FCP app grew to 119 GB....

Question

I was working with FCP 7.0.3 this afternoon on my MBP 15" 2.2 i7 running 10.6.7. When I didn't do anything for a number of minutes FCP would go into a file writing exercise. I thought it was rendering even though all the files appeared to be proper and not needing to be rendered), and after stopping it one time and then going to the Render All command, nothing happened. But a while later it would start again and write for half an hour.
All the video files were converted from AVCHD to Pro Res in FCP.
After doing this for awhile, I got a message that my drive was nearly full. I started the afternoon with 120 GB free on my internal drive and almost 400 GB on the external drive which contained the files for the project. I cancelled the dialog that offered to free up some memory, and then saw I only had 2 GB left on my internal drive.
I threw out a bunch of podcasts and videos in iTunes to clear out some working space, started up WhatSize app and it showed my FCP app was 119.51 GB, and it had 118 GB of rendered files which had the name of the project I was working on at the time. Here is the path to one of the files, which is the largest at almost 40 GB by itself:
"/Applications/Final Cut Pro.app/Contents/MacOS/Render Files/project/project-FIN-00000067"
I ran a safe boot and repaired permissions, opened a different project in FCP and changed all my settings regarding where FCP would save files, etc. I was hoping it would clear out those somehow clear what appears to be some kind of caching of the video files.
Any ideas? Thanks. Joel.

Answer 1

Meg The Dog wrote:
OK, I am confused as to what issue you want resolved.
In your first post it appears that you were surprised that FCP was rendering on its own when you were idle. That is what checking Auto Render "On" does.
I've had it auto render before, but this afternoon the renders are going to the FCP application file. I've never seen that before, and it ran my internal drive out of space. Never seen that, don't like it!
Is the issue that the renders are going to an incorrect location? Changing the specification of where the render file will be located only affects future renders, renders done after making the selection, it does not relocate renders you have done - or FCP has done via Auto Render - in the past.
I am a little confused about how it got changed, although I did move this project's folder (including all renders, captures, scratches, and caches) from another drive. I did go through and confirm they were all pointed to the new external drive.
In FCP you can go to the menu Tools > Render Manager to selectively delete renders.
OK, now we're talking, Render Manager appears to show the 118.3 GB of renders that are filling my internal drive.
So I can just delete these in the Render Manager, and they'll get re-rendered at the appropriate place on the external drive as I need them?
Thanks. Joel.