Permanently delete unused sections from hard drive?

[James Binder]

How do I permanently delete the unwanted/unused portions of an hour long file (capture) from which I have pulled the good takes?

Within any given project I have several takes of scenes, but only use the good one(s).

The remaining material is just hogging up space on the hard drive. How do I get rid of it off of my hard drive?

Is there a ‘condense’ function within Vegas that allows one to ‘pack up’ the used portions and delete the rest?

Thanks

[Richard Alvarez]

Is there a 'consolidate' command? Sorry, don't work in Vegas, work in Avid. But that's the procedure for doing just that. So maybe look for 'consolidation' as a search term?

[Edward Troxel]

Render the pieces you want to keep to a new file(s) and then delete the big file.

If you have them all on the timeline, you can simply do a file - save as and check the option to trim and save media with the project. Make sure you pick an new empty folder when doing this as all the smaller segments will be copied into this folder. Then you can delete the original media.

[Dave Blackhurst]

James -

There's a "delete unused media from project" or something similar - IIRC you can just delete the thumbs or the actual files. I'm doing this off the top of my head, but it's in there.

[James Binder]

Thanks Edward and others – that’s exactly what I was looking for. I guess I never paid attention to the check box in the ‘save as’ command box.

However, I have a question – since I am using Cineform intermediate files (created with HD Link, Neo), I wonder if I am losing any quality when Vegas makes copies of the segments?

How exactly is Vegas saving these files?

Thanks --

[Edward Troxel]

When possible, Vegas simply COPIES those sections. When not possible, Vegas copies the entire file. So... no loss at all.