Workflows by profession
Video breaks every default: files too big for the internal disk, media split from projects, and caches that eat drives whole.
Final Cut Pro — one .fcpbundle library holding media (if managed), render files and the project. Package = invisible to file search; size = enormous. File → Delete Generated Library Files purges renders safely.
Premiere — small .prproj files referencing media wherever it lives, plus caches in ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common — check Media Cache in preferences and purge from there. Unmanaged media means *you* own the layout, which is power and risk.
DaVinci Resolve — projects in an internal database by default (export .drp for files), caches wherever configured.
Per production, one root on the media drive:
/Volumes/EditA/ClientX/
01 Footage/ 02 Audio/ 03 Assets/ 04 Projects/ 05 Exports/Relinking after a drive swap is trivial when everything lived under one root; agony when media was scattered.
Render/proxy/cache folders regenerate — and quietly grow to hundreds of gigabytes. Purge per-app (all three have a button), and point caches at a scratch volume you can wipe, not the system disk.
"Media offline" slates mean the drive with the originals is not mounted, and Spotlight cannot tell you which drive that is. Editors solve it with discipline (drive labels in project names), catalogue tools, or an index that retains offline volumes — the search result naming the drive turns relinking from a hunt into a fetch.
Projects rot with app versions; the export is forever. 05 Exports/ gets archived with the same care as camera originals, and named with date + version, because "final_v3 (1).mp4" in Downloads is nobody's archive.
Managed media plus render files inside the bundle. Delete Generated Library Files purges renders; consider external (referenced) media for big jobs.
One root per production per drive, drive names in project metadata, and/or an index that keeps offline volumes searchable.
Everywhere keeps track of every file on your Mac — including the folders Spotlight hides and drives you have unplugged. Free for a day, then $19 once.
Download for Mac