How to keep your film files with you everywhere you go | We live in a world where information is a dime a dozen. Whatever touches the whole surplus. There were heaps of books and even more articles. Who is not just a journalist or blogger now? There are also a lot of films. The stream of new products is not sickly, plus much of the old is worthy of attention. For all this, not only time is needed, but also some orderliness, organization. Besides, what if you want to take your collection with you? How to be a movie fan, and is it an easy hobby or a way of life? Let’s consider the options.
How to prepare a video for storage
Although digital media is getting cheaper every year, and cloud services offer better conditions, it is terrible to store all movies in a row indiscriminately. There are probably many frankly unsuccessful ones among them, which you are unlikely to watch with pleasure. Set aside a few hours and delete those movies – the collection will be noticeably smaller, and it will be easier to find a suitable storage device for it.
DVD and Blu-ray discs
One of the most affordable ways to store home movies is, at the same time, the most unreliable. Yes, you can easily buy multiple discs and organize a collection, but you will not do anything with the data if the media ceases to be read on the road. Manufacturers promise us up to 100 years of service for DVD and Blu-ray discs, but this figure does not exceed 4-5 years in reality. Problems with reading arise due to natural wear and tear after scratches and abrasions appear on the working surface due to non-compliance with the temperature storage regime.
Flash drives and memory cards
USB sticks are still popular, although microSD cards have replaced them. With both, you get between 16GB and 1TB of free space for your movie collection. If you are in the mood for long-term storage, use metal or rubberized USB drives to protect them from external influences.
Both media are easy to use. For example, multimedia or software such as a landlord app, on a flash drive can be viewed from personal computers, laptops, and modern TV. And microSD memory cards are now supported by many gadgets – primarily smartphones, tablets, and cameras. With a card reader and an appropriate adapter, microSD is easy to read from a laptop that you can take with you.
External drives
SSD drives are much better. They are based on flash memory built on microcircuits. Such drives are more expensive than traditional HDDs, but they are not afraid of mechanical damage. They are more compact and quiet in operation. The cost of SSD continues to fall steadily, so today, you can safely buy models with a capacity of 128-256 GB without comparing their price with the price of an aircraft. True, 500-1000 GB SSDs are still expensive, so using them for home movies is not rational.
Cloud services
Sadly, any digital medium will become unusable in a few years. Therefore, it’s time to switch to cloud services. These are huge virtual spaces where you can place large amounts of data for free or for a reasonable price – up to several tens and hundreds of gigabytes. Many people are familiar with the services offered by large Internet players (Google, Yahoo), developers of mobile ecosystems (the same Google, Apple), and others. There is an excellent variety of them – there is a lot to choose from.
For example, if you are a filmmaker or student of filmmaking and need to make a large file transfer, you may encounter a problem that you cannot do this by email. In this case, you can use services for sending large files.
Final word
An English proverb says: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket! In the case of your film library, this means that you need to choose at least two media for your film collection. It is best to combine one or two cloud services with physical media: flash drives, memory cards, or external drives. And one more thing: keep a close eye on technology. If you see that DVD drives are no longer on sale, it’s time to rewrite the information from the optical disc to another medium.
I hope you have already prepared films for the archive, and these recommendations will help you easily decide on the appropriate storage and transportation option.
