m8 freeing up space has absolutely no impact on memory usage of an app

in this case, mr @kurtchan, you need to scroll down in the “Open Project” window and read what is written there as it directly applies to what’s going on in your situation, unfortunately

open half the project, the first 50%, save it as “project_first half”

then go and open the project again, but only open the second 50% and save it as “project_second half”

now you have 3 .stknds files

project.stknds
project_first half.stknds
project_second half.stknds

you’re free to open project_secondhalf.stknds and continue now, as it’s only half the size

export both when you’re done, and use a video editing app to put together the MP4s