How much raw footage & video projects do your retain for future?

[Arfa]

You know how it, you shoot a tonne of footage, you get home you spend hours cutting it something half interesting, you stick it up on YT, everyone loves it, happy days. You've now got several gigs of raw footage, video project files, random voice-overs, stills and of course the rendered output, what do you do with all that? After all that time and effort, you don't want to just ditch it. You might do some best of, year-end round video later, so you want to keep some of it around to dig out highlights etc. Some of it may have been shot in foreign climes on crazy adventures, so again you probably want to retain it for posterity.

What's your plan for all this data you accumulate?

Myself, I currently do this:
Raw footage initially gets dumped on big hard disk mirrored raid on a networked server in loft until I can get around to editing
Footage is later imported into iMovie for editing, with iMovie library sitting on a fast striped raid connected locally to Mac.
Rendered output is uploaded to YT and saved on networked server.
I generally have a fresh iMovie library for every dozen or so videos, with past ones coped to the networked server.
Script on network server will archive rendered output and past iMovie libraries to Backblaze cloud storage (note archived, rather than a backup/sync).
Oh and the network server presents itself as a TimeMachine for the Mac too!

I'm currently at a point now, where I've filled up nigh on 4Tb on the network server and kind of thinking I really need to archive more to Backblaze and clear stuff off. Especially the raw footage, though I guess some of this is duplicated within the iMovie libraries.

Would love to hear how others manage all their data, what housekeeping process you follow and if I could do anything better more efficient.

 

[Drakhen99]

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, so thanks for bringing it up!

Here's what I have: (and I use DaVinci Resolve 16 ATM)

1. 1TB in-laptop SSD (for OS and programs)
2. 4TB external platter disk (storage and videos being edited)
3. 8TB external platter disk (archives and render cache/render disk)

The two external drives are daisy-chained through USB to my laptop. I've done tests and it isn't a bottleneck, or at least it doesn't seem to be. DaVinci Resolve maxes out my CPU and takes up to 18GB of RAM when it's working hard (usually only during renders)

My workflow for storage:

1. Import raw footage to the 4TB drive, in a Videos\<Year>.<Month>\ folder
2. Create a new Project in DR and import the raw footage into it
3. Edit footage
4. Render to 8TB drive
5. Review & Final Edits, then re-render and off to YouTube it goes
6. Once all the videos for a specific month have been edited (or projects scrapped for one reason or another), I move that folder from the 4TB drive to the 8TB drive.

I've only been at this a few months, so I only have about 1-2TB of footage stored. I have plenty of room. I figure once a year is up or the drive gets closer to full, I'll delete raw footage and keep the renders.

-John

 

[Arfa]

6. Once all the videos for a specific month have been edited (or projects scrapped for one reason or another), I move that folder from the 4TB drive to the 8TB drive.

So the sysadmin in me would say, get that 8TB drive backed up somewhere. That will quickly fill up with a lot of data you've worked hard on and put a lot of time into. Storing it on just a single drive is giving you no redundancy, what do you do if that drive dies, gets stolen or house burns down? Get a secondary backup or archive off-site.

 

[Drakhen99]

So the sysadmin in me would say, get that 8TB drive backed up somewhere. That will quickly fill up with a lot of data you've worked hard on and put a lot of time into. Storing it on just a single drive is giving you no redundancy, what do you do if that drive dies, gets stolen or house burns down? Get a secondary backup or archive off-site.

I agree - it does need a redundancy. The IT guy in me (day job) agrees.

I'm working on that. As prices for storage come down, I may buy a NAS device or something similar with RAID so I can back that stuff up.

-John

 

[Meifesto]

I always tell myself i will make a year compilation.
Never do though xD

Everything is stored on an external hard drive, every other month or so.
Removed from pc what has been used after storage is done.

 

[HippoDrone]

Like I've said in the other threads on this topic, once I have uploaded to YouTube I delete the raw footage, and only keep the edited footage from videos I think may get included in the yearly recap vid.
I don't really see any point in keeping the raw footage, as the edited version has all the entertaining bits, the the rest is superfluous and would never get watched again.

 

[Drakhen99]

Like I've said in the other threads on this topic, once I have uploaded to YouTube I delete the raw footage, and only keep the edited footage from videos I think may get included in the yearly recap vid.
I don't really see any point in keeping the raw footage, as the edited version has all the entertaining bits, the the rest is superfluous and would never get watched again.

I mostly agree with you on this, but there's one instance where I have found I used previously-unused footage: In a montage of sorts. I created a video intro where I gear up, and I really wanted to feature the engine starting on my Harley. I could not for the life of me find a clip where I like the video, but the audio in a couple of them were exactly what I wanted. I used the audio and not the video for those intros. Had I deleted old footage, I wouldn't have had the audio clip I wanted to use.

-John

 

[R-Rated]

I keep nearly all of it. I have half a drawer full of portable harddrives.

I plan on watching it all if I get to where I can't ride.

 

[motosera]

I delete all the raw footage after final edit is done and only keep the final video file. I've had everything useful form the content at that point and don't see any need to keep TB of data kicking around for no reason

 

[Theodor]

I currently keep about 2 years worth. This is just how much space I have on my drive. Still working towards getting a NAS, but I have kind of unusual demands for it, so it will not be a wallet friendly device.

 

[Ponkster]

I may be odd but once I have made a final version of a vid for youtube I delete all the footage , I then save a copy of the final vid on an external hard drive . If something I have recorded has some generic quality that could be useful I will save it as a video tool , but on the whole it all gets deleted once the final vid is complete .

 

[Fool Moon]

I filled up 1TB with raw footage and it compromised on transfer to the new 5TB HD. I think i could/can try to retrieve it, but i'm ok with letting the raw footage go. I have the final cuts and no Bigfoot footage was lost.

 

[AmpdMoto]

I make my edits then I delete the footage. I never go back and re-edit the same files so it’s a waste to try and save them. I do keep most of my edits though but not every single one. I typically save the actual trips I take or family stuff not every little motovlog.

 

[Moto Mengy]

Like I've said in the other threads on this topic, once I have uploaded to YouTube I delete the raw footage, and only keep the edited footage from videos I think may get included in the yearly recap vid.
I don't really see any point in keeping the raw footage, as the edited version has all the entertaining bits, the the rest is superfluous and would never get watched again.

I've been keeping all of my raw footage on a 5TB external drive so far, but in time I feel I'll migrate to what Hippo does above.

 

[Arfa]

So, I recently gone up to 4k footage with a GoPro Hero9 and now find myself producing 50Gb per hour! hmm, yeah, I might now have to revisit my approach to what footage to keep, otherwise I'm gonna be spending a fortune on disks!