trouble removing fcpx 10.2.1 files from mac

What is deleted and how depends a lot on your workflow.

If you delete a clip from your browser, and it is being used in a project, it will not be deleted (or the project would stop working). This may well be your case.

If your media is external, it is never deleted by FCP X.

You need to let us know more about what you are doing.

For the future, instead of creating and deleting projects inside one library, consider creating several libraries, according to what you are working on, and simply move the libraries out to a backup drive.

The first easy way to recover most of that space is to delete generated files.

Your library is 224 GB, and most of it seems to be render files. Select the library in the browser and click

File->Delete Generated Library Files...

Check all the boxes.

Then look again at the inspector and in the Finder and see how much space you recovered.

FWIW, I'd like to make a quick suggestion: unless you're working on many different projects, consider moving inactive events (and their projects) to new archive libraries and store them on an external archive (backup) drive. How you do this depends on whether you are editing across events, or whether each event/project is independent.

Doing this will accomplish a lot in terms of risk management and in increasing performance. (Performance starts to suffer as libraries get larger with higher numbers of events.)

Russ

File->Delete Generated Library Files is a very useful command. As the name implies, these files are generated by the application (AND they can be REgenerated if necessary) - they include render files, optmized and proxy media. Render files in particular can be successively created when you make changes, and keep growing, even if they are no longer used. Optimized media typically takes a lot more space than original and may or may not help with editing smoothly.

Bottom line:

File->Delete Generated Library Files

is harmless and can get you hundreds of GB of disk space back...

Mantravine wrote:

hi luis,

your suggestions have been really helpful. thank you very much.

one last question...how do i regenerate that which i have deleted?

Render files are created by the software to ease playback (either automatically if you have background rendering on, or on demand when you choose "render all" or "render selection"); usually it is recommended to keep background rendering off, and only render portions if FCP X can't play them smoothly without rendering.

Optimized media can be created by control-clicking on a clip or clips and choosing Transcode Media... again, depending on what you are doing, you may not need this. FCP X can handle AVCHD media recorded by most consumer cameras natively, and optimized media can take a huge amount of space (about 10x the size of AVCHD is typical); so don't do this unless you need it.

Proxy media is a lower quality version, easier to edit it, but still may take more space than typical AVCHD; it is of more use if you do multicam or work with high end stuff, very high resolution like RED cameras and such. Not needed for run of the mill consumer stuff, mostly. It is created the same way as optimized.

Mantravine wrote:

hey russ,

thank you for this suggestion.

in my case each event and project are independent. how do i transfer each event and it's relevant project to a separate hard drive easily?

Which version are you using? Talking of events and projects as separate entities suggests you are still on 10.0.*.

Since 10.1, libraries contain events and events contain clips and projects.

The general consensus seems to be to leave background rendering off.

Is there a way to do this for specific projects/ events or does it just do all at once?

Background rendering is set in the preferences. It is not project specific. I leave off at all times, and only render portions of the timeline when something does not play smoothly without rendering. (control-R renders the selected area of the timeline, control-shift-R renders the whole timeline).