Portable SSD NAS, UPS, Card Reader, RAID… Too good to be true?
If you are making videos these days on any sort of regular basis then you will be well aware of the fact that it doesn’t take long before backup and storage becomes an issue.
I know from my own experience shooting exclusively in 4k that a One Terabyte backup drive is certainly not what it used to be!
Back in the day a terabyte was an unimaginable amount of data that only Nasa would possibly need.
Well those days are well and truly over so for me at least learning about backup and storage solutions has become my next learning curve.
Of course space for backing up your data is not the whole story with another important aspect being how secure that data is and whether you need redundancy built in as well.
There are a number of solutions available these days but before you can make an informed decision you first need to be informed!
So in light of that here’s a slightly unusual take on it all.
In the video below from Matt Granger he reviews a very new system for backups which is all well and good.
The key part of this review is that as he is going over the device quite thoroughly he is also educating as to why you would need some features over others and under what circumstance you may decide on a particular solution.
NVIDIA RTX 50 Series: Built for Advanced Video Editing
The downsides to editing video at the consumer level pretty much comes down to one core issue.
You and I are mostly likely going to be using either a Smartphone or a lower level camera to capture footage.
By “lower level” I don’t mean some kind of inferior quality device but a device that has been designed for consumer use as opposed to some kind of professional Hollywood setup.
The main thing that makes this possible is the existence of modern video codecs that allow for devices like these to capture high quality footage in a small form factor and at a price we can all afford.
Of course I am referring to the H.264 and H.265 video codecs.
The problem with these codecs is that they were exclusively designed for video capture and playback and absolutely no consideration was given to their functionality for editing.
As a result, editing this type of footage is hellishly demanding of computer resources and has been the driving force behind graphics cards packing greater and greater processing power over the years.
You can read a more detailed explanation about problems connected to editing highly compressed video files here: MPEG2, AVCHD and MP4 Editing Problems Explained
On the other side of things there has been another development that has come into play in our world and that is A.I.
This is yet another function that has appeared which demands enormous resources especially when it comes to the creation and manipulation of video.
Well this week those two worlds collided with an announcement by Nvidia of a range of graphics cards utilizing the latest technology driven by A.I. that will benefit video editing enormously.
It’s gets a bit technical in parts but the article linked below is well worth a read to see where we are heading.
Tips on Editing a Project Containing Subtitles in PowerDirector
One of the main reasons you really need to get to know your video editing software inside out is best explained from the point of view of ” it has all gone wrong!”
What I mean by that is that when you are very deep into a project you will have a timeline loaded with all sorts of assets, effects applied and it is going to be very busy.
That’s fine up until you realize there is a basic error in the project and correcting it will affect everything you already have sitting on that timeline.
That is when your knowledge of the program really comes into play and will determine whether you as a newbie are going to have to undo everything and start over or you as a pro are going to deal with it effectively.
Here’s an example in PowerDirector where making a change will mess with the subtitles and how to deal with it.
How to Hack the New YouTube Algorithm in 11 MINUTES (and Get Views)
OK so the reality is that advice on achieving success with a YouTube Channel is pretty easy to come by.
However the accuracy of that information is the hard part!
I am not sure that there is any other subject that seems to be more prone to myths than this one.
It seems that everyone has at least one “do this for YouTube success” tip that sounds reasonable but in reality is worthless.
I find that it doesn’t really take very much to analyse the various tips and tricks to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Here’s a video from the guys at Movavi on this exact subject and the reason I am posting it is this.
For every tip or piece of advice they logically step though and explain why this tip or that one is real or not based on what YouTube is trying to achieve rather than just someone’s “feelings” about it.
Filming in National Parks is Allowed for YouTubers
Commercial filming in U.S. national parks was severely restricted if not outright banned some time around 2000.
The driving force at the time was that those areas needed some kind of protection from large scale movie productions.
The problems they were causing were that the resources were being exploited commercially yet nothing was going back to the parks themselves plus the general public were being inconvenienced in places that were supposed to be open to all.
Congress passed laws requiring the need for permits to be issued to try to gain some kind of control over the situation but over time that began to become a problem in itself.
The rise of “YouTubers” and small scale video production exposed questions as to what represented a commercial interest and exactly what constituted a “large scale” production.
A few lawsuits were launched challenging the validity of the laws and it was all a bit of a mess.
Well this week new laws were passed clarifying who can film in those parks and who needs a permit and you can see the details in the video below.
Solve Your LAG Issues! – DaVinci Resolve
Although you may initially need a slightly more powerful computer to actually use the free version of DaVinci Resolve, if you can the benefits keep rolling in!
Most video editing software these days offers a feature called “Proxy Files” or in the case of PowerDirector “Shadow Files.”
The name is unimportant but the function itself can be a lifesaver.
Proxy files are lower resolution copies of the original files you import into a project with the advantage being that your computer has to do less work to manipulate these files.
This can become especially important if your computer is not a beast or if you are using 4K videos.
For example if you are using 4K Mp4 files the software allows you to create smaller Mp4 files at perhaps 1080p which takes some of the pressure off.
However at the end of the day you are still dealing with files that have been created using either the H.264 or H.265 codecs that were never intended for editing.
They are strictly designed for playback and as such are a handful to deal with for your computer.
So back to DaVinci Resolve!
In Resolve you can create proxy files but you can also dictate how those proxy files are created and using what codec.
DaVinci comes with a range of codecs you can use that are specifically designed for editing and thereby taking even more pressure off your system.
Check it out in the video below.
8 Mind-Blowing DaVinci Resolve AI Tools
There’s a lot of blah, blah around these days on the subject of A.I and its application within various video editing software solutions.
I keep quite a few programs on my computer because it helps me answer readers questions that they have and a lot of them are specific to a particular brand.
Because I have access to them and because I also edit a bunch of videos I am in a position to really look at those A.I. features to see how useful they actually are.
The truth is that while some of them are quite useful, a lot are great for marketing but in the day to day world of content creation, they don’t really come into play.
Basically it’s a lot of fluff with no substance.
One piece of software I do have that has A.I. tools in it that I use is DaVinci Resolve.
This is not really all that surprising because Resolve doesn’t really have to prove itself to anyone and industry pro’s are not going to be impressed by wizzbang features that really do nothing.
So for a realistic look at some A.I. tools that actually have a purpose here’s some in Resolve.
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