Share your growing video storage strategy?

[marklyn]

I've only had my Mavic Pro for about 5 months now and typically fly it about twice a week, maybe 2-4 flights per session. I use the highest video setting (except raw) and my "dedicated" terabyte drive is already 1/3 full.
I had to come up with some type of strategy otherwise I'll be out of space in under a year. The majority of my videos are test flights or flights trying out features for practice and learning.
I tried a combination of things:
uploading to YouTube (upload time constraints but 'doable') because it's free
uploading to Vimeo and other similar online storage for easy viewing (usually a subscription)
not keeping (deleting) undesirable videos
creating date named folders for those flight videos with a summary log of each flight (learning purposes)
initially keeping *all* videos (unsustainable)

Even if I had all of the storage in the world I don't see the purpose in keeping every video so I've decided on a strategy (for now) that might work best for me.
* store all flight videos in a date named folder
* include 1-3 descriptive words at the end of the named folder (ie: 2017-12-09 City Park)
* create a info.txt file in each folder with 1 line descriptions of each flight for that day and a summary of best practices learned or best settings used, etc.
* delete any flights that have no learning value or are really bad video (noted in info.txt file)
* view-worthy videos sent to YouTube with no editing -or-
* view-worthy videos edited by something like Dashware and output video sent to YouTube; original deleted
* remaining videos converted to 720p and original deleted

The last bullet is the most significant. I use Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate, which easily allows you to import two or more videos, combine them and output a *much* smaller mp4 file, usually 90% smaller in almost every case. Quality is still very good. It takes about 4.5 minutes (on my pc) to combine a 3.8 gb and 1.8gb file and down-covert it to 720p.

Would like to hear anyone else's ideas on how you deal with the bulging video storage or do you delete most everything?

 

[chris wentka]

I bought a bluray burner for my gopro videos and plan on using that for mavic videos also

 

[marklyn]

I bought a bluray burner for my gopro videos and plan on using that for mavic videos also

So do you keep everything and, if so, how do you categorize or file them so if you're looking for something specific? Any further details about how you do this might give me additional ideas.

 

[wytnyt]

with the addition of my wifi 1 tb i now have 55 tb of storage space,bottom line get more storage as how will you feel if you lose your hdd to a failure and lose all your stored files?

 

[marklyn]

with the addition of my wifi 1 tb i now have 55 tb of storage space,bottom line get more storage as how will you feel if you lose your hdd to a failure and lose all your stored files?

No sure I understand. You have "wifi 1tb" *and* 55tb space? Could you clarify?
With my current strategy (not set in stone) the only videos remaining are down-converted videos of flights that aren't extraordinary in any way. The "good" stuff is uploaded to YouTube, in which I'm selective about what I deem is good enough for perm storage online. That's my thinking for now.

 

[wytnyt]

No sure I understand. You have "wifi 1tb" *and* 55tb space? Could you clarify?
With my current strategy (not set in stone) the only videos remaining are down-converted videos of flights that aren't extraordinary in any way. The "good" stuff is uploaded to YouTube, in which I'm selective about what I deem is good enough for perm storage online. That's my thinking for now.

when im on the go i plan on using the wifi hdd to use for storage and once im home everything gets copied to my home drives,i usually have copies of everything in case a drive fails,multiple copies are important as drives will fail

 

[chris wentka]

So do you keep everything and, if so, how do you categorize or file them so if you're looking for something specific? Any further details about how you do this might give me additional ideas.

blank blu rays are pretty cheap so if its something i want to keep I burn a copy of original video so I can re-edit it later and I make a copy of my final edited video. Write on them with a marker whats on the disk and I have a big disk binder.

 

[Brojon]

If you have Lightroom you can set keywords and ratings to your videos.
Best way I know to have some notion of content.
The only other solution that comes to mind is some of the freeware that catalogs DVD's, books etc.
Here's one: Azzul

 

[Furious Tacos]

I store all of my footage that I'm done editing on Amazon's S3. Dirt cheap and I can access it anywhere.

 

[marklyn]

I store all of my footage that I'm done editing on Amazon's S3. Dirt cheap and I can access it anywhere.

Do you keep the original files or only keep the edited files?

 

[Furious Tacos]

I keep everything - the raw files and the edited.

 

[Qoncussion]

Having designed and built numerous corporate networks, I have seen the worst of the worst when it comes to data being lost. A large company hired me after they lost 1-year of their entire account department's data. Poof! Gone... For over 20 years, I have always run nightly backups for all of the computers in my house. So for every new hard drive I buy, I get two ~the second one is for backups. Total I have about 25 (+/-) TB of total storage. I've been a videographer for a long time. I keep client jobs, and my own shots, archived long after they have been completed. I zip them to an external drive, then store the drives once they are full. It may sound like a long way to go ~but I have had clients come back, years later, asking for updates to a previous production. So I keep everything I shoot with the Mavic, as I have room to spare.

