This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Managing your storage
Once you’ve used the Project Manager to create a new copy of your project or you have completed your project and finished with its media, you’ll want to clean up your drives. Video files are big. Even with large storage drives, you’ll quickly need to think about which files you want to keep and which ones you want to discard. You might want to move your project media to slower, larger, more robust long-term archive storage to keep as much fast media storage available as possible for current projects.
Unless you enable the Ingest Copy option, Premiere Pro creates a link to the file wherever it is on your computer. To make it easier to remove unwanted media when you’ve finished a project, consider putting all of your media in a single location before importing. By organizing media files before you import them, you’ll find it easier to remove unwanted content at the end of the creative process—everything will be conveniently located in one place.
Deleting clips from a project, or even deleting the project file, will not delete media files. You’ll also have to account for proxy files if you have used them. It’s possible your proxy files will be stored in a different location from your full-resolution original media.
Removing cache and preview files
The Premiere Pro media cache uses storage space when you import new media files to your projects and they are analyzed. Also, each time you render effects, Premiere Pro creates preview files.
To remove these files and reclaim some space on your hard drive, there are several options.
Choose Premiere Pro > Preferences > Media Cache (macOS) or Edit > Preferences > Media Cache (Windows), and click Delete in the Media Cache Files section. This will remove cache files that are no longer referenced by a project.
Note that even cache files relating to old projects that you haven’t opened recently will not be deleted as they are still in use.
Media cache files for open projects will not be deleted. If you want to remove all media cache files, including those that are in use, restart Premiere Pro and select Delete All Media Cache Files From The System before opening a project.
You can delete render files associated with your current sequence by choosing Sequence > Delete Render Files.
Locate your Preview Files folder by checking under File > Project Settings > Scratch Disks. Then, manually delete the folder and its contents using Finder (macOS) or Windows Explorer (Windows).
Consider carefully when choosing the location of the media cache and your project preview files. The total size of these files can be significant, and the speed of the drive will impact playback performance in Premiere Pro.