How to save session files from video project?
 

Hi Everyone. My cool friend KPMedia from another forum said to ask my question here since I will get worthy responses and suggestions from the community.

The past...I worked in music in many years and built a DAW for numerous amounts of projects. Now...my wife does YouTube videos and I built a machine for her to use. We installed Premier and things have been going well.

So the question...when a project is done, what is the common method to save the sessions files (my wording is musical). To help explain through music terms;

- Worked in Cubase
- created a folder for the specific song/project
- all session files for the song were saved in that folder
- when the project is done, export the song to wave (about 40mb) or mp3 (5mb), and save all the session files to a data DVD (usually about 3GB)

How do I do this process for videos? The exported video is usually 500mb-700mb, but what of the session files or project folder? Should I just copy them to a couple DVD's or is there an option that will do this for me.

Thank You in advance for all your replies.

DAW = digital audio workstation
sessions files (audio) = project files (video)

Premiere is excellent, if used correctly. Pro or Elements?

Youtube videos usually means this sort of source:
- video camera shot footage (format?)
- all assets used to create edit timeline (graphics, audio, etc)
- and then the Premiere .prproj file (Premiere project)

With audio, the difference between WAV and MP3 was small, and both were small to begin with.
With video, the source is 10x+ larger than the output (mp4 for Youtube), and all files are exponentially huge compared to audio.

So the plan for archive really comes down to the source for the shoot. What is it?
How long is the raw shoot?
How large is the file you see on disk?

To add, single-layer DVD is an acceptable archive format. Yes.
But how large is the project data?
A backup HDD may be better. If it's important, both HDD and DVD (or two HDD).

But be sure to save the raw shot footage, not just the edited version. Because you may someday find yourself needing it, even if seems unlikely right now. Trust me, throw away source footage you need once, and you'll never do it again! Be wise, learn from others' mistakes, don't repeat it yourself.

Since the "raw" is probably H.264, there's really no way to compress it more. It's not the same as, for example, a restoration workflow, where you can save lossless as MPEG to save space.

The project data is about 15GB. That's about the average for each folder. The raw files looked to be Mov. They're from a Canon Rebel T4i. Throwing away source files...you never know what you might need in the future. I know in music, once a song is done there's an option to delete unused files and it will cut a 1GB project down to 500mb...but those files are gone forever...although in music the source and final files were never an issue with size...and most of what gets "thrown" away was mostly never going to be needed. Not so for video. Maybe a backup HHD might be a good option, although I've heard so many negative stories from people I know who have them. Sudden drive failure....even more so from those than the drive in the computer.

A few DVD's also sounds like a good idea. I just wanted to see what route others have taken with finished work.

For only 15gb, I'd archive it to an external HDD simply for that purpose. You do have one, right? ;)

And then to be extra cautionary, burn it to disc. Preferably DVD, as it's archival (using good DVD media!), hoping that you have 4gb chunks. If the files are larger, then burn to a BD-R. It's not archival, but it's better than nothing.

Or a 2nd backup hard drive.
Or a corner of that desktop drives you never use anyway.
Or an online backup (yuck).

Whatever you don't, don't reconvert the video. You want to store the source, not something that's been re-processed.

This is a good backup drive: http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53...-/361317970996
USA only, not Canada -- maybe you have a USA box?

What's so wrong with an online backup? Looking at the failure rates for HDD is reassuring from a probability perspective, unless you are one of the unlucky few. I had a hard drive die not so long ago, but luckily everything was saved on an online backup.

With the yearly cost of an online service about the same as a hard drive (before considering the considerable costs of HDD recovery providers), I would think having both backup types is safer. Obviously, the company must be reputable.

If you don't like that, just open a Gmail account for each 15gb project....:D