Archiving footage whilst saving disk space

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deathwinger

Active member
Consider that you have just finished an edit for a client and handed them the final videos on DVD format and you now have a project that is 50-200 GB large.

What techniques would you employ to archive the project you have for the client so that if they come back say a year later and want to make changes you can BUT at the same time you want to save on disk space so you don't run out of that terabyte you just purchased in a few projects time?

I'd like to hear different methods so that I may pick and choose which ones I believe would my production house best.
 
When I archive projects, I archive the following:

1. Source files
2. Project file
3. Ancillary files (anything needed to add to #1 and #2 to reproduce the original)

If room allows, I also add the exact copy of what I delivered, and a high and low res mpeg4 or wmv version.

This allows me to offer a fast web delivery, a fast exact replica of what was delivered for duplication purposes, and allows me to create a new high quality master from the source files should the need arise.

I archive this generally to DVD or BluRay as necessary. If I was regularly having to archive over 45GB projects, I would purchase an LTO backup system. Fortunately, I don't have to do this. My long shows are recorded either on XDCamEX or HDV which don't take up that much room.
 
Most of my stuff is on HDV as well, but I do use a lot of motion graphics which are pure HD from after effects and can take up as much as a gig per 10 seconds of footage which can allow for the large project sizes.

So I guess a big old compression of a folder couldn't cut it especially if its a project you don't plan to touch for a while later.
 
Well, you can do whatever you like and works. Not sure why you can't compress those motion graphics down to something reasonable with a good codec. That should solve a lot of the problem.
 
I usually save the motion graphics in a full quality render in avi format from after effect render queue. What other formats/codecs would you recommend to keep unnoticeable quality differences and bring down file size?
 
deathwinger said:
I usually save the motion graphics in a full quality render in avi format from after effect render queue. What other formats/codecs would you recommend to keep unnoticeable quality differences and bring down file size?
Click to expand...

AVI is a container. So it tells me nothing of how you are currently saving anything. There are literally dozens of codecs that will work inside the AVI container.
 
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