Do you save all those raw files from mavic pro from every flight ? External storage/ Buy cloud storage ?

[ashsys]

I know every one take photos and mainly records video while flying. My main concern is the storage.
My laptop has just around 50gigs remained. If I take 3 flight say each 22 mins and start recording from takeoff to landing in 4k then it will be around 25Gigs !
I generally upload in youtube by selecting best clips and trimming and mixing making total duration around 5-6 mins.

Now after I upload I am always in delima whether to delete all those raw videos I took or save it some where.
I hate to delete it and I don't have space to save it. duhhh

What are other pilots doing with all those raw videos they took ? Deleting it after extracting best clips or saving all those raw videos ?

 

[Meta4]

What are other pilots doing with all those raw videos they took ? Deleting it after extracting best clips or saving all those raw videos ?

Amazon.com : usb hard drive 2tb

 

[ashsys]

i have two 2tb external drive which is full of those raw videos from my phantom 3 , mavic pro and spark.
Thinking of buying another one. But is this every pilot doing ? Piling up those external drives?
I have no idea what will i do with all those gigs of raw videos but still I don't wanna delete it lol

 

[RadioFlyerMan]

I know every one take photos and mainly records video while flying. My main concern is the storage.
My laptop has just around 50gigs remained. If I take 3 flight say each 22 mins and start recording from takeoff to landing in 4k then it will be around 25Gigs !
I generally upload in youtube by selecting best clips and trimming and mixing making total duration around 5-6 mins.

Now after I upload I am always in delima whether to delete all those raw videos I took or save it some where.
I hate to delete it and I don't have space to save it. duhhh

What are other pilots doing with all those raw videos they took ? Deleting it after extracting best clips or saving all those raw videos ?

I capture only videos rather than pictures. And I only shoot in 4K. It eats up a lot of disk space, but I feel the same about deleting videos. But I know I can't keep everything forever.

My plan is to hold up to three years of raw video. I purchased an external Samsung SSD of 2 terabytes just for that purpose. As I start the 4th year, I will delete the oldest videos from the first year. It may be painful, but if I haven't used a three year old video by then, it isn't work keeping anyway. Also, when I first started flying and shooting in 2018, I'd take videos for no good reason. Now I only shoot if it will contribute to a video project I'm planning to produce.

 

[buddb55]

I have a WD 6TB network drive dedicated for video and pics. It's actually 2 drives with one mirroring the main drive in case it fails.

 

[Dave Maine]

Best Buy often has either 8 TB, or 10 TB Western Digital drives on sale, for less than $200. That will hold a lot of video. That is what my process it. If you go down that path, consider how you will find a particular file later. A catalog system set up early will make your life easie.

 

[tcope]

I don't usually record in 4K as only a few people will ever view it in that format. That is going to cut down storage by 1/4. I then make every attempt to recording only things that I need. That may cut it down by another 1/4 or more. Once I load it onto my computer I delete the clips that are 100% trash. I then stores these on a 6TB work drive and back them up to a 4TB and 3TB drive.

 

[Roger_that]

I run a 1tb SSD laptop and a 1tb external drive for back up, and another 2tb external drive just for video and pix. I don’t normally shoot long videos. I set up the shot and pre fly it, when possible, or set up smart shots, and pre fly it, before I hit record. I leave a little room at the beginning and end of the shot for editing. This cuts down on a lot of wasted video. In 3 1/2 years I have accumulated about 500gb if video & pix, and have lots of space to go. 90% of what I shoot is commercial footage, realty, car lots, construction sites and personal video for clients. Pre flying shots saves a lot of time editing and allows more stick time practice so when an “on the fly” opportunity arises my reaction time and execution are more controlled.

 

[Unknown Pilot]

I have at least two copies of all my photos... 100k photos per year, maybe 10% in raw. It adds up.

 

[THE CYBORG]

For video I edit the best bits to save & delete the rest, When a project is finished I save the final cut then delete the clips.
For photo’s I am ruthless in immediately deleting anything not up to standard then go through the rest to fish out the mediocre, delete those and only save the ones I think are good enough.

 

[JS1600]

My 4TB external drive filled up fast so I recently purchased a 10TB external drive, I'm sue a lot could be deleted but that is time consuming.

 

[THE CYBORG]

My 4TB external drive filled up fast so I recently purchased a 10TB external drive, I'm sue a lot could be deleted but that is time consuming.

