Opening the Tool

Right-click a Roll in the explorer window and choose the "Media cleaner" command:

01_media_cleaner_open
Note
The "Media cleaner" command is not available if your roles do not have the "Garbage sweeping" rights. Refer to the Assigning Actions to Roles paragraph in the Cinegy Archive Manager Manual for details on assigning rights to user roles.

The "Media Cleaner" window appears:

01_media_cleaner_main

You can maximize your "Media Cleaner" window with the "Maximize" button or by double-clicking its caption.

Interface

The "Media Cleaner" window consists of three main parts:

Media Utilization Panel

This panel represents graphically the overall usage of the footage throughout the entire system. In addition, the total usage of the essence is shown here:

01_media_cleaner_percentage
Note
Zero percentage means the current Roll is not being used in any projects in the system.

To change the current position of the time slider, simply click the time ruler.

The current frame will be displayed in the "Roll usage info" viewer, the time slider will move synchronously with the time slider in the media utilization panel and when the timeline is scaled up, the time slider is displayed as two lines representing the edges of one frame (beginning and end):

01_media_cleaner_scaled

The region selected in the media bin panel is marked with a red line in the time ruler.

When a part of essence is not referenced from any project, it is displayed as a darker "hole" on the timeline:

01_media_cleaner_timeline1

Unused data can be deleted from the media files (for all the qualities in parallel) thus decreasing its size in the storage.

The system adds "handles" on every boundary of the referenced material to allow the proper trim removal of the clips. These fragments are displayed with a hatched pattern.

Note
Default handle duration is 1 second and it can be changed via Cinegy Archive Manager. Refer to the Media Cleaner paragraph within the Cinegy Archive Manager Manual for details.
Note
If the duration of an unused area is less than its handles, it will not be chosen for compacting.

The bottom left corner of the utilization panel contains the time scale control:

01_media_cleaner_timescale
Tip
Set the scale to 100% to fit the Roll into the media utilization panel.
Important
Generally, the media utilization panel is designed to be consistent with the main Cinegy Desktop Timeline. Refer to the Timeline Interface article for more details.

Media Bin

01_media_cleaner_clip_trumbnails

The interface of the Cinegy Media Cleaner media bin resembles the standard Cinegy Desktop ClipBin interface but has certain limitations (for example, the "Insert" and "Overwrite" operations are not available in Cinegy Media Cleaner).

Important
Refer to the Handling Bins article to learn how to work with bins.

The upper right corner of a clip thumbnail shows the number of different objects throughout the entire database that refer to that clip. The red zero shows that the clip is not used. When deleting a clip from a media bin, you will be asked to confirm the deletion, which is mainly handy in case the selected node has references to other objects:

Media_Cleaner_confirm_items_with_references_deletion

Media References Panel

01_media_cleaner_bins

All the nodes that use (i.e., refer to) the clips selected in the media bin are listed in the right panel.

To view the content of an object from the list, double-click it. The corresponding container will be opened. Now you can navigate through the material to decide whether to keep or remove it.

The same command is available from the context menu. This menu appears when you right-click the list in the media references panel:

01_media_cleaner_context_menu1

The context menu contains the following commands:

  • Open – opens the corresponding ClipBin or Sequence for viewing;

  • Open in a new window – opens a bin in a new window if there is already at least one bin window open. You can also use the Shift+double-click combination to perform the same operation;

  • Highlight in explorer – finds the corresponding item in the explorer window and highlights it;

  • Delete – deletes the selected nodes.

  • Select all – selects all the nodes in the list;

  • Invert the selection – inverts the selection of the current object.

Toolbar

01_media_cleaner_toolbar

The toolbar represents the following commands:

Playback in the clip viewer icon

The "Playback in Clip Viewer" command opens the selected clip in Clip Viewer for preview.

Tool Menu_icon

The "Main tool" menu provides access to several functions for working with clips.

minimize_icon

The "Minimize" button minimizes the "Media Cleaner" window.

maximize_icon

The "Maximize" button maximizes the "Media Cleaner" window.

close_icon

The "Close" button closes the "Media Cleaner" window.

