Please answer an easy question!

[Phil]

So...after I've edited a scene, I save it. But I don't want to render yet, because I want to start editing the next scene.

Let's say after I do that a couple times, I now have in my media pool, A LOT of uploaded clips. If I delete them out of the media pool, the edited "event" is torn apart, because the clip was still part of the media pool.

How can I delete the uploaded clips (so I don't over work my computer) without hurting the scenes I'm working on now?

Thanks
Phil

[Jive]

You'll need to render your finished edit to a new video file.

Another solution would be to get a larger HD so that you don't have to worry about running out of space.

[GenJerDan]

Um...have I been misunderstanding the Vegas docs? I thought the media pool was just "shortcuts" to the actual media, not physical copies of them. So they weren't really taking up any extra space on the drive.

Dan

[J.R. Hudson]

Thats what I thought too. Anyone?

[Phil]

if I take them out of the media pool they disappear from my edited scene...If I render, how do I bring up that render in the timeline, so I can edit something else? Import right? How do I keep it at it's highest quality?

Jive (anyone), How big of a HD would you recommend, I'm buying a 250. That's for a 10 minute, and a 90 minute feature. Is that good?

[Jive]

Media items in the Media Pool are basically only referrences to actual media residing on the storage medium.

The default method of deleting them from the media pool (i.e. selecting them and pressing 'delete' on the keyboard) does NOT remove them from the storage medium, but rather removes the reference to the selected media from the media pool AND the timeline. The file will still be taking up space on the storage medium.

You can, however delete the actual media from the storage medium by right-clicking an item in the media pool and choosing 'Remove from Project and Delete Files'.

The only way to delete the actual media file from the storage medium without deleting the reference from the media pool and the timeline is to use Windows Explorer, select the actual file, and delete it. By doing this, Vegas will see the media as 'offline' but keep references to the media item in the media pool and the timeline (so that you could recapture the offline media if you wanted to without loosing your sequencing).

This has been one of Vegas' biggest weak points for me since day one. Media Management is very lacking at this point. By leaving the application to management media, you become far more vulnerable to tossing the wrong media file (among the numerous downsides to poor media management). I have spoken with Sony's engineers about this and they agree (but of course they have their priorities). Nevertheless, I have learned to live with it and hope that they improve Vegas' media management at some time in the future.

My advice would be to never remove anything from the media bin unless you're sure you'll never use it (in which case it should be deleted from the drive). As the media bin merely contains references to the actual files, they take up virtually no space.

If you need to clear space on the drive, then the best (pretty much the only) way to do this would be to delete the files directly from Windows Explorer so that the media items would remain present in the media pool and timeline (but be marked as 'offline'). Note: this is not a recommended course of action as offline media will need to recaptured anyway to be used.

When choosing a media drive, keep in mind that 1 hour of DV25 footage takes up ~12GB of space. How much space you will need will depend on the amount of raw footage you have as well as how much rendering you'll have to do (3D, compositing, etc.), as each new rendered sequence is a unique video file and will take up as much space as any other DV25 clip (that is, if you render to DV. Uncompressed rendering will yield better quality over multiple generations, but will take up far more storage space).

Taking this into account, a formatted 250GB drive could concieveably hold ~20 hours of DV25 footage (give or take).

Coming from the days of linear editing, I used to advocate logging a reel and only capturing what you needed. I liked to advocate this even when editing on a NLE because it meant that you had to have a plan for your edit (keep in mind I used to teach production to High-School and College students).

However, with the incredibly low prices of HDs these days, I can no longer honestly advocate that workflow, as I myself enjoy the freedom of simply capturing an entire reel and using its contents in its entirety to do my edit. Almost as a rule, I will not delete a single file until I have output the edit to a master tape and backed-up the project file in such a way that I know that I could recapture the raw footage and easily get back up and running with the project if it ever needed to be re-edited.

[Phil]

Understood. Thank you for your knowledge.

[David Jimerson]

I totally agree, Jive -- HD prices are INSANELY low. There's little reason to log and batch capture anymore. Good for us!