Is "Save with Trimmed Media" Safe?

MH_Stevens wrote on 4/1/2008, 9:34 AM
The only project I ever lost was by trying to safe hard disk space by saving with clipped media and then deleting the original full length clips.

It seems to me that it should be possible to save a project and its trimmed to one disk location and then be able to delete everything else but I'm hesitant top try again. Is this work-flow safe?

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 4/1/2008, 10:38 AM
It should be completely safe. Make sure you specify a new target directory that does not contain any of the current project files. It's best to make a new empty folder from scratch and use that as the destination.

Note that the files will be renamed and often split into multiple pieces when you do this so it may not be obvious that everything is copied properly. Also note that the new .veg file that is created is automatically adjusted to use these new file names. If you try to use the original .veg file after deleting the original media then it won't find the files, even if you point it to the new directory, because of the renaming. Maybe this is why you thought you lost files?
JohnnyRoy wrote on 4/1/2008, 11:37 AM
Also important to note is if you use any nested veg files (i.e., nested projects) they are NOT copied!!! The veg file is copied but it's media is not so don't go deleting the original media for nested vegs.

Ultimate S3 has a function to work around this by also saving any nested veg files. It takes every nested veg file and saves it's media with trim and then saves the main project. You would have to do this manually otherwise.

Just something to be aware of since you are deleting the original source.

~jr
Jim H wrote on 4/1/2008, 1:42 PM
"Also important to note is if you use any nested veg files "

I made that mistake only once and wouldn't you know it, that's the one time I was asked to re-edit a scene after the project went final.
johnmeyer wrote on 4/1/2008, 1:45 PM
The copy with trimmed media feature is wonderful, but it does have lots of hidden "gotchas." I certainly wouldn't delete the original files if you have any need to do more editing in the next few months.

First, the trimming only works for a few types of media. Actually, I don't know if it works for anything other than DV. I just tried it with video from my still camera which is MJPEG, and it didn't trim the media. So, no space savings.

Also, at least in older versions of Vegas, the trimming process would end up creating a separate file for the audio, even if the audio was embedded in the video file in the original, un-trimmed version. I just tried a few tests, and it looks like later (my version is 7.0d) versions of Vegas don't do this anymore.

Finally, any audio files you have will be converted to WAV. So, if you use MP3 or other compressed audio formats, they will be expanded to uncompressed. This, to some extent, cancels out the space savings from the trimming.