Hard Drive Memory Full???? All video projects are deleted?

[caddiguy]

I have been experimenting with converting all my digital 8 camera footage to DVD. I am starting to figure it out. I have a problem with all of my hard drive space getting eaten up. I started with a 80gig drive and after burning 5 hours of footage I now have only 15gig left. I have deleted all the files I can find but I am missing something. Does Suite7 SE keep any files under a different root?

Any help or direction is greatly appreciated and would keep me from pulling the rest of my hair out...

[tyamada]

In Video Studio under Flie select Preferences Working Folder is where VS places your files.

[Ken Berry]

If you are capturing via Firewire in DV format, you will always need to bear in mind that DV creates large files -- around 13 GB per hour of video. So with only a 80 GB, I am not sure you have the luxury of downloading more than 5 hours of DVD video. For one thing, once you start editing it, your working folder will require quite a lot of free space to create temp files -- usually at least as much space as the file you are editing... It could thus be better as a work flow simply to download one cassette at a time, do your editing, produce your DVD-compliant file, then erase all your captures and move on to the next 8mm cassette...

[caddiguy]

Thanks, for the information. I realized I needed to work with one tape at a time after seeing how much space I needed, but after deleting what I thought were my previous file videos I still show that all of my hard drive is used up.

My question now is, if the files were still somewhere in the Ulead software as tyamada says in my work folder, should it not still show up as being a file of a major amount of memory? I have searched my whole "c" drive for huge files and have had no luck finding where they may be.

I will look for and try tyamada's suggestion tonight when I get home from work.

Any other possible causes or corrections are appreciated.

[Ken Berry]

Have you got Windows Explorer (or My Computer) set to show hidden files and folders? If not, you might need to, then do a new search. Also check your C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\Local Settings\Temp. That often accumulates files that don't always get erased when you re-boot your computer. I regularly clean it out manually.

[tyamada]

You might also want to look in the C:\windows\temp subdirectory, this is where windows stores some temporary files.

Also in Windows Explorer right click on C: and select properties, on the next page about 3/4 down the page is a block labled disk cleanup, let windows calcluate and choose what you want to remove. This action should give you some extra space.

[2Dogs]

If you have an HP, it might have the insidious "image vault" which can store copies of every "mulimedia" file you have. (it did on my own pc till I found it!) Use Explorer to check the "properties" of various folders and sub-folders, and you may see some large sizes that will point you to the culprit.

It's easier to track drive usage if you use a separate data partition on your hard drive/s, and it's a good idea for many other reasons too. 80Gb is not very big these days, and hard drives run to less than $0:50 per Gb in the US, so consider getting another drive.

You also need to make sure that your "recycle bin" (stupid name) is empty - by default it may be storing your deleted files. Make sure you also do a defrag if you've just deleted a whole bunch of stuff. If you want that to happen several times faster than Windows defrag, use a program such as Diskeeper defrag is pretty crap.

[caddiguy]

Ok, I finally found the problem. I have Norton Utilities and found the files in the restorable file location. I missed them before since they don't come up as big files in Norton. Once I deleated all of that stuff I gained back my lost 70 gigs....

Thanks for all your suggestions!