Use the Consolidate menu to permanently remove head and tail frames (handles) from a clip—and from the framestore, freeing up space on it. You can keep a number of the existing handles by specifying an upper handles limit before consolidating the clip. For example, if you have a clip with 40 head frames and 10 tail frames, and you consolidate it with a value of 15, the resulting clip has 15 head frames and 10 tail frames.

You may want to consolidate clips with a large number of heads and tails before archiving to avoid archiving unused material.

Use the Consolidate menu to consolidate:

• A clip
• All the clips on a reel
• All the clips on the Desktop
• An element (soft edit) on a clip
• A range of elements on a clip

Consolidate does not apply to audio.

To remove head and tail frames from a clip:

1. Click Consolidate in the Editing menu.

   The Consolidate menu appears.

   
   

   (a) Item Type box  (b) Track box  (c) Handles box  

2. Select the type of item you want to consolidate from the Item Type box.
3. Enter the number of handles to keep in the Handles field.
4. Specify which tracks to consolidate in the Tracks box.
5. Select the item you are consolidating.

   To select:	Click:
   A clip	The clip with the red cursor that appears.
   A reel	Anywhere on the reel.
   The Desktop	The Confirm button.
   An element	The frame immediately before the element.
   A range	The start of the range with the red arrow cursor and the end of the range with the green arrow cursor.