common sense way to store recorded videos?

[estockme]

Hi all- i'm having a recurring problem of being unsure of my photo and video storage. as it stands right now all my photos and video (99% from iphone) end up copied into my iphoto library and i have a smart album to pull out all videos from that. my issue is in not knowing what to do with videos from there... I know imovie has a similar library structure of some sort and it seems like i would be better off keeping them in there to save some energy in loading on iphoto... but do people do this? forgive me for being a rube here. i've always ignored imovie and i really just want a sensible place to put things.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

iPhoto should be for storing photos. It can take videos too but I wouldn't do that.

iTunes is probably the best place to store your videos. It's made for holding all forms of media (except photos).

I suggest downloading a tagging program like MetaZ or similar and tagging your videos so that they have names, dates, descriptions, etc (just like iTunes music or podcasts). Tag them as "movies" or "tv shows" or "home movies". Personally, I tag mine at "TV shows" so that the "Season" field can be set to the year in which the video was shot. This keeps videos with names like "Christmas", "Easter" etc neatly arranged by year rather than having to hunt through 10 videos named "Christmas" to find the one you're seeking.

If you have or get an TV, this will come with the bonus of very easy access to any of your videos on your television.

iMovie can store video clips too but it is more about editing video into a final form. Conceptually, you import your raw videos there, edit them, then render out the polished-perfection, final version. Tag that and drop it into iTunes. Play it on your computers, iDevices, or TV.

Video is a storage hog. Consider storing your videos on a big external drive. You can click an option in iTunes to NOT import media into your iTunes library. This means it just points to wherever the movie is stored (which would be on that external drive). It won't look any different in iTunes but the big difference is that it won't eat up your internal storage if you go this way.

Lastly, I'm guessing these are home movies you've shot yourself. If so, some/all of them will become increasingly precious with the passage of time. Be sure to work out a solid backup plan so that a bricked hard drive doesn't wipe out those memories. That happens much too often because people skip this part of things. Don't do it. It's much cheaper to buy a backup hard drive now than to pay data retrieval services to try to recover your home movies later. Just do it.

Think offsite backup if at all possible so that a fire/flood/theft doesn't wipe them out either. One good (low cost) strategy there is to gift your home movies to other family members who might want to watch them too. Grandparents, Aunts & Uncles, etc. A good old safe deposit box can be a great option too.

 

[pinholestars]

Hi all- i'm having a recurring problem of being unsure of my photo and video storage. as it stands right now all my photos and video (99% from iphone) end up copied into my iphoto library and i have a smart album to pull out all videos from that. my issue is in not knowing what to do with videos from there... I know imovie has a similar library structure of some sort and it seems like i would be better off keeping them in there to save some energy in loading on iphoto... but do people do this? forgive me for being a rube here. i've always ignored imovie and i really just want a sensible place to put things.

iMovie should actually show you all of your iPhoto videos. I say should because I haven't used iMovie since the new update.

 

[ChrisA]

Hi all- i'm having a recurring problem of being unsure of my photo and video storage. as it stands right now all my photos and video (99% from iphone) end up copied into my iphoto library and i have a smart album to pull out all videos from that. my issue is in not knowing what to do with videos from there... I know imovie has a similar library structure of some sort and it seems like i would be better off keeping them in there to save some energy in loading on iphoto... but do people do this? forgive me for being a rube here. i've always ignored imovie and i really just want a sensible place to put things.

I would say the answer depends on how much editing you do. Some people use video like a moving snapshot and just store away hundreds of them like photos. Other people edit the video into a story or a show. Is the "product" an archive of your snapshots or is the product a something that tells a story, with titles, maybe a voice over and so on.

If this is an archive iPhoto is good enough.

If the video will be cut into some kind of story then import directly to iMovie. Edit your footage into a show then export it to iTunes, Youtube or burn a Bluray/DVD.

iMove is not good as an archive because only iMovie can get inside and look at the video. But if this is a story you are shooing you likely will never want to see 8 takes of the same shots and you only want the final edited result

Backup is a hard problem with video. Buy the largest external disk you can and set up Time Machine. That is your fist level. Level two is to make copies to other drives and move them off-site. Having two backups is kind of minimal.

 

[estockme]

One thing that gets me, and this could be totally personal experience and not reflective of the larger culture (if there is one): I am 29. I grew up with camcorders and home videos and watching home movies together was basically a dedicated extended family activity...

now I don't see home movies being made any more. I wonder if maybe the fact that a we always have a camera on us and the ubiquity of things like youtube make the idea of home movies somehow less sacred, and so we value the ability to capture these things less- sort of like the power of old, expensive vignettes on expensive 8mm film vs video tape vs today, when your ability to record is essentially limitless. but this could just be my sentimentality or something specific to my family.

I've thought that maybe there is a way to do this on youtube or vimeo now (plus that limitless cloud storage and accessibility of the videos) but maybe the practices just haven't worked themselves out yet... and even so the communal aspect of viewing the media together as a family (or whatever group) is somewhat wrecked when we are just sharing a link through a social network or whatever.

anyhow, thoughts. I've just noticed that more often for me the videos i do take are ephemeral, disappear on my hard drive or get uploaded to some social network, liked a few times and forgotten. and that is my dilemma.

 

[ChrisA]

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anyhow, thoughts. I've just noticed that more often for me the videos i do take are ephemeral, disappear on my hard drive or get uploaded to some social network, liked a few times and forgotten. and that is my dilemma.

It was the same way when the web allowed anyone to post text. Now everyone can be a published author. The net result was a wholesale decline in the average quality of published text.

Same when camera because cheap, the over all quality of photography took a nose dive. Look at old photos from before about 1910 and they are ALL taken by a professional but now anyone with zero artistic ability can take 1,000 photos.

So, when you expand the number of people doing something by lowing the cost and/or making it technically more simple to do then you can expect the average quality to go way-down as less skilled and less serious people move into the field.

BUT, that good news is that as more people do this, the base of the skills pyramid is wider and the higher levels of the pyramid are larger. SO..., yes we are flooded with worthless Youtube cat videos but there ARE people now making good quality video with their dSLR based video system, editing in Final Cut. More people are getting into serious film making because that can.

But also the base level is bigger so there is more junk. Back in the days of 8mm film it used to cost $20 to shoot 4 minutes of film so people at least thought for a few seconds about where to set up the camera and where the light was and it the subject was worth recording. Now that the cost is free people don't think at all and the video is so bad we forget about it. So what automation has given us is tons a perfectly exposed, sharp and colorful video of stuff we don't care about. When it cost $$$ people were more selective.