Storage and Videos?

[BikeFather]

How do you deal with Storage? What's your workflow? How long do you keep the footage before you delete it?
How do you organise your footage in a way that's easier for the future to create a compilation of various bits from multiple videos? or recycle some older footage for a new reel. Do you scrub through all the video footage and mark it with various keywords for footage use? Do you create one big project for all your videos, or individual projects for each video?

Sorry, lot's of questions, but they are all related to storing and organising video footage. I[m just trying to find the best practices.

I currently have a 1TB External SSD that I work from directly, and I store all the footage there, but one day of riding from 2 cameras, can easily give you 300-500gb of footage. So after 2-3 rounds like this, I'm full, and I need to clean up.

I thought about upgrading to a bigger SSD, but thats still will only give me a few extra days or recordings, and with a job, and a baby, sometimes it takes weeks before I actually have time to do any editing.. and ideally I would like to keep most of the footage for quite awhile just in case I need it again, before I delete it.

So I thought about getting some normal HDDs like 10-12TB, as they are obviously cheaper than SSD, and just keep them for storage purposes - when I need to edit something, I could copy it across to the SSD. Is this what's everyone else doing, or any other ideas?

 

[tojjer29]

I tend to make a video from a days footage, then upload it to that free storage space called Youtube.
i do just treat that as a free storage cloud, it's nice to keep the rides to look back on. Once I've made a vid, that footage gets deleted from my drive.

 

[SweetTripl]

Currently I have 2TB google Drive and I’m also quickly filling up my 2TB internal HDD. My raw videos and project renders tend to fill up about 50-60gb per video so don’t know what I’m going to do once I run out of space either. Don’t want to spend more on cloud storage really. Thinking about it my GoPro plus subscription does allow unlimited storage of videos so could start uploading it there. Or as you say buy some external HDDs and just keep them in a draw somewhere. Answering your second question I make a new premier pro project for every video I create. To keep it uncluttered this is on my internal (500B) SSD once my project is complete and uploaded to YT it then gets archived to my (2TB) HDD but as I say that is filling up fast so will need another solution at some point. I recon eventually I will look to have a stash of external HDDs and just make sure I’m only keeping the good bits of footage for b-roll etc..

Good luck with whatever solution you go with!

 

[Drakhen99]

There's a lot to unpack there, but I have 28TB of storage on my laptop, plus the 1TB internal SSD.

2 1TB SSDs to store current footage on, and the rest is archive. Once those get full, I cull the regular everyday vlog footage.

I use a remote so I only record what I need. No need for hundreds of gigs per ride.

Once edited, the raw footage goes on the archive drive, and the rendered video goes into a folder, since it's higher quality than YT. It also gets uploaded to YT.

Every day ride is marked with a date in the folder name, so they're easy to find, with sub folders for each camera.

Hope that helps!

-John

 

[SOGGY BAWS]

It wasnt planned, but I've used 1TB Toshiba SSD's for the family photographs and PC back ups over the years, and when I started editing I just bought more of them. I've graduated onto 2TB and now 4TB as they are a bit better value.

I must have a stack of 15 of them in the bedroom drawer. Kept everything so far, but that's going to have to change.

I've used a surprising amount of my old footage in recent films, that give a bit of depth, but I am going to have to start being ruthless and have a clear out of completed projects.

I would like to at least keep my edit and used footage, but my current workflow wouldnt allow that. I draw footage from my project folder so I dont know what has been used and what hasnt, which would break the edit.

Dont know if everyone does it, but I edit straight from the SSD's. I've got an editing SSD, then I throw the completed project onto a storage SSD at the end. I was surprised that this worked. I expected to have to edit from files upon my laptop.

New member - Nice to see a few faces I already know from YT.

 

[tojjer29]

It wasnt planned, but I've used 1TB Toshiba SSD's for the family photographs and PC back ups over the years, and when I started editing I just bought more of them. I've graduated onto 2TB and now 4TB as they are a bit better value.

I must have a stack of 15 of them in the bedroom drawer. Kept everything so far, but that's going to have to change.

I've used a surprising amount of my old footage in recent films, that give a bit of depth, but I am going to have to start being ruthless and have a clear out of completed projects.

I would like to at least keep my edit and used footage, but my current workflow wouldnt allow that. I draw footage from my project folder so I dont know what has been used and what hasnt, which would break the edit.

Dont know if everyone does it, but I edit straight from the SSD's. I've got an editing SSD, then I throw the completed project onto a storage SSD at the end. I was surprised that this worked. I expected to have to edit from files upon my laptop.

