render files will also be removed.
  • Click OK.
• Delete Media Files in the Browser:
  • Activate the Browser window.
  • Select everything you want to delete (e.g. Select All).
    • Warning: Don’t select any clips, images, audio or anything else that is used in another project, or is used by another application (a photo that you are also using in a DVD project, for example), , as you will not want them to be deleted.
  • Modify > Make Offline.
  • Click the Move Them to the Trash button.
  • Click OK.
  • Close your Final Cut Pro project (and don’t bother saving!)
• Delete the Project File
  • Drag it to the Trash after you have quit Final Cut Pro.
    • But how do I know where it is located, e.g. if it was the latest project, auto-loaded into FCP, I might not remember where it is.
      • Save Project As reveals the project file name e.g. [LenWed RecepLine Expt 001 copy.fcp].  Expanding the Save..As Finder reveals it is in a directory called [FCP Projects].  But not obvious where that folder is located.
  • There may also be project files in the AutoSave Vault(s).
    • In my case, this vault is on the System drive, because I save my main project files to real-world-project -specific folders on a separate Media drive (a local RAID).
• Check any scratch areas etc. on other disks, e.g. System disk, in case anything got (accidentally) written there, e.g. if system was accidentally powered-up when RAID was not running.
• Empty the Trash

This entry was posted on Monday, May 17th, 2010 at 13:13 and is filed under Final Cut, tidy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.