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Activity Forums Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy Question About Scratch Disk

  • Question About Scratch Disk

    Posted by Dave Miller on November 7, 2011 at 10:10 pm

    My hard drive is getting full from all the final cut projects I do. My question is if i delete the contents of the scratch disk will that screw up my projects or will i just need to render them back out if I open them up at a later date?

    I also have backed up the original videos and but it with the projects if that helps.

    Chris Tompkins replied 14 years, 6 months ago 6 Members · 8 Replies
  • 8 Replies
  • Steve Eisen

    November 7, 2011 at 11:18 pm

    You should keep your FCP Projects on your System drive and the Autosave Vault to a scratch drive.

    You can delete the media off your drives if you have it backed up somewhere.

    That being said, before hard drives start to skyrocket in price because of the floods in Thailand, get yourself a 1, 2 or 3 tb drive to replace you current scratch disk (no need to delete the files on that drive).

    Steve Eisen
    Eisen Video Productions
    Vice President
    Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

  • Dave Miller

    November 7, 2011 at 11:31 pm

    I currently don’t have money to buy a hard drive to use as a scratch disk. I have been using my system drive as the scratch disk as well as where I keep my Projects. My concern was if I delete the scratch disk then do my projects get into problems or can I just rerender out the projects Im currently working on?

  • Phillip Van west

    November 7, 2011 at 11:48 pm

    By “scratch disk”, I assume you mean your Scratch Folder, since you say you only have one drive. Once you delete your Scratch Folder files, they’re gone and to keep editing, you’ll have to reload the clips (from tape or P2 or whatever). There won’t be anything left to “render out”. Follow me?

    But you NEVER want to use your system drive as your scratch disk. Hard drives are SO cheap, if you’re going to edit seriously, you need to buy one. Firewire or faster. Now. Really.

    pvw

    Phil Van West
    Terra Nova Productions
    Denver, CO
    Video Production/Post-Production

    Mac Pro 8-core 2.66GHz / 16GB RAM / OS 10.6.7 / FCP 7.0.2 / QT 7.6

  • Jeff Meyer

    November 8, 2011 at 12:01 am

    The Final Cut project says hey, go find this file and play it from 4 to 8 seconds here, then grab this file and play from 17-24 seconds here. Deleting the files Final Cut Pro references (Capture Scratch) means your project is missing the pieces it needs to come together.

    The Render Files can be recreated if the Capture Scratch is present, so feel free to delete those guys.

    For project archiving look into using Final Cut’s Media Manager which you can use to narrow your capture scratch down to only the frames that are necessary.

  • Dave Miller

    November 8, 2011 at 12:04 am

    So If I have the Video in the project folder and I import them into the project when I delete the capture scratch folder then I would have to re add the video again?

  • Dave Miller

    November 8, 2011 at 12:05 am

    Thank You I will Try that

  • Eric Johnson

    November 8, 2011 at 12:20 am

    The best way to deal with deleting Render Files in my experience is to use the eRender Manager in FCP.

    It will be especially usefull in this instance so you don’t erase anything of value.

    It is under Tools. It will give you a list of projects and tell you how much space is being used by render files. Very handy.

  • Chris Tompkins

    November 8, 2011 at 12:24 am

    He’s not talking render files.
    He’s talking deleting the mov’s in the capture scratch.

    The answer is NO, they will be gone, when you launch the project all your movie files will be off-line media.

    Chris Tompkins
    Video Atlanta LLC

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