Can I save space by deleting transcoded media for older projects?

Hey.

My 750gb media disk is starting to fill up and i'd like to try and get some space back.

I see there is a way to delete render files for projects and events within FCPX, these will be recreated as needed later on.

There doesn't however seem to be a similar way of handling the transcoded media.

I always create optimised media when i'm working on files, and as you know they're rather large.

I may try a quick test on some test files but it'd be really nice if i could just delete the transcoded media folder for an event. Still load any projects and edits which will then resort back to the original h264 media. Then if i did want to resurrect this project i could go ahead and transcode the media again to be right back where i started..

As the files are so large the gains should be massive.

I just want to know, is anyone doing this, or has done this. Does FCPX behave as you'd hope with all of it?

Cheers

Jim

If you won't need those files in the future, you can manually delete them. I don't believe your project would successfully re-link if you do, since those files would be gone, so you would have to re-create your edits. Someone may correct me on this if I am wrong.

You might check to see if you are also retaining your original media, in addition to the optimized media. If so, you don't need both. If optimizing, select not to copy events.

Hey.

Thanks for the reply, 2 months ago.

You're warning made me not think that it was possible and i just left it as it was as i still had some space left on my scratch disk.

Fast forward 2 months and a few weddings and holiday in Paris and this is no longer the case so I thought i'd conduct a quick experiment on a dummy event i imported that i didn't care about.

Basically it worked fine, and my 750gb drive that was starting to choke with a few gb free now has 420gb free again after I've deleted all my transcoded high quality media.

Here are the steps i undertook

• imported a few clips, transcoded as i do with high quality option rather than proxy
• when imported and transcoded I made a dummy project and threw a few edits in
• I closed FCPX and inspected the sizes of the files I had, the event was 2.5gb, 2gb of which was the transcoded media
• I deleted the transcoded media to the trash
• I started up FCPX, it booted fine
• i scrubbed over the event in the library, everything was fine
• I opened the dummy project and scrubbed and played it back, again fine
• I exported the project to a final file, again worked fine
• Then just right clicking on the event in the event library you'll find a transcode media option
• Selecting this and doing high quality again, and a few mins later i was back to where i started with 2.5gb of event data
• if you look you can also analyse and fix on the right click menu.. basically everything you can do on initial import you can do (and redo) at a later date

So basically it's all fine, it all works as you'd hope it would and it makes a real difference!!! Much more of a difference than deleting render files which FCPX has options for in the program.

This seems so robust now that they should really add a remove transcoded files for project option.

Anyways i'm happy. I can put off buying a new hdd for just a little bit longer

Cheers!

Yes, sounds correct. I had a similar question I posted on Larry Jordan's website:

www.larryjordan.biz/media-in-fcp-x/

Part way down you will see his answer that you can delete those files as long as you keep the original media and you don't have proxy selected in the preferences.

"James:
Use FCP X to delete render files (under the File menu) for your project. You can delete Optimized and Proxy files from the Events folder — HOWEVER, be sure you have safely kept your camera source files or you’ll have problems.
Larry"

JT