Main Tool Menu

The "Main tool" menu contains several commands similar to commands provided by the standard ClipBin and Roll context menus.

The "Delete" command removes the selected clips from the loaded Roll and all the objects referring to these clips.

Context Menu

Right-click somewhere in the media utilization area to get this menu:

01_media_cleaner_timeline_context_menu

Clear the Archived Status

The Roll is marked with the archived status after it has been compacted and/or moved to the archive storage.

Press "Clear the archived status" to clear the archived status for the current Roll.

Note
This function is only available for Rolls with the archived status.

Compact Footage

The "Compact footage" function is used for cleaning unused essence data from the Roll, for audio and video in all the qualities.

01_media_cleaner_context_scheme
Note
If the duration of an unused area is less than its handles, it will not be chosen for compacting.

This is how the Roll looks in Cinegy Media Cleaner before and after compacting:

01_media_cleaner_before_compact

Before compacting

01_media_cleaner_after_compact

After compacting

The "Compact footage" command launches a separate dialog box displaying information about all existing media qualities. Select the Archive or Regular media group type from the drop-down list:

01_media_cleaner_compact_footage

Select the "Delete the old Roll" checkbox to delete the current Roll after compacting has been completed:

Delete the old Roll

The new Roll will get the current Roll name.

If this option is not selected, the new Roll name will be identical to the original Roll name with the addition of a version number enclosed in brackets as it is shown below:

01_media_cleaner_archived_roll

Select the "Delete the old footage" checkbox to delete the current Roll footages after the operation has been completed. This option is only available when the "Remove original files" option is set to "True" in Cinegy Archive Manager.

Press "Start" to begin the compacting operation. The confirmation dialog box appears:

01_media_cleaner_compact_footage_message
Caution
This operation cannot be undone!

Press "OK" to continue.

The following window with the compacting operation progress appears:

compact_footage_progress

The new Roll will have the archived status.

The compacting operation may fail for some specific media with the following error in the system log:

compact_footage_error

This means that handles of the referenced material should be increased to at least 3 seconds via Cinegy Archive Manager.

Important
Refer to the Media Cleaner paragraph within the Cinegy Archive Manager Manual for details.

Copy Roll to the Archive Storage

This option is used for copying Roll essence data to the archive storage. Usually, you build cheaper and bigger secondary RAID storage to move the "outdated" footage into. This means that faster and more expensive primary storage can be used for capture/import and for "hot" clips.

This command launches a "Copy Roll" dialog box:

01_media_cleaner_copy_roll

From the drop-down list select the target media group which will be used to copy the compacted media files. Select the "Delete the old Roll" checkbox to delete the current Roll after it has been copied.

Select the "Delete the old footage" checkbox to delete the current Roll footages after it has been copied.

Now press the "Start" button to begin the copying operation. The confirmation dialog box appears:

01_media_cleaner_compact_footage_message
Caution
This operation cannot be undone!

Press "OK" to continue.

The new Roll will have the archived status.

Delete the Unused Roll with Its Footages

This command is only available for completely unused Rolls. Select the "Delete the unused Roll with its footages" command to remove the current Roll from your database along with all its media files from the Cinegy Archive storage:

delete_unused_rolls_message

Before the Roll is deleted, the confirmation dialog box appears:

01_media_cleaner_delete_unused_rolls_message
Caution
This operation cannot be undone!

Press "OK" to confirm the deletion.

Missing Footage

The unavailable Roll footages will be colored red and marked with N/A ("Not Available") in the clip properties and the "Copy Roll" or "Compact footages" dialog boxes:

01_media_cleaner_some_media_offline

If the footage you select to compact contains missing footage, you will be asked to confirm whether you would still like to proceed:

error

If all the Roll qualities are not available, the "Missing Footage" warning will be displayed directly in the media utilization area:

01_media_cleaner_missing_footages