How do you manage your video media? Photos or iMovie libraries?

[dodgie]

Hi,

I have a load of video; old family videos encoded from VHS, and a load of DV recordings from digital video cameras which are held in an iMovie Library which is about 1.25TB in size so held an external USB drive.

iMovie is really very slow because of this external drive and nowadays I don't carry video cameras around with me so any film I shoot is on my iPhone and so ends up in Photos.

I've never been 100% comfortable with the split between Photos and iMovie libraries for storing content so I was wondering what people tend to do to overcome this?

Do I just have to suck it up and put my media on faster storage so I can access it without iMovie crawling, do I move everything into my Photos library and then just use iMovie to create edited movies from that or what?

What does everyone do? It's got the the point where I rarely open iMovie because it takes so long to load my library and so I feel that stuff is just getting forgotten about.

 

[iStorm]

I think the iMovie Library is intended more for holding the media you want to use to make videos...not the final result. I create my movies and save them as files to the disk (either external disk or NAS) and organized by folders. I don't import them into Photos because I don't want them taking up my iCloud space.

 

[ColdCase]

Most folks with substantial libraries of clips that they may use in constructing a movie use FCP to manage them.

Most folks that want to store and manage the edited movies do as iStorm does. Export the movie as a file in case you want to edit is later. Share another version compressed and suitable for use with your intended audience. And put them in a directory. Put the compressed files in a media server (iTunes for example).

Photos are in photos. For symplicity I import everything off the iPhone into photos. Then export the video as originals into a folder and then import into FCP in my case.

In my case I don't throw away any clips that are useful and I can reshare at any time, so I don't bother exporting final movies as files. Storage is cheap, but not that cheap

What does everybody do? Everybody is different as work flows are different and compromises different.

 

[JamesMay82]

I use to be like you and had a similar sized library but then I moved to Final Cut and that worked fine but then, like you I wasn’t really watching the videos.

i now keep all videos and photos in the photos app and i love it. Especially the for you feature when it selects photos and videos into a short video clip. I love how it reminds us of forgotten photos.

i also keep a copy of all my photos and video in a finder file structure as well just in case my photos library got corrupted or i got locked out of it. I then take that copy and back it up again on another external.

 

[dodgie]

i also keep a copy of all my photos and video in a finder file structure as well just in case my photos library got corrupted or i got locked out of it. I then take that copy and back it up again on another external.

Do you have any automatic way of doing this or is it just a case of manually exporting originals from Photos occasionally?

 

[JamesMay82]

Do you have any automatic way of doing this or is it just a case of manually exporting originals from Photos occasionally?

Unfortunately no. The initial export takes a while and I would recommend doing it in batches by year or months just because I found it slow down the machine a bit and to I was a bit paranoid and it was easy to double check they exported correctly.

I have my finder folder structure as year and then month. Some people take it one step further and add a day folder as well but that’s just personal choice. If I have a vacation then I will just put them all in one folder as well in the corresponding year and month folder.

Once you’ve done the initial export it’s VERY easy to maintain.

It does perhaps sound an extreme way but my sister did get locked out of her iCloud and lost a good few years of her kids photos which prompted me to do this.

The other thing I like is if you go with iCloud Photos it’s super easy to watch all the videos back on your Apple TV in the living room via the photos app.

 

[Runaway Train]

I am doing a combination of the above. Looking for the best way to archive/ library the Videos that I finish editing and creating in FCP (i.e. the "Shared or rendered file). Right now they seem to be split between Photos and Apple TV (although I do not have an Apple TV). A thought was to load them all into the Apple TV app so that photos would be "Photos" only and Apple TV app would have the videos. Not sure if anyone has done this or even if it si a good idea to be thinking of the TV app as a place to store rendered videos. Anyone?

 

[JamesMay82]

I am doing a combination of the above. Looking for the best way to archive/ library the Videos that I finish editing and creating in FCP (i.e. the "Shared or rendered file). Right now they seem to be split between Photos and Apple TV (although I do not have an Apple TV). A thought was to load them all into the Apple TV app so that photos would be "Photos" only and Apple TV app would have the videos. Not sure if anyone has done this or even if it si a good idea to be thinking of the TV app as a place to store rendered videos. Anyone?

I just tried this and it was a little bit messy with how it organised them but my biggest issue was it didn’t like the formats for some of my older formats and when streaming to the tv app I have network issues over wireless so I just gave it up.

The photos app was the best but it means subscribing to an expensive iCloud package depending on your data levels.

I’ve not just gone back to keeping them all on finder on my desktop machine. I also have an iPad Pro and I copied all my home videos to that and I now screen share them to my LG tv which works great as well. Plus it’s another back up.

I’m also contemplating just keeping them in Final Cut Pro as it organises them nicely. People say you shouldn’t do this but I’ve never really read valid reasons why not to.

 

[Runaway Train]

Thanks. I have it down now to this:

1. iPhone = Primarily capture device. Keep onboard only what I will view or review frequently
2. Local fast access SSD drive (all historical videos going back 15 years in folders). Two sets of data
   1. Raw clips
   2. Final Cut - rendered or final movies
3. DropBox Cloud storage - mirrors exactly what is on the hard drive.
4. On Mac - those final movies I will view frequently. Perhaps will store them all on a new Mac, I would need 2TB but for now staying put.

Having just picked up an iPhone 15 PRO 256 - that's plenty of storage for frequently viewed files reduced our to FCP to a smaller format for viewing on the device. I realised I was keep way too many large videos taking up huge amount of space that are honestly only viewed occasional. I can get toi the SSD very quickly of I want to view a larger library in full HD. Do not yet have an Apple TV and the TV app although allowing for folder access seems way too limited for a true Video archive Library.