New member - Nice to see a few faces I already know from YT.

Nice to see you here Stevie

 

[SOGGY BAWS]

Nice to see you here Stevie

Cheers Nige. Wow, what a resource. I think I've found the answers to a hundred million questions!

 

[Drakhen99]

Glad to have you here! And yeah, editing off an SSD is just about required anymore. The data requirements of streaming 2.7k or 4k off a HDD to your editor is brutal on a platter drive.

Once I got my new laptop, I decided the stuttering playback was unacceptable for editing, so I got my first 1TB SSD. And it only grew from there. I almost always have 500-1,500gb of footage "in editing", so I need it.

Exporting or Rendering to a HDD is plenty easy, as it's just writing, and I have a folder on that drive to store the rendered videos, so I can pull from them to use as B Roll in another video.

FWIW, I was able to pull 3 4k videos and 2 2.7k videos simultaneously from the same SSD into Resolve and display on-screen at once And it played back fairly smooth in a 4k timeline

-John

 

[BikeFather]

Awesome. I appreciate all the tips and everyone sharing their setup.

I think I'll wait for black Friday since it's only a few weeks away, as that's usually a good time to buy storage - and I'll probably get a 4tb SSD that I can edit from. That should definitely be more than enough to handle quite a big backlog of videos that need editing, based on my chaotic lifestyle at the moment.

+ I might get a normal 10 TB HDD for long-term storage.

I don't plan to keep the videos for too long, but at least a year or so, just in case I might need the original videos & projects. When I was doing just youtube, this wasn't really needed, but now I started doing some reels & tiktoks, and I figured I could recycle old content, so I don't always have to rely on going out and recording a new video.

Great tip about using the remote @Drakhen99. Is the remote able to connect to multiple cameras?

 

[HippoDrone]

I used to store my edited videos on my HDD, I now generally ditch everything once I've confirmed the upload to YouTube has not corrupted. I don't tend to use the footage again other than possibly PIP, in which case I can rip it back off of YouTube as the loss of quality is less of an issue when scaled down into a window.

 

[Drakhen99]

Awesome. I appreciate all the tips and everyone sharing their setup.

Great tip about using the remote @Drakhen99. Is the remote able to connect to multiple cameras?

Yeah, GoPro's The Remote can handle 5 cameras simultaneously, from Hero 8-12, and Max.

-John

 

[R-Rated]

How do you deal with Storage? What's your workflow? How long do you keep the footage before you delete it?
How do you organise your footage in a way that's easier for the future to create a compilation of various bits from multiple videos? or recycle some older footage for a new reel. Do you scrub through all the video footage and mark it with various keywords for footage use? Do you create one big project for all your videos, or individual projects for each video?


I thought about upgrading to a bigger SSD, but thats still will only give me a few extra days or recordings, and with a job, and a baby, sometimes it takes weeks before I actually have time to do any editing.. and ideally I would like to keep most of the footage for quite awhile just in case I need it again, before I delete it.

So I thought about getting some normal HDDs like 10-12TB, as they are obviously cheaper than SSD, and just keep them for storage purposes - when I need to edit something, I could copy it across to the SSD. Is this what's everyone else doing, or any other ideas?

There is no "right" answer. There are other things to consider such as

- How long do you plan on keeping the old footage? Will you be making an archive in case you ever get to the point you cannot ride?

If that is a no or not more than a couple of years tops, then here is one option. Use the SSD for travel and offload onto it. Then when you get back to your lair, offload that onto a regular portable hard drive for working. My current working drive is 5 TB external portable hard drive. My SSD for travel is 2TB

If the answer is maybe or yes. Then when the portable working HD gets near full, buy another for standing by. I label them by timeframe and have several in a drawer going back to the beginning of my channel in 2016

I leave nothing on the actual machine as far as raw footage and edits. Nothing like Murphy's law making a machine needing to be swapped out in middle of projects.

Now as far as raw footage on what to keep or not keep? That depends on what I was recording. Interesting places - keep. Conversations/topics - keep. Edited project - keep. Suspicious activity - keep.

The same dang road I ride everyday where nothing happened - not even a sunset or sunrise - might delete.

Organizing the footage for me is by date recorded. Then when I go through that folder, I label at the end of the premade filename for the camera - add the topic or item such as "old truck", "vampire bag", "deer on bypass", etc.

 

[Moto Mengy]

I have a 5TB external Seagate SSD which I archive my video files onto. I'll soon have to start freeing up space on it, or buy a second one....

 

[Drakhen99]

I have a 5TB external Seagate SSD which I archive my video files onto. I'll soon have to start freeing up space on it, or buy a second one....

5TB ... where's my Leo DeCaprio meme saying those are rookie numbers?

I kid, I kid... of course, I won't get a response for 2 weeks

Geez, another jab? Sorry, @Moto Mengy , couldn't help myself.

But seriously - just get another 5TB [or bigger] HDD to archive your footage to. You never know when you're gonna need that old footage to fill in.

-John

 

[Moto Mengy]

But seriously - just get another 5TB [or bigger] HDD to archive your footage to. You never know when you're gonna need that old footage to fill in.

Yep, I'm sure that's what I'll do, they are pretty cheap nowadays honestly.

 

[Drakhen99]

Yep, I'm sure that's what I'll do, they are pretty cheap nowadays honestly.

Yeah, the prices have come down a lot, especially platter disks.

I think the 14tb drive I got was like $250? And I just saw that the 18tb version is $229 on Amazon!

-John

 

[Theodor]

I store my files on nas type of thing. I edit from there, over network. Copies of final video renders also go there.
I keep the files in folders, named by date and keyword. That is usually enough, because I make so few videos, I can remember pretty well, what was going on in them, even for the last year ones. I suppose it is only matter of age, when that will change.
For past longer travel, and the current one I am on, I have managed to get by with 3TB HDD. I also decided to bring handfull of usb sticks this time, to make 2nd copy of every file, just in case.

 

[LimeyRider]

How do you deal with Storage? What's your workflow? How long do you keep the footage before you delete it?
How do you organise your footage in a way that's easier for the future to create a compilation of various bits from multiple videos? or recycle some older footage for a new reel. Do you scrub through all the video footage and mark it with various keywords for footage use? Do you create one big project for all your videos, or individual projects for each video?

Sorry, lot's of questions, but they are all related to storing and organising video footage. I[m just trying to find the best practices.

I currently have a 1TB External SSD that I work from directly, and I store all the footage there, but one day of riding from 2 cameras, can easily give you 300-500gb of footage. So after 2-3 rounds like this, I'm full, and I need to clean up.

I thought about upgrading to a bigger SSD, but thats still will only give me a few extra days or recordings, and with a job, and a baby, sometimes it takes weeks before I actually have time to do any editing.. and ideally I would like to keep most of the footage for quite awhile just in case I need it again, before I delete it.

So I thought about getting some normal HDDs like 10-12TB, as they are obviously cheaper than SSD, and just keep them for storage purposes - when I need to edit something, I could copy it across to the SSD. Is this what's everyone else doing, or any other ideas?

When I first started this motovlogging journey I set out with a PC with just a 1TB SSD in it, since then I have added 4 more SSd's and bought an external HDD - my main C drive holds everything I'm currently working on and then everything else gets stored on the other drives, all time/date stamped and labelled, every video has a sub folder, so say im making a video - that will have a 'final cut' folder of the finished product and a 'raw footage' which as you'd expect is just all the uncut footage pulled straight off the cams. Occasionally I'll have a 2nd rider recorded, which then opens up a 3rd sub folder for their video footage and a 4th for their voice comms.

It's a bit chaotic, but worked for me so far xD

Side note - I noticed recently that my drive space was taking huge hits and I didn't know why, even after deleting a lot of old footage I didn't need any more I was still quite low on some drives. Turns out if you're using Wondershare it makes copies of EVERYTHING you ever work on, so I had duplicates of a years worth of videos just piling up taking up space in a proxy folder.

Quite annoying if you don't know about it.

 

[HippoDrone]

Side note - I noticed recently that my drive space was taking huge hits and I didn't know why, even after deleting a lot of old footage I didn't need any more I was still quite low on some drives. Turns out if you're using Wondershare it makes copies of EVERYTHING you ever work on, so I had duplicates of a years worth of videos just piling up taking up space in a proxy folder.

Quite annoying if you don't know about it.

Ahh, I shall have to see if mine is doing that, not noticed it though, but be good to get some space back if I can. Thanks for the tip!

 

[Theodor]

Proxy isn't really a duplicate, it's a lower resolution smaller file, for allowing smoother editing, with less pc resources. Most decent editors have the possibility to turn on proxy clips. Render will still be done with original files, based on the timeline you created with the proxy clips.