About every quarter it is a good idea to remove any expired media from the server in order to free up space. There are three main steps involved in doing this. 1. Identifying Expired media in ProTrack, 2. Deleting Expired Media, and 3. Updating the ProTrack Media to Purged to reflect that the show has been purged from the system. Below are the specific steps to complete each of these tasks.

Identifying Expired Media in ProTrack

• From the main menu select Media | Interactive Purge List

• Enter Attachment Expiration ranges, Status, Rights Expiration data, and it’s a good idea to add the “Not Scheduled After” the current day you are running the report.

• Once that has been completed you’ll be presented with a list of shows which rights and media attachments have expired.

These are the ones you will remove from the server (NOTE: You may decide to keep some of these in the event that you believe you will be able to renew the rights, or in cases where you feel rights may not be correct). There are a number of ways to do this. Below is one.

Deleting Expired Media

Because media used to be recorded in .MOV format which had two different files, it is easiest to remove media from the Clip Tool (which knows where any dependent files are located).

• Once Clip Tool is loaded, select the Load for a list of files. By typing the first few letters it will take you to the portion of the list for which you wish to delete. (e.g. AMFM).
• Select the files for which you wish to delete by highlighting the first file in the list while holding the shift key select the last file.
• Once selected, press the Delete key (BE EXTRA CAREFUL WHEN DELETING AS THERE IS NO WAY TO GET IT BACK ONCE YOU DELETE IT FROM HERE).

This will remove the files from the server. Once you’ve done this, you’ll want to return to your list in ProTrack and mark the removed files as “Purged”.

Updating the ProTrack Media to Purged

Now comes the most tedious, but arguably the most important step. You must go down the list of each files one-by-one and change the media to “Purged”. The steps are below. (NOTE: Using the shortcut keys will save you loads of time).

• From the Interactive Purge List Results list, select the show, then select Tools | Media Info (F1)

• From the Media Information screen select Tools | Set Status (F3)
• Then change the status to Purged

• Repeat these steps (Down Arrow, F1, F3, P, Enter, CTRL+F4…) until each file for which you have removed media has been marked purged.
• NOTE: Any daily or weekly shows for which we do not trim and mark recorded, you’ll want to go through and delete as well, as they will not show up in this list. These are shows like BBC Nightly Business Report, BBC World News, Alaska Weather, Talk of Alaska, Alaska Edition, and Newsline.
• I have also started adding a comment to this post to indicate when the last time i purged was – so that I can easily determine when I last did it.