Not as time consuming as trawling through 10 TB of clips unless you have an extremely good filing system

 

[Johnmcl7]

I keep all my raw photos and videos as you never know what portions you may want to use from a video in the future, I've been going through old videos I've taken while riding on the bike and although there's hours of them I like being able to use sections of my choice different to before.

My connection isn't fast enough to make online storage viable so I store everything locally on my PC (30TB) and then have a NAS (24TB) for backup and shared storage.

John

 

[xjjon]

I keep all my raw photos and videos as you never know what portions you may want to use from a video in the future, I've been going through old videos I've taken while riding on the bike and although there's hours of them I like being able to use sections of my choice different to before.

My connection isn't fast enough to make online storage viable so I store everything locally on my PC (30TB) and then have a NAS (24TB) for backup and shared storage.

John

Awesome, is your PC and Desktop running RAID?
I have a similar amount of drives on RAID5 and then a smaller NAS on RAID1.

What's your workflow from SD card onwards?

I currently do SD card -> PC -> eventually rotate them to NAS. but this process is mostly manual.

The only automation I have is syncing edited files (both raw + output) to my cloud storage (AWS S3/Glacier).

 

[Thomas B]

I save all my files, still or video to backup as well as main CPU drive.

 

[jimlips]

I bought four Western Digital 4-TB external USB drives (on sale for $89/ea). I keep one on the computer all the time, and then occasionally back it up to the other one, which I keep in the safe.



I always keep the original .mp4 file from the aircraft's SD card for best quality. And I keep everything I've ever recorded. You never know when you may need to go back and get something.

I would not recommend "storing" stuff on YouTube. They compress the video horribly. Never looks as good as the original stuff.

Keep a local copy of your final edited video in a separate folder. Those files tend to be smaller (mine are usually only 200k-300k). Those are what I upload to YouTube for others to see, and are typically 1920x1080.

 

[Johnmcl7]

Awesome, is your PC and Desktop running RAID?
I have a similar amount of drives on RAID5 and then a smaller NAS on RAID1.

What's your workflow from SD card onwards?

I currently do SD card -> PC -> eventually rotate them to NAS. but this process is mostly manual.

The only automation I have is syncing edited files (both raw + output) to my cloud storage (AWS S3/Glacier).

No I don't run raid on either system instead I prefer to have sync software that backs up only what I want to keep (plenty of stuff like game data and huge intermediate video renders don't need backed up) and it means the drives can be easily mounted elsewhere since they're not tied to any others. It's just personal use , I'd probably do it a bit differently if I was doing it professionally.

I import the files to the PC in a suitable position then the sync software mirrors the change on the NAS.

I was doing monthly backups to USB storage that I'd remove and keep elsewhere although it's getting tougher now as the file sizes for everything are growing but hard drive capacities have slowed right down.

John

 

[ashsys]

The main problem with external disks are their life span. Those rotating SATA disk has life span of around 5 years. And after that you never know when the problem arises and there is always risk of data loss. And all those old videos will be gone in seconds.
One solution is to buy SSD external drives which has better life span instead of those old SATA drives. But they are very expensive.
For these exact same concern I am leaning towards cloud storage like premium google drive or Dropbox etc..
But they are not cheap either

 

[4wd]

The main problem with external disks are their life span. Those rotating SATA disk has life span of around 5 years. And after that you never know when the problem arises and there is always risk of data loss. And all those old videos will be gone in seconds.
One solution is to buy SSD external drives which has better life span instead of those old SATA drives. But they are very expensive.
For these exact same concern I am leaning towards cloud storage like premium google drive or Dropbox etc..
But they are not cheap either

I think the five years means if you are using them continuously which you clearly don't need to do.
I have a 500GB one attached to router USB has run continuously longer than that so results will vary.
Looking back at drone video recorded years ago there is very little worth keeping mainly due to inferior video quality so most gets deleted though most edited material is kept.
Stills take up less space but same applies to a large extent.
So the general rule here is save to PC hard drive for up to a year, then select more serious recordings from special outings etc to save - but the great majority can be dumped if no finished video edit has been created after a year or so.

 

[Mavnik]

I tried to use a cloud service called Thunderdrive.io and then I realised it was a scam after paying up. Upload is annoyingly slow and unreliable. I used to have iDrive in the past for backup of my photos but I forgot to renew and it takes about a week to upload 2TB