What do you do with your project files?

litwithray

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I've scoured the depths of Google looking for the answer to this. I finally gave up my search and decided to ask here.

After you've completed your video, uploaded it and all is said and done, what do you do with your video project? Do you trash all of the files? Do you keep them on a storage somewhere for all of time?

I'm the kind of person that hates to delete or throw things away (I'm not a hoarder) and although I have a few terabytes of storage available at the moment, I know that it won't last forever. I would love to keep the videos, but I have to be realistic. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
 
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Me personally i delete all the files, and just keep a copy of the finished video.

but my friends almost do the same, except they keep anything that might be useful in another video; like a really nice picture of the city, or if you made a new intro, or if theres a picture/video that's worth keeping for memories, then they keep that too.
 
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markkaz

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With over ten years of videos on YouTube, I keep everything on external drives. Everything...
 
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As markkaz, I keep everything on cheap external drives (1).

But opposite to EndlessWatching, I keep ... everything but the finished video (and intermediary edit files).
To save space, I just keep the footage, sound files, eventually graphics, and the files needed to build the final result (for me it's a Makefile with a 300 lines long ffmpeg command, but that'ts the unix way, it can be the project file saved from any graphical editor).

(1) as for external disks: try to avoid SMR drives and stick to PMR drives (see here for explanations). It is not always easy to know, as manufacturers are not proud of using SMR and try to hide the information. You can stick to 3.5" disks; if you want 2.5" disks, avoid >4GB capacity. WD (My Passport, but not the new Ultra line) are ok. Stay away from Seagate, particularly Seagate Backup Plus Slim (have a look at the failure rates in the previously cited web page...)
 
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mirrorlessNY(youtuber)

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after all is done, I simply move the whole folder to a storage drive, I try to record in 1080p to save space, any thumbnail/graphic designs will stay in that folder too
 

markkaz

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after all is done, I simply move the whole folder to a storage drive, I try to record in 1080p to save space, any thumbnail/graphic designs will stay in that folder too
Do you keep a text file of your description too? It is a tiny file size but could come in very handy!
 

mirrorlessNY(youtuber)

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Do you keep a text file of your description too? It is a tiny file size but could come in very handy!
everything thats in the folder I keep yea, text of script or camera gear/settings used,thumbnails,,,music used,,,the project is always ready to be opened again,,,,,,,another thing I do to save space is deleting vid files that are useless, like ruined shot or unused/unimportant shots.
 
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markkaz

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@mirror I am glad thar I started saving all of that years ago.
I plan on re-purposing my content and it's going to be great that a lot of the info/files I need will be there.
Unfortunately, for the first few years, I did not save the original Sony Vegas movie/video files for easier rebuilding but the master files are still there for me to use.