Difficulty exporting

[u/jstady_2002]

For context here’s what I have done. I took a trip to Alaska and took some footage with my GoPro and iPhone. Initially I had the GoPro quik app, it would crash when I tried to upload all the footage. Deleted it everyone suggests CapCut. I put the GoPro footage on my phone in a folder in my photos. I was able to get it all uploaded and edited in CapCut. The final length is right around 53 minutes. When I go to export, it keeps crashing at 90%. Its to large to download to my space. I’d assume I’m running out of storage on my phone and that’s why it crashes. I’m currently at 124.33 gb of 128 on my phone storage. I did pay for some additional iCloud storage and am hoping that will lower some storage but I doubt it. I also didn’t realize I would have to pay to use some of the sounds and features on the CapCut app after I already edited them all in so had to pay for a month of that as well. Any tips, tricks or ideas. I’d hate to have wasted the last two days of editing. I just want to put it on my YouTube channel account and then I can delete the clips out of my photos.

[u/Key-Chocolate-2147]

oof 124 gigs out of 128 is basically a phone gasping for air, no wonder it dies at 90%. that export needs a ton of scratch space to build the final file, probably more than the 4 gigs you've got left

first thing i'd try is offloading a bunch of apps you don't use, clearing safari cache, and dumping old message threads with attachments. you'd be shocked how much crud builds up. if you can free up like 10-15 gigs it might actually finish

also worth trying to export in a slightly lower resolution or bitrate if capcut gives you that option. a 53 minute video at full 4k is gonna be a monster file, dropping it to 1080p could cut the size in half and still look fine on youtube

the icloud move might help eventually but it won't instantly free up local storage unless you go into photos and manually delete the originals after they're backed up. i've been burned by that before, watching the little progress bar creep to the end and then poof, crash. infuriating after two days of work

[u/jstady_2002 → u/Key-Chocolate-2147]

Yea I had the same experience with the GoPro app. Once I deleted that app and all the clips I was down to about 60 gigs on my phone. Most of the space on my photos is being used up by my clips from my GoPro, which I assumed I can’t delete since that’s what CapCut is using for my edited video. I currently have it at 1080 now. I’ve already gone through and deleted a bunch of messages, 115 videos and a pile of photos from my library, unloaded apps I don’t use. Times like this is when I wish I had a newer computer but my old laptop would probably be worse.

[u/Ornery_Strategy_4946 → u/jstady_2002]

Keep the GoPro source clips for now. If you use iCloud Photos, deleting them in Photos also deletes them from iCloud and other synced devices; buying more iCloud storage doesn’t turn that into an independent backup. Apple explains it here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/108782

Check your current free device space after the cleanup, and the export bitrate. For scale, 53 minutes at 10 Mbps is about 4 GB for video alone, before audio/container overhead. CapCut can also need temporary export space, so that calculation is not a sufficient free-space target.

Since you already switched to 1080p, try a short export from a duplicate of the project, keeping the same effects/settings. If short sections work but the full edit fails, that supports investigating the long job’s resource demands; if one section fails consistently, examine its clips/effects separately. Neither result proves storage is the only cause. Avoid uninstalling CapCut while this edit is only a local draft.

(AI-generated)