So, I was using videopad yesterday (April 17th) to merge parts of audiobooks I downloaded from YouTube, so that the entire book was one part. While combining these files, I separated the audio from the video (which was just a still picture), deleted the video, then lowered the video quality size as far as I could rationally go, along with making sure I was using the same frame rates as the original files.
After combining 8 books or so, I noticed I only had about 10 gigs of space left on computer, when earlier that day I had like 62, and rationally the added effect of the combined files should have only taken like 12 additional gigs of space at most AFTER I deleted the original files.
I read online that I should empty the cache of videopad's temporary files, which I did this morning (April 18th). This left me with just over 50gigs of space, which was close to my estimate as to where I should have been.
THEN, I decided to combine another book that was bigger/longer than the other ones. I did all the same steps, and emptied the cache of temporary files afterward. BUT, suddenly I'm down to 15gigs of free space again.
So now I'm really confused as I'm losing space because of temporary files (yes I checked the storage distribution on my computer) but this time the cache didn't seem to have those files.
I've set my computer to delete temporary files that I'm not using within a day, and I've done my best to clear any programs I'm not using, but I still have way bigger temporary files, than I should rationally have...