[Matt Westport]

I understand.
forgive my inexperience here, but one of my goals is to reduce the amount of space these files are taking on my drive (and how much junk is currently sitting in the same files alongside the shots I need). Would there be any merit in re-importing the large file into something like iMovie, rough cutting the waste footage out, saving individual shots/locations in separate files, then importing only the clips I want back into FCP. My thought is that I could then have smaller source files permanently on my drive, thereby saving space in the long run.
Your thoughts?