Opinions/advice on how to backup mlv files vs file size vs quality

Started by ricardopt, March 06, 2019, 07:10:25 PM

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ricardopt

Hi everyone

Been using my eos m more frequently and and it is quickly using a lot of space on my hardrive, i have a few 1tb internal drives already full with backups (noy just mlv) and recently bought a 4TB drive for all the mlv's and phone/gopro videos. I usually convert to prores before editing it, i dont really like to erase videos that dont look very good to save space as it kind of feels like erasing a part of personal history/memories.

By converting to prores 4444 i usually get half of the original file size, but im also kind of loosing that "raw" information if i ever want to use the video again, from what i understand prores keeps somes of that info but not as much as mlv for future edits.

What do you do? keep the mlv's or convert to prores?

Thanks for any advice

whitelight

My personal advice is to divide the footage into three categories:

1) The best of the crop/What you cannot afford to lose: 2 copies of the original MLV/RAW + one Prores copy (all on different storage and in at least two different locations)
2) Footage not so wonderful, but well worth to keep for various reasons: 1 copy of the original MLV/RAW + 1 Prores copy + 1 Mp4 copy
3) Unimportant stuff/May have only a personal/sentimental value: 2 Mp4 copies

The last category may take more than 50% of the total, so that leads to some good space saving, anyway trying to save on storage space is never a good investment in the long run.