Final Cut Express Project space problem

Question

I have just finished my first real project in Final Cut Express HD. It has created a Capture Scratch folder of 54 GB. Included in this 54GB is the footage that I used to complete the project which are captured as QuickTime movies. Also included are the render files.
The FCE project itself is saved in my Movie folder and that is 17GB. I created a Quicktime Movie and that is an additional 17GB (the same as the project)
In addition to the above I had to import the Quicktime Movie into IDVD and that IDVD file is 13GB.
All of this is taking up a lot of space on my Power MAC G5. I only have 11 GB available.
I have an external LaCie drive that has 91 GB available. The question is What can I transfer to the LaCie drive and still keep the project intact. I do not want to have to start this project all over again.
Please help!

Answer 1

Hi Kennbu,
The minimum you need to keep includes 1) your FCE Project File (which is in your Final Cut Express Documents folder, not your Movies folder), 2) the clips in Capture Scratch that you captured from your camera, and 3) any other media files (photos, sound, etc) that you imported into your FCE project. You do not need to keep any of the render files or output files unless you have other reasons to keep them.
Your FCE Project File cannot be 17GB; I suspect you are calling your exported movie your project file. The FCE Project File only contains the instructions for the things you did when you edited your project in FCE and it should be a relatively small file, usually under 1MB. It does not contain any actual video; that's what your original footage clips and/or render files in Capture Scratch contain.
When you export your project, FCE reads the instructions in the Project File, applies the instructions to your video & audio files and then creates an output file. I suspect you did this twice and that is why you have two 17GB QT files in your Movies folder.
In the future, one way to save space on your HD is export your FCE movie as a reference movie not as a self-contained movie. When you export, if you leave the "Make movie self contained" option checked, FCE copies all your video into the exported file; it takes a lot of time and uses disk space at the rate of ~13GB per hour of video. If you uncheck this option FCE makes what is called a reference movie that is very small and very fast; it usually only takes seconds to export a reference movie. You can import reverence movies into iDVD just the same as a self-contained movie as long as you are on the same machine that has your captured clips & other media files.