This is a great trailer for a full season of exciting (and harrowing) adventures into these challenges. I’m staying tuned, especially as I struggle with every one of these.
Conventional wisdom (not bad) on NAS is Synology. Which drives? Iron Wolf or better. Avoid Western Digital. Pick the size based on cost per TB and present capacity needs. Personