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Assests and File Organization Across Dozens of Hard Drives
Greetings,
This is my first post in a long time. I’m looking for some guidance on the best method of organizing Video files, and assest across multiple drives at my new workplace. I use PPro CS5.5, and I put together a weekly web show(20min).
Each week I receive a few hours of footage from several camera guys. I put the Video Footage onto a 1TB Drive and back it up onto another 1 TB drive using a BlacXduet Esata Dock from Termaltake. I have about 30 drives..( including backup drives) 🙁 Stored in Pelican Cases till I need them. I connect them to the Esata dock when I need the drives.
I need to find an effective way to organize footage so that I won’t be swapping out HD’s constantly. The real trouble is when I’m using the same assets in multiple shows. My instinct is to keep all the Shared assets on a 1 TB internal drive, and the camera footage on separate drives.
Let me post this example of my dilemma. Lets say I have 3 Drives, Video 1, Video 2, and Shared Assets.
The trouble that I run into is that Project #2[Video 2] requires footage from Project #1 [Video 1]. So I copy the footage over from [Video 1] onto [Shared assets]. Now I have 2 copies of that Footage. I finish the project backup all the data. Eventually I will fill up my [Shared Assets] Drive doing this for a few months. OKay well I’m finished and backed up so I delete files in the [Shared Asset] to make space. Everything seems fine until my boss asks me to put together short video with segments from project 1,2,3,4…. and Keep in mind I only have 2 external drives attached at one time with my dual drive bay. Now I might have this data spread across 3 drives. Now I have a hassle relinking footage in premiere re-copying it all to the shared asset drive. Huge waste of time in my opinion.
I didn’t decide on this workflow, I’m just replacing an editor the let go. I would much rather have all the drives connected to the PC at all times, or do some sort of networked solution. but I have 15 Footage Drives and 15 Backup drives.
What do you think I should do, any in expensive options? or am I just being stupid and overlooking some simple workflow practice? I’ve tried 2x BlackxDuets to have 4 drives connected to E-Sata PCI card, but can’t get that working on this HP z400 workstation. I also have 3 drive inside the PC, 2 x 1TB drives and a 250BG system drive.
Let me know if you guys have any suggestions Thanks a bunch.Brandyn Streeter
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4 Replies
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I’d take a look at using Adobe Bridge to help manage and track your assets. It has a feature called “Collections”, which allows you to browse and “collect” materials from multiple folders and drives without having to duplicate them.
Here’s a link to an article I wrote a while back for the COW Magazine:
https://magazine.creativecow.net/article/managing-broadcast-assets-with-adobe-bridge
There might also be some use for an offline cataloguing package so tht you can have a log of what footage is on which drive without having them mounted/attached. I’m currently using Gentibus CD on Windows 7 to catalog everything from network drives to CDs and DVDs. It allows me to have the contents of everything on my computer without having to insert the disks, or have the network drives running.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
I’ve already run into this, as I’ve expanded my video business in the last few years. It sounds like you need to get a larger set of drives, first off, if you can afford it. I’m now up to an 8TB RAID 1 from OWC (running on Windows 7 64bit)
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/RAID/Desktop/
This allows me to have everything for my projects all together. I am likely to need to another one by end of next year, but will put all major projects on one and minor projects on another. You also might be able to, by archiving older, less likely video, be able to setup a second PC with your less used footage, running next to your main unit, connected by 1Gb Ethernet. That would keep it close, fast and online.
There are more expensive solutions, including towers of RAID, and SAN solutions, but really, for a small shop, I think this would serve you better for expansion. According to the link above 16 TBs of RAID is only $1400. Only downside is that these models don’t yet have USB 3. I’m waiting on the next cycle to make sure I get both eSata and USB3 on a unit. I’ve liked USB 3 on a few portable drives. Fast, easy. Hope this helps.
Cataloguing it all? I don’t know. I’m not a fan of Bridge for Video (yet). For example, it doesn’t store metadata for MTS files. I will read the article above and give it another try. It seems now that it might be better than it was. I’ve not found the right solution for cataloging it outside of Adobe (need lots of metadata). Would love to see Lighroom step up to the task. I use it for all my still stock. Maybe there’s a way to export all my LR metadata into Bridge or maybe Bridge will see it . Have to look into it further.
Al
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Thanks for the responses, I’ll give that article a look. It sounds like I’ll have to look into that software too. Right now the budget doesn’t allow for much new hardware, sadly.
Brandyn Streeter
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