Remove media

Removing media takes a file off the project’s list. It never touches the file on your disk, and one undo brings it back.

Where: Right-click a row on the Media tab ▸ Remove
Agent tools: remove_media

Remove a file

Right-click the file’s row on the Media tab and choose Remove.

If no clip uses the file, it goes at once, with no question, as one undo step called Remove Media.

To see what you can remove without losing a clip, tick Unused only first.

Remove a file clips use

If clips use the file, Frame Job asks first, because a clip can’t stay in a project without its file. The alert reads “Remove “name”? It is used by 3 clips, which will be removed with it.”

Remove and Delete Clips removes the file and those clips as one undo step.
Cancel changes nothing.

The count covers the whole project, including clips inside nests, even while a nest is open. The clips go from wherever they are:

Clips on the timeline leave their time empty. The clips around them don’t move.
Clips inside a nest go from the nest. The nest itself stays, with everything else in it.

If you’d rather keep the clips and use another file, relink instead.

What stays on disk

Remove never deletes a file:

Your original stays where it is.
A copy in the project’s package, from Consolidate Media, stays in the package’s media folder.
A movie copy Frame Job made of a WebM or MKV stays in its Rewrapped folder.

Good to know

Removing a LUT works differently: its clips stay and lose their look, and the alert’s button names what it clears, such as Remove and Clear Looks. See Remove a LUT in use.
If a clip’s Hide While Silent follows the file you remove, Hide While Silent turns off on that clip. The clip stays.
You can remove a file with a nest open. It still comes out of the whole project.

With an agent

remove_media doesn’t ask. It won’t remove a file that clips still use unless the call passes with_clips: true, which takes those clips too. Without it, the call stops and names the clips in the way. For a LUT, with_clips clears the looks and Camera Logs that name it and keeps the clips. See Tools: media.