What happens to rejected clips?

Rejecting a clip with the R key doesn’t delete the file from disk. During export, you can choose a separate action for rejected clips. Your choice is applied only after the export finishes completely and without errors.

Options appear side by side. You can click another option whenever you like.

Option	What happens?
Add to Pending deletion	Clips move to Pending deletion, but the actual files stay where they are on disk. You can restore them from there if you like.
Move to Trash	Clips are first added to Pending deletion, then the actual files are moved to the macOS Trash. Disk space is freed when you empty the Trash.
Keep in place (default)	Clips stay in your Merceq library, and files stay on their current disk.

Rejected clips on camera cards, network disks, or disks that aren’t connected at the time aren’t touched.

If all rejected clips are on a camera card, you’ll see the warning “They’ll stay as they are because they’re on a card.” Add to Pending deletion and Move to Trash appear but can’t be used. Keep in place is always available.

For more about protecting camera cards, preview warnings, moment copies, and deletion, see Pending deletion and reset.