- Clear Off Your Desktop
- Clean Up iTunes
- Clear the Cutting Room Floor
- Get Rid of E-Mail and Attachments
- Clear Out Unnecessary Language Files
- If All Else Fails, Nuke It
Clear the Cutting Room Floor
If you have a video camera, you likely have a lot of movie clips sitting on your hard disk waiting for you to do something with them. Or maybe you’ve used iMovie or some other editing tool to create movie projects and movies to share with others.
Do you really need all that stuff on your hard disk? As with the photos, back up the clips or movies you want to keep to CD or DVD. Then delete the ones you don’t need. You can always pull them off your backup discs if you feel a burning desire to watch your nephew’s ballet performance.
If you use movie editing software, such as iMovie or Final Cut Pro, open the application to see what projects it lists. Some of these applications have internal mechanisms for deleting files. For example, iMovie can move events, unused clips, and rejected clips to the Trash from within the program. This might be a good way to clear out junk without messing up projects you might want to work with again in the future. Consult the documentation to see how it handles the removal of clips and other content.
If you use an HD video camera, you may want to check out Roxio’s Toast Titanium ($100 retail ). It offers “one-click” backup of AVCHD video to disc, so you can put these files on a DVD until you’re ready to use them.
Oh, and one more thing. We all know how fun it is to collect movies e-mailed to us by other people. But do you need them all on your hard disk? Archive your niece’s piano recital and your brother’s trip to Disneyland to a CD or DVD and remove them from your hard disk.