what to keep and what to delete (and how)?

[Claude Lyneis]

I am just working on those issues myself. My plan going forward is to use one external disk for original media (in my case AVCHD files dragged directly off the camera). A second hard drive to hold FCPX projects and Events. I now don’t have to convert to Apple Pro Res 422 since the new iMac can edit directly without conversion or generation of proxy files. In this case the Event and Project files are not too large. The finished projects I will store on the internal hard drive in H.264 format and maybe on data DVD’s. Still figuring out if I need to back up disk one or disk two described above and since I use Aperture for photos how to deal with its files. My view is that it makes sense to store Projects and Events on the same disk, since if you lose one of the other, it will require much rebuilding. So with both on one disk, a back up of that disk that stays off line when using FCPX would give good redundancy.

[Bill Davis]

[Liesbeth Jongkind] “My questions are:

1. where do you keep your original media? I understand that to be save for disasters, I have to save the original footage (as a disk image, is what I learned) as well as two copies of the original footage. Do I need three different harddrives for that? Should I put one copy on my internal HD?
Should I upload one of those backup copies to ‘the cloud’? (which cloud is preferable, by the way? and uploading, should it take ages? Do you do that at night?)
Is your double backup automatic? How should I set up a system for that? (I am relatively new to apple, so this is something I just do not know yet. I use time machine though)”

Liesbeth,

Not the definitive answers, just how I do things…

Camera Cards to Disk Images – those go in a folder with the Project ID – That folder is backed up to at least two ARCHIVE hard drives. These are my Field Footage Archives.

FCP-X (the program) stays on my main drive – laptop or desktop – both have a copy.

One set of the original disk images gets stored on one of my External Project Drives. I launch these to capture the video into FCP-X. The Program is NOT on these drives, just the Projects and Event Folders FCP-X needs to work properly. I use Firewire 800 portable drives for this. So Different External Drives can hold different Events with their associated Projects.

Depending on the format of the source footage, I might have FCP-X transcode to ProRes (and or Proxy) and store those in the Event Folder. Or not. If not, I’ll need to launch the disk images in order to have my timeline populate. If I do read the clip data into the Event, I don’t have to launch the Disk Images to work – but it takes up a lot more space to have TWO copies – one in the disk image, one in the event.

Which route you choose depends entirely on the amount of storage space you have access to and how rapidly you need to be able to switch projects.

Cloud storage is currently too expensive to store HD Field footage on it, IMO.

[Liesbeth Jongkind] “2. where do you keep your projectfiles? They should not be on the harddrive where FCP X is, is that correct? (But why is that so?) Should I also backup my projectfiles twice? Where?”

With X it doesn’t really matter where they are. So long as the program knows where to look for the files, it will “auto” re-link when it sees the proper folder structure (Events and Project Folders) Years ago, keeping your media on the same disk as your System or Application was a potential bottleneck. Now it doesn’t appear to matter. (faster storage and much faster computers, I suppose.)

[Liesbeth Jongkind] “3. where do you keep your ‘mastertapes’? (and the two backupcopies?) I put ” around it because they are not tapes, I mean the highest possible (original quality) quality output of the finished project.
“

Those are the “disk images” originally duplicated and stored. You can make as many clones of these as you feel comfortable with – and store them locally, or in a bank vault or at a relatives house or wherever the importance of your projects and your comfort level dictates.

[Liesbeth Jongkind] “4. When you are finished working on your project, what do you keep ‘just in case’ and what do you delete? do you delete the renderfiles? if not, why not? If yes, how?
Do you delete the proxy media? if not, why not? If yes, how?
Do you delete the optimized media? if not, why not? If yes, how?
“

I use the “MOVE” command to store the completed project files on two separate hard drives, just as with my Disk Images. If I’ve copied my footage into my Events – that provides additional backup protection aside from my disk images – but not in the original format – in whatever editing format I’m working in – but it’s a backup form you can get back on-line and work with quickly, since all you have to do is plug in the backup drive for FCP-X to “see” it and let you start editing. (If you do this and change things, remember to “move” the same revised project to your other backup drive oNor you’ll have two different backups!)

No to separate Proxy Media and/or Optimized media extra backups – all that data is already in the backups made via MOVE.

[Liesbeth Jongkind] “5. do you save anything on DVD’s? Why, how, and what is your precaution against data-loss over time?
“

No. I’m increasingly sure that in a world generating terabytes of data by the second – the VAST majority of it it will be pretty worthless in the future. Sure there are exceptions – but fewer than we want to admit.

If the marketplace isn’t paying someone big money for their data today – it likely won’t be paying for it tomorrow. So all you’re doing is storing your arrangements of bits for vanity. Which is fine, but not worth much in a functional sense.

I kinda think that the value of what I create – is the value I can leverage out of it in the next year or two – not much longer.

Sure, there are exceptions. But the demand curve for old digital content is a pretty sharp cliff and a continual dive after that – even for top-quality major market generated content.

FWIW.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Liesbeth Jongkind]

Thanks, both of you, for these answers!
Claude, it seems to me that we are indeed working on the same issues, and also that Bill is far more experienced in these matters. So I hope you don’t mind that for now I will ask him to clarify some of the things he writes.

Bill, I am not always sure if I understand what you mean, so now I will ask some ‘stupid’ questions.
I will not ask all my questions right now, so more are coming in a couple of days.

you write: Camera Cards to Disk Images – those go in a folder with the Project ID –
My questions:
– do you save those disk-images on your internal harddrive?
– do you make a compressed disk image? Or do you choose read/write? Or read only?
Because I made compressed images (which is the default setting in Disk Utility on my mac) and they take forever (15 minutes for 11 GB) to open (I wanted to check if they really contained the files that are on the original card). Is this normal?

When you write ‘those go in a folder with the project ID’, do you mean you give the folder a name that for you identifies the project? Or is there something called a project ID that I should know about?

You write `That folder is backed up to at least two ARCHIVE hard drives. These are my Field Footage Archives. ‘

Do I understand correctly that ARCHIVE is the function of these two harddrives, so they can be any kind of harddrive, it is just that you use them for archiving your field footage?

For now I am skipping the middle of your post and go straight to the last part, which I like very much, because it is about the why of storage in stead of the how.

Do I understand correctly that you do not keep you data (= footage, events, projects) for about more than two years? So that when your files are over two years old, you delete them? (execpt for some exceptions). It is not the two-year-part that I am asking about, but the actively-deleting-old-data-part.

This sounds very liberating! (data is piling up here)

thanks for you answers to come,

Liesbeth