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media storage
Hello,
I am a freelance video blogger who is just starting out acquiring my own hardware.
I am having problems figuring out an appropriate storage situation for all my media. I just bought a 1 TB drive and already I have filled the drive up with less than six projects. These are quick projects that I put up every week so at this rate I will be losing money buying drives at 180 dollars a pop every few weeks. I suppose I probably shoot too much material for my 1-5 minutes pieces, but you never know where a story might lead. Is there a cheaper way to buy hard drives or to store media?
I am hesitant to just start throwing away shots that may be valuable in the future. I shoot on a small Canon HD VixiaHF10 which shoots onto SD cards, so I have to empty my cards in order to shoot again, so I have no physical tape backups of the media.
Should I just media manage projects over to a storage drive and dump all my extraneous footage? I guess I am a packrat and just can’t bear to see footage that you might be useful in the future go.
Is there some other way to store old projects and media that I am missing?
Do most filmmakers save all their raw media from old projects somewhere or do they only keep shots that were actually used in the projects?
Christie Koriakin
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4 Replies
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Christie,
You’re buying 1Tb hard drives that come pre-configured in a manufacturers expensive enclosure, which are no great bargain for sure. Instead, you can buy an inexpensive firewire enclosure that will allow you to easily swap out one or more bare drives yourself. I saw 1.5Tb Seagate hard drives at Fry’s yesterday for just $139, and 1Tb drives for just $85. If you can learn to mount them yourself they will certainly help to save you a bundle.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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[christie Koriakin] “Should I just media manage projects over to a storage drive and dump all my extraneous footage?”
I totally would.
Like David says why keep buying drives the way you are, just get bare drives.
Drive docks like this are great
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/FWU2ES2HDK/
and hard drives are CHEEP
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Hitachi/0A38016/There are no “technical solutions” to your “artistic problems”.
Don’t let technology get in the way of your creativity! -
[christie Koriakin] “I guess I am a packrat and just can’t bear to see footage that you might be useful in the future go.”
If you want to archive everything, then you’re going to need to really think strategically. Not only do you need to store all of your footage, you need to find & retrieve it.
As David says, bare drives are cheap. You can buy a SATA to USB, FW or eSATA drive dock and place bare drives in it to dump your archives, then store the bare drives in a safe place. But you need to be able to find the footage later, or you’re wasting your money, time and effort.
You’ll need to build a database, a methodology of tagging and meaningful metadata. Good luck, you have a lot of effort ahead of you.
Arnie
Post production is not an afterthought!
https://www.arniepix.com/ -
wow, we certainly came back around to tape quickly…LOL
for archive you CAN’T beat the price of tape AND storage area size too…
have you thought about getting an inexpensive dv deck of some sort and just laying footage back to tape?
takes more time yes, saves TONS of money though in the long run.
Marc Brewer
MarcusVision Media
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