How do you process and store your Drone photos, videos, logs etc?

[eva2000]

I'm new to DJI drones and only bought my Mini 2 5 days ago. But after my first 3 flights recording in 1080p 30fps, I have realised that I will be racking up a lot of time and disk storage space over time with photos, videos and DJI flight logs etc. If you also add a phone screenshot video recording of the DJI Fly app, that's even more disk storage space to consume!

There's also disk space on the mobile phone device too from Fly app! How do folks handle that?

I am wondering how fellow DJI drone users are handling this? What's your workflow for dealing with photos, videos, DJI flight logs etc? How much disk space does your DJI drone usage consume?

Any tips and pointers are much appreciated

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

Logs I store on an external hard drives (2 of).
Photos and video on a second set of external hard drives, each 1Tb, I remove the rubbish videos before storing them other wise they would accumulate too much space.
In truth 1Tb is probably now on the small side of what would be considered 'necessary' where video is concerned especially if you are shooting in the higher resolutions.

 

[Gagey52]

Hi there Eva2000, I use a 4TB external HD to keep all my drone files. The biggest problem I had was keeping track of the files and settings for the directory, so that I could locate them when needed. I also use an electronic logbook to keep track of my flights. I hope you get sorted.
Regards

 

[cheddar-man]

80% probably end up in the bin

 

[vindibona1]

Managing so much data is hard. The first thing is to recognize what is valuable to keep. Whatever isn’t should be deleted. But still you might still collect a ton of files. Big ones.

Your post made me look at my drive inventory. Within my laptop I have 4 partitions totaling 6TB, I think. Externally it is harder to calculate. I have 4 or 5 CURRENT external drives estimated at 10TB which service two computers and back up a 3rd.

If I have any advice it would be to be judicious in what you save.

 

[MS Coast]

Amen to what @vindibona1 said, "be judicious in what you save." And sort through things as soon as possible, on the same day you shoot them if you can.

I'd suggest setting up a system to organize your files by date, location, and subject and be consistent in how you name things. I try to group mine in folders that way. So, if I fly over the local harbor today, they'll go into a folder named "20220627.OS.harbor."

Once things start accumulating, you'll probably want a software program that helps you index and search for particular files. Locate32 is one good option for PCs. After it's indexed your drives, it can search and find things almost instantly.

Locate32

Download Locate32 for free. Locate32 finds files and directories based on file names. Locate32 finds files and directories based on file and folder names stored in a database. Locate32 saves to a database the names of all files on your hard drives.

sourceforge.net

(There's a 64-bit version available, despite the program name.)

There are also programs that allow you to attach keywords and descriptions to photo and video files. If you're disciplined about using keywords, you can look back through terabytes of files to find the photos of "trains" that you shot in July of 2020 in "Colorado" when there was "snow" on the ground using your "Air2S."

If my experience is an indicator, no matter what you do with organizing your photos and videos, you'll someday wish that you'd been more organized, more consistent, and more descriptive.

 

[Photo guy]

Amen to what @vindibona1 said, "be judicious in what you save." And sort through things as soon as possible, on the same day you shoot them if you can.

I'd suggest setting up a system to organize your files by date, location, and subject and be consistent in how you name things. I try to group mine in folders that way. So, if I fly over the local harbor today, they'll go into a folder named "20220627.OS.harbor."

Once things start accumulating, you'll probably want a software program that helps you index and search for particular files. Locate32 is one good option for PCs. After it's indexed your drives, it can search and find things almost instantly.

Locate32

Download Locate32 for free. Locate32 finds files and directories based on file names. Locate32 finds files and directories based on file and folder names stored in a database. Locate32 saves to a database the names of all files on your hard drives.

sourceforge.net

(There's a64-bit version available, despite the program name.)

There are also programs that allow you to attach keywords and descriptions to photo and video files. If you're disciplined about using keywords, you can look back through terabytes of files to find the photos of "trains" that you shot in July of 2020 in "Colorado" when there was "snow" on the ground using your "Air2S."

If my experience is an indicator, no matter what you do with organizing your photos and videos, you'll someday wish that you'd been more organized, more consistent, and more descriptive.

As a photographer, I completely agree with your last sentence. lol.

 

[JoelP]

I use my drone to record both still and video images. As others have said I delete anything from the Micro SD that I know I won’t ever use. For the remainder I move the still images to a folder named to correspond to that micro SD on a 2TB external SSD. For the videos I do the same thing but to a folder labeled as drone video ( to differentiate from gimbal and other video) and with sun folder by location on an 8TB WD external drive. I never delete the micro SDs.

For the stills I use Lightroom to build a catalog and put these into a collection labeled drone stills. For the video I import the media using DaVinci Resolve to a project named for that location.

 

[FLDave]

Files get moved to my laptop AFTER EVERY FLIGHT. They go to to my 5T external hard drive. It's important to ORGANIZE your files immediately. Moving files means they are delete from drone storage. Set up folders and folders within folder to match your organization style. (You may prefer removing the SD card from the drone do to the storage update; that's just a matter of personal preference.)
Flight logs (TXT and DAT) files are copied to my computer and TXT files uploaded to AirData. I also have my personal flight and checklist logs created on my computer; these includes weather data for the flights.
In all of the organization is key to record keeping.

 

[Yaros]

I have a 4 TB internal drive I installed in my PC just for drone footage, as mostly I record in 4K 60FPS which takes up a lot of storage.
I use Davinci Resolve 18 to edit videos and Photoshop Camera Raw to edit photos.

 

[thispilothere]

Everything is on a NAS system that also stores other pics, movies and TV shows. I'm thinking about setting up a Plex server.

 

[dozzn]

I don’t have a computer, I only have my iPhone. If I truly want to keep my footage I save it to an sd card. I like the 32gb and the 64gb cards and I have plenty of them.

Good luck to you and congratulations on the new mini 2! It’s a wonderful drone!

 

[MS Coast]

Everything is on a NAS system that also stores other pics, movies and TV shows. I'm thinking about setting up a Plex server.

A Plex server is an interesting idea. Please keep us posted on what you do.

 

[ifr]

Hi there Eva2000, I use a 4TB external HD to keep all my drone files. The biggest problem I had was keeping track of the files and settings for the directory, so that I could locate them when needed. I also use an electronic logbook to keep track of my flights. I hope you get sorted.
Regards

I don't intend to hijack this thread. Would you please share what electronic logbook you use?

 

[Chaosrider]

I'm new to DJI drones and only bought my Mini 2 5 days ago. But after my first 3 flights recording in 1080p 30fps, I have realised that I will be racking up a lot of time and disk storage space over time with photos, videos and DJI flight logs etc. If you also add a phone screenshot video recording of the DJI Fly app, that's even more disk storage space to consume!

There's also disk space on the mobile phone device too from Fly app! How do folks handle that?

I am wondering how fellow DJI drone users are handling this? What's your workflow for dealing with photos, videos, DJI flight logs etc? How much disk space does your DJI drone usage consume?

Any tips and pointers are much appreciated

I've been flying Mini-2s for a little over a year, and I was shocked by the amount of storage space the vids required. I had bought anew computer to edit my drone vids, with a 1 TB SSD, and I was filling it up at least once a month.

I finally settled on a sorting scheme that works for me.

Once a month I download all of the SD cards from my various aircraft onto my computer SSD. Then I sort through them to decide what I might even want to take the time to edit. I quickly discovered that Sturgeon's Law applies.

The stuff I don't' even expect to edit goes onto an external 2 TB HDD. When that fills up, I transfer the older stuff to a second, 5 TB HD. I got that one early this year, and so far it's about half full.

I never purge any of my original footage. It just becomes less convenient to find it, the less likely I think I am to use it.

Hope that helps!

 

[rgarjr]

files get moved from microSD into my MacBook Pro. Then just move them to my NAS (Synology / QNAP, have a few NASes). I can check them out with my iPad.

The video cache on the phone from the Fly app I purge it from time to time.

May need to delete some stuff off the NAS that don’t need to prevent from getting too full.

 

[ThatBeardedDroneGuy]

I asked a similar question a while back but didn't really land on a great solution. I come from a photography background where a DAM (Digital Asset Management) solution was critical. I eventually moved to Lightroom and it's great since you can tag photos. you don't need to import them into certain folders, or have an insane folder structure to keep subjects together. It doesn't matter if they're even on different physical volumes. As long as you have keywords, you can search and find your images.

I have yet to find a similar solution for video. There are plenty of expensive options but they seem more suited to enterprise solutions rather than meeting the needs of an individual. Optimally, it would also provide the ability to quickly separate the wheat from the chaff so you don't waste space with useless clips. I looked at ACDSee (which I also used in the photo world) but it also fails miserably on the video front.

 

[Dale D]

I'm new to DJI drones and only bought my Mini 2 5 days ago. But after my first 3 flights recording in 1080p 30fps, I have realised that I will be racking up a lot of time and disk storage space over time with photos, videos and DJI flight logs etc. If you also add a phone screenshot video recording of the DJI Fly app, that's even more disk storage space to consume!

There's also disk space on the mobile phone device too from Fly app! How do folks handle that?

I am wondering how fellow DJI drone users are handling this? What's your workflow for dealing with photos, videos, DJI flight logs etc? How much disk space does your DJI drone usage consume?

Any tips and pointers are much appreciated

You had better design a storage plan fast or even your computer memory will fill up. In my case, I back up everything twice, using Costco Seagate hard drives. They sell them with 6 and 8 Terabyte models. Since these are spinning drives, they can break, which is why I back up twice. You could also back up on Samsung solid state (no moving parts) drives but the cost is much more but very reliable.

Each shoot with the drone results in videos, stills, and I usually make a video, using DSLR shots, and timelapses. Thus, Have a bucketful of "ASSETS". from which to create my video. Once my project is finished, I put all of the assets into one single folder and drag that folder, by name, into the Seagate drive. Here is a screen shot of some of my storage on the Seagate drive. Once stored, I find wherever these assets are on the computer and deleted them to free up hard drive space on the computer.

Dale
Miami

 

[eva2000]

Thanks, folks for sharing your wisdom! Didn't even think from the indexing/search/finding perspective over time for videos/photos!

I noticed most folks are transferring their drone video/photos at least twice from drone to pc/laptop to external storage. Any reason you're not transferring from drone directly to external storage first? Faster local disk for video editing I guess?

 

[FLDave]

Direct from drone to external hard drive attached to laptop, no stopping on laptop storage.