What happens when I delete rendered video

[Yismyname]

When I delete rendered video from my laptop to make more room memory wise, I lose the edited video.  What do I need to do?  Should I copy and paste the unrendered video in the same project so I have it as I need to make room for new video projects on my MAC (FYI I save the rendered video on an external hard drive.)

Thanks for any advice.

Yvonne

[Peru Bob]

Let's get the terminology straight so that we can fully understand the issue:

Render in Premiere Pro means to create preview files by pressing Enter on the timeline or by Sequence > Render Work Area from the menu.

Exporting is the process of creating a stand alone file for external viewing or for reimporting into Premiere Pro.

Please explain more clearly exactly what you are trying to do.

[Yismyname]

Yes...so after I do that and save to my ext. hard drive, at some point I delete on my laptop the rendered files and what happens is the edited footage disappears in Premiere Pro on the timeline in the project.  Does that make sense?

[Peru Bob]

If you delete the media used in the timeline from its location on the hard drive, that will happen.

Premiere Pro only acts as a database or shortcut pointing to those files and doesen't actually store them in the project file.

Rendering creates a separate file that makes the timeline preview better.

[Yismyname]

so would it be a good idea to make a copy so it won't delete my edits when I delete the rendered files to make more space on my laptop?

Thx for all your help btw.

Yvonne

[Peru Bob]

When you say "rendered files" do you mean the actual media files or the preview files?

[Warren Heaton]

Rather than make a copy of your renders, go into the Project Settings and set the Scratch Disk for Video Renders to a folder on your external drive.  Assuiming that the external drive is fast enough to play the renders, you should be good to conitnue editing.

For your next project, consider creating a folder on the external drive for the project, save the Premiere Pro project to taht location and set the Scratch Disk to "Same as Project".

[Yismyname]

NOICE THANK YOU SO MUCH !

[R Neil Haugen]

"Renders" ... are simply preview files. Deleting renders doesn't have any effect on a timeline other than perhaps slowing playback.

"Render and replace" is an entirely different process, where it encodes a new file to replace the original clip on the sequence. The way to get back to originals from R&R is to right-click "restore unrendered".

So ... do you mean previews made by simply rendering from the sequence, or new media made by doing a render & replace?

Neil