I have a couple old final cut pro projects that I'm done with and are already archived somewhere else. How can I get the original video and audio files (the actual captured footage) off of my computer? I'm trying to free up space on my hard drive. Thanks a lot.

TGhe easiest method isto drag the files to the trash. They will be found where you have designated the capture scratch folder. Be sure to trash all files connected to the projects like render files etc. as these can be mammoth in size too.I like to use the media manager in FCP to delete my render files to be sure Im not deleting other render files.

The location of the files can vary somewhat depending on how you configured things and also what version of FCP you're using. If you didn't do anything special and just let FCP choose its default then everything will be in your home directory on your computer's startup drive. Look inside your Documents folder for the Final Cut Pro Documents folder. Inside that you'll see several subfolders. Inside each of these you will find folders for each project you've worked on. The really big files are going to be inside the Capture Scratch and Render Files subfolders.

If you chose an external drive or an additional internal drive as your scratch disk then look in the root (top level) directory of that drive. You should find either a Final Cut Pro Documents folder, or possibly just individual folders for Capture Scratch, Render Files, Audio Render Files, etc. Once again, there will be subfolders for each project inside these.

I'm sure the media manager is a good way to do this as Matt suggests. I've never taken the time to learn how to use it however, and am always scared I'll mess something up ;-) I really should RTFM...

The Render Manager (found under the tools menu in FCP) is a pretty straightforward way to clean up unwanted render files. When you open it you'll see folders and subfolders for the current project, and then another folder with subfolders for all the render files on the scratch disk for other projects. You click on the delete column to mark folders and files you want to remove. This is relatively safe since they can always be rendered again, although it could take a long time depending on what you delete.

We discussed this very thing at last night's FCPUG meeting. Managing files from both inside using Media Manager and outside using Finder. If you aren't sure of what you're doing, the consensus is that you should let Media Manager handle the cleanup because it knows where all the related files for a given project are.

You can go into Finder as Boyd suggested, but if you delete the wrong file, it might affect other projects because FCP doesn't store by project, it stores by type and then project. So, you would have to go through each of the type folders(ie capture scratch), then locate the sub folder for project to remove the files. OTOH, Media Manager will do all of that for you and it's not too hard to use.

Boyd, I bet you could figure out Media Manager without any RTFM.

regards,

-gb-

Thanks for all your help guys. I tried to do the Media Manager, but I don't really know how to work it (maybe I should RTFM too). I just went through the capture scratch folders and deleted the files. It worked, so I'm happy.

I am one of those who are afraid to use the Media Manager and haven't bothered to RTFM.

But I have found a useful article on Ken Stone's site

http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/media_manager_fcp_4_balis.html

When I get the cahones to use it, I'm going to follow the instructions there.

Well it makes me feel better not to be alone in this ;-) I guess my fear springs from earlier versions of FCP where there were some bugs and "gotcha's". As I recall, moving a project was tricky and didn't always retain all of your files. Yeah, I should learn to get comfortable with it now, would probably make my life easier. But I do know how to manually move files with the Finder and have never had a problem that way.