Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
"Movies" Wasting Space
- Thread starter w00t951
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
If you're wondering what "Other" category in the Lion/ML storage tab is about, this may help explain:
For space issues not explained by the above, there are a few things you can try, some of which may or may not apply:
How OS X and iOS report storage capacity
For space issues not explained by the above, there are a few things you can try, some of which may or may not apply:
- Begin by restarting your computer as a first step. This sometimes resolves issues.
- For Time Machine users on notebooks running Lion or later, space may being consumed by Time Machine local snapshots, which can be disabled.
- Check to see if some of the space is being used by your sleepimage file.
- Check the System Memory tab in Activity Monitor to check page outs and swap used. If swap used is significant, restart your computer and track that value under your normal workload. If you have significant page outs under normal use, you could benefit from more RAM.
- Search with Finder to see if the space is being consumed by a very large file or several large files. Adjust the 50GB in the illustration to whatever size you deem appropriate.
- Use OmniDiskSweeper, JDisk Report, Disk Inventory X, DaisyDisk or GrandPerspective to see how space is being used on your drive. Some of these apps may show more detail than others, so try several.
- Check your drive with Disk Utility: Using Disk Utility to verify or repair disks
- Try re-indexing your drive: Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes
- Encrypted drive
- Time Machine backup files and needed disk repair
- App filling log file
- App or file was 89GB
- Drive needed to be re-indexed
- Time Machine backup file
- Large app cache file
- Garageband files and video podcasts
- Oversized email being duplicated
- Another email issue
How OS X and iOS report storage capacity
I too have this problem, only my movie storage says 8GB 
I searched in all my folders and couldn't find any movies. I used omnidisksweeper and I was able to reclaim some storage but none were movie files. In my iTunes I have only 3GB of movie files. In iPhoto I have about 500MB of video footage, no movies in iMovie either. When I upgraded my HDD to an SSD and restored from TM the 8GB movie storage showed up again. I have an external drive connected at all times for TM scheduled backups. However only TM is used on this drive. No other files exist on the external drive.
OP if you find out how to remedy this issue let me know.
I searched in all my folders and couldn't find any movies. I used omnidisksweeper and I was able to reclaim some storage but none were movie files. In my iTunes I have only 3GB of movie files. In iPhoto I have about 500MB of video footage, no movies in iMovie either. When I upgraded my HDD to an SSD and restored from TM the 8GB movie storage showed up again. I have an external drive connected at all times for TM scheduled backups. However only TM is used on this drive. No other files exist on the external drive.OP if you find out how to remedy this issue let me know.
Did you search in Finder for all files with "Kind" is "Movies"?I too have this problem, only my movie storage says 8GB
Do you see the red text in the screen shot I posted, with the red arrow?
You have to type something, or the button to add search criteria won't appear.
That's why you search "This Mac" or "Macintosh HD", as shown in the screen shot I posted. Don't use the "All My Files" for this purpose. Click on "Macintosh HD" under Devices before you start your search. Also, I recommend you don't use Icon View for this. Use List View.
If you type "Movie" in the search field, you may miss video files that don't contain the word "Movie" in the file name or in the file. That's why I recommend typing a space, as it's far more likely to find all video files.
i think there are little demo videos or something they might be hidden in your ~/Library folder, ive seen this discussed before but im forgeting the outcome
I don't know about Lion or ML, but I don't have any in SL. You could always add the search criteria "System files" "are included" in addition to "Kind" is "Movies" to be sure.
In Lion and Mountain Lion when you type "Movie" a drop-down menu appears where you can select you want to search for files of Kind Movie. It's a convenient shortcut over what Snow Leopard did.
Attachments
Cool! Thanks for that! If you select "Movie" under "Kinds", does it still show "Movie" in the search window? If so, can you replace it with a space after selecting "Kinds"?
Thanks for your help. I feel like I am hijacking this thread but hopefully the OP can find this stuff useful. I did what you said and this is what I'm seeing in my files....
It appears that these videos are imbedded with other programs such as iMovie, Quicktime, etc etc... Random videos like fish videos, water falls, video loop MP4's, etc etc... I'm not sure if I should delete these because they might be essential for whatever program uses them. Unfortunately they are taking up about 8GB of space on my SSD.
It's possible some are simply media samples that you can safely delete. Some may be instructional videos that are part of the help feature for some apps. You may be able to safely delete them without affecting functionality of apps. My preference would be to leave them alone, unless they're consuming significant space.
This is a combination of video files that comes with a default installation.
If you do a systemwide search for *.mov you will see them. For example, when in track pad or mouse system prefs there is that little animation that shows the effect of different options, each of those is a small .mov video file on your system. Also... iWeb, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, and Garageband by default have a bunch of these videos that are used when making various slideshows or video effects in menus. iMovie in particular has a lot of these.
You are fine.
It gets replaced with a special token, and then you can add other search terms:
Attachments
I just used the "Movies" search trick and rediscovered my collection of SNL music videos. Thanks!