I am having difficulty importing video clips into Da Vinci 15

[George Dean]

Hi Terence,

I think huge files is what we deal with dependent on how we will deliver the end results in the future. I’m not sure how I will deliver in the future, so I suffer with storage space, acquiring video in the highest quality chroma subsample and color space as my camera is capable of, and that happens to be for me, HDxHR 422 10 bits. Most of the stuff I produce goes to 1080p 420 8 bit, but I keep my master material at HDxHR 422 10 bits, so if in the future I produce 4K HDR, I can possibly use some of my past recorded materials.

But, I’m a small potatoes guy, retired and only do this as a hobby. I’m serious about it, nonetheless I’m not in the business and at 73 there are not a lot of years in the future for me.

I think the best way for you to determine if a lessor codec, to save storage space, such as h264/x264 (or maybe h265) would work for you is to try it out and see the difference in both comparison to your source, and in comparison to your delivery format. h264 can produce higher quality than that which is normally used for delivery, by increasing the bit rate, but by doing that, it also increases the size of the files. It will however never be better than your source and how much quality loss can be tolerated, is up to you.

As for your other question, as you know, drives can (and do) go bad. How much redundant storage we keep is pretty much dependent on the budget. I approach is, if it is important enough to keep for the future, it is important enough to use the safest method I can afford. Your mileage may differ.

Best Regards……George

[Terence Christopher]

HI Thanks for your reply. I am in the same boat except a bit older but with the similar ideas. My purpose has been to leave a good record of family life for my grandchildren. I guess my appreciation of the beauty of an image forces me into getting the best quality rather than than just what is is necessary. That is why I switched to HD back in 2006 and UHD in 2015 when reasonably priced reliable equipment became available. I am forking out for data centre quality HD with 5 year warranties which I hope will give longer trouble free service for everyone plus a commercial quality RAID 6 NAS which should give prediction of disc failure (I hope) However I am thinking that this is more useful for the final product and perhaps storing the larger masters on large standard USB drives would suffice for the back up. (Just in case anyone wants to re edit the data.) My son in law said that PNG is a lossless compression which he uses and says that it works for videos too, I looked it up and there was a reference to that though it is not as small as MP4. Streaming would be nice for family members though I would not like to sacrifice the quality for that.
I will do as you recommend and will play around before deciding. However I do not know what bit rate I should select for HD and UHD what do you use? Could you tell me how many Terabytes you use for your system especially for UHD and is all of that with reduntant RAiD support
Thanks for your guidance
Terence

[George Dean]

Hi Terence,

Long story that I will not bore you with, so my current storage is in USB drives of various sizes. I no longer have an NAS or RAID, although I will need to invest in an NAS probably sometime later this year. Not having any recent experience with NAS/RAID, I knowledge on the setups and cost is based on 12 year old technology, so I will op for others that have current systems to hopefully provide you with some real reference.

Best Regards……George

[Terence Christopher]

Well I have too many USB drives lying around all without the size needed to handle this quantity of data. That has contributed to my problem as I have now been organising some 50,000 photos not including pre digital as well as various types of video and film going all the way back to 8.mm I thought that a 6 bay NAS with 6X !0 Terabyte hard drives would be adequate. That gave me 30 Tb but my 3 Terabytes of m2t overwhelmed that and I now have an * 8Terabyt USB drive that is also full. My Nas has the capability to switch to apple and a thunderbolt drive if necessary or a 10 gigabit/sec Ethernet, however I am doing OK with the old standard 1.0 Gigabit/sec so far. But I am not sharing.
If I need to double my NAS size I will be forced to purchase a satellite NAS which can be configured to add on. I did not want to purchase 10 Tb drives as they are expensive but had opted for the 6 bay system which was a mistake as I now find.
Terence