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Does MP4 conversion use up space?

Tulani

Tulani

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Dec 6, 2012
1,966
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i am noticing that each time i use a mac app on my air to convert HD videos of other forms to mp4 they seem to eat up my storage space.

is this a correct observation?:eek:
 
I'd say so, as it needs some temp space to do any conversion and after the conversion wouldn't you have two copies of the files?
 
Even if I delete both I still notice a significant marked usage as compared to before the conversion process.

I wonder if that space will ever get recovered.
 
earlier versions of mp4-tools (for example) didn't delete the demuxed files created while converting, you had to delete them manually (and they ate up just as much space as the original/converted file). look into the preferences of your conversion-tool, maybe there's some folder the temporary files are saved to - or do some digging in your file system for size changes after a conversion.
 
No trace of residue.
Been using MacX Video Converter Pro
 
does mp4 conversion use up space?

I converted two files of about 3 Gig each and it gobbled about 9Gig of my hard drive.

I will try those apps but I tried some other disk analyzing utility apps with no success
 
Tulani said:
I converted two files of about 3 Gig each and it gobbled about 9Gig of my hard drive.

I will try those apps but I tried some other disk analyzing utility apps with no success
Click to expand...

Meaning the source files where 3 GB each in size, and the transcoded files where each 3 GB in size, but strangely 9 GB instead of 6 additional GB were taken?
 
does mp4 conversion use up space?

I used disk scope and daisy disk. Let me try yours
 
Last edited:
DaisyDisk is my preference for visual organization of drive usage. What conversion app are you using? Does it keep a cache?
 
It may be worth trying Handbrake to see if it is an application-specific issue. I certainly can't say I have ever had such a problem with Handbrake.
 
Thank you. I can't seem to find the source of the problem and how my space is getting eaten up. I am going to stop using that app for now or maybe just delete it.
 
Suddenly after all these days the space seem to be gradually coming back to where I expected it to be.
 
My free space

----------

Daisy disk was also confirming the same
 
Tulani said:
Suddenly after all these days the space seem to be gradually coming back to where I expected it to be.
Click to expand...

Sounds like TRIM on your SSD is freeing up the "free space." Deleting files on SSD's does not actually free up the space, so TRIM works to free it up over time when your computer is idling.
 
Tulani said:
Even if I delete both I still notice a significant marked usage as compared to before the conversion process.

I wonder if that space will ever get recovered.
Click to expand...

Tulani said:
My space has been fully recovered
Click to expand...

Sorry I am late to the party, but do by any chance have Time Machine turned on?

If you do, what you are seeing is perfectly normal. Time Machine stores deleted files in a hidden folder until the disk gets to 80% full then starts to delete the files. This page explains it pretty well.

Try this test to see what I mean. Turn Time Machine off then back on to clear (empty) the hidden local backups folder.

Now run this command in Terminal to show the size of the local backups. It will be very close to zero. Now make a couple copies of a big video file or something, then delete the files. Run the command again and you will see the size of the local backups folder has increased by the size of the files you deleted.

Code: 
sudo du -hs /.MobileBackups
 
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