We live in the woods, where fires are a part of our summer landscape. Because of this, all of my backup drives are external. If we have to evacuate ~I would grab the drives and throw them in the car on our way out the door. Then I would grab my wife

 

[marklyn]

Having designed and built numerous corporate networks, I have seen the worst of the worst when it comes to data being lost. A large company hired me after they lost 1-year of their entire account department's data. Poof! Gone... For over 20 years, I have always run nightly backups for all of the computers in my house. So for every new hard drive I buy, I get two ~the second one is for backups. Total I have about 25 (+/-) TB of total storage. I've been a videographer for a long time. I keep client jobs, and my own shots, archived long after they have been completed. I zip them to an external drive, then store the drives once they are full. It may sound like a long way to go ~but I have had clients come back, years later, asking for updates to a previous production. So I keep everything I shoot with the Mavic, as I have room to spare.

We live in the woods, where fires are a part of our summer landscape. Because of this, all of my backup drives are external. If we have to evacuate ~I would grab the drives and throw them in the car on our way out the door. Then I would grab my wife

Your situation makes total sense, particularly because of the commercial aspect, but for an average Mavic owner I'm trying to get a sense for what people do out there for their personal video footage. My current strategy places the videos I care about the most on YouTube and leaves video on my hard drive that is, in large part, expendable. But, I'm very open to doing something different, thus wanting to hear what other people are doing or even care.

 

[Furious Tacos]

Having designed and built numerous corporate networks, I have seen the worst of the worst when it comes to data being lost.

Same here. Which is why you should always have off-site backup as part of your strategy - what if that fire occurs while you're at the store and nobody is home?

My backup/DR plan goes like this:

PC ----> Drobo ----> AWS S3.

All files are scripted to back up to S3 weekly, and a machine image is taken once a week as well (also stored on S3). If I ever lose files we have bigger worries than the video files that got lost.

 

[marklyn]

And I do have a solid, off-site and another "in-cloud" backup for my data or files critical to finances, etc. but strictly speaking of Mavic video footage I don't unless it's something I really want to keep (ie: YouTube).

 

[Xtreme Drone Pilot]

I store all of my footage that I'm done editing on Amazon's S3. Dirt cheap and I can access it anywhere.

Does it also offer a desktop program to map cloud storage to your hard drive, like Dropbox, Onedrive, etc?

I have 1TB in Onedrive, comes with $10/mo. Office 365 subscription, planning on using it for "must not lose" footage, with 4TB WD drive for $80 as local storage, with a couple of 2TB Seagate drives for backup.

 

[Furious Tacos]

Does it also offer a desktop program to map cloud storage to your hard drive, like Dropbox, Onedrive, etc?

Not directly from Amazon, but there's a ton of third parties that have similar solutions. BUT, Amazon does offer quite a bit more flexibility than something like a Dropbox. All depends on what you're looking to get accomplished.

 

[ManuCH]

Btw, I suggest you look at an alternative S3 provider called Wasabi - wasabi.com. I'm not affiliated with them, but their S3 storage is much cheaper than Amazon's.

There are 2 catches:
1. you pay more for downloads than on Amazon, meaning that a data loss will cost you more, but regular usage won't
2. the minimum you pay for is 1TB for $4/month

 

[wytnyt]

Having designed and built numerous corporate networks, I have seen the worst of the worst when it comes to data being lost. A large company hired me after they lost 1-year of their entire account department's data. Poof! Gone... For over 20 years, I have always run nightly backups for all of the computers in my house. So for every new hard drive I buy, I get two ~the second one is for backups. Total I have about 25 (+/-) TB of total storage. I've been a videographer for a long time. I keep client jobs, and my own shots, archived long after they have been completed. I zip them to an external drive, then store the drives once they are full. It may sound like a long way to go ~but I have had clients come back, years later, asking for updates to a previous production. So I keep everything I shoot with the Mavic, as I have room to spare.

We live in the woods, where fires are a part of our summer landscape. Because of this, all of my backup drives are external. If we have to evacuate ~I would grab the drives and throw them in the car on our way out the door. Then I would grab my wife

good minds think alike

 

[FASTFJR]

Storage is cheap. I use (2) 4TB external drives. I also have a Promise raid 20TB, best $1500 I spent