Creator Blog #24 - How I organize my video and picture files

Today everyone takes pictures and videos. But our phones can only store so much before we run out of memory for all the pictures we take over the years. Some people pay for cloud storage and move their photos and videos online from their phones. For some time, this worked out for me for personal photos and videos. But ever since creating YouTube videos, I’ve septupled the amount of memory I need. And that amount of cloud storage is very expensive.

I’ve since started storing footage for YouTube and personal pictures/videos on external hard drives. I have two sets that mirror each other so if one gets corrupted, I have the other as a back up. Also, a tip someone gave me was to buy  two hard drives from different brands to make sure they weren’t coming from the same assembly line. If one had a manufacture defect, the other would not likely have the same problem.

At some point in the future, I’m going to set up a RAID system. This is a more sophisticated way of backing up files which I can talk about in another blog post. I can’t set up a RAID system now because of how expensive they are.

For both YouTube and personal files, they are arranged according to year first, then by location/event/occasion.

For example:

Top Folder —> 2022 Videos

Sub Folders —> “High Line”, “Astoria”, “Christmas Party”, “4th of July”

For YouTubing, footage is organized according to year first is because footage older than three years tend to lose relevancy and need to be archived. For example, a street today might look different three years ago because business and shops come and go in New York frequently. It’s also possible that three years from today no one will be wearing masks making all footage from 2020 outdated.

Within each year, footage is arranged by location or event. This is based on how I search for footage. I need footage by location or event, not by exact date.

For personal pictures and videos, it’s easier for me to remember what year something happened, but beyond that it’s hard for me to remember exact dates. It’s easier to remember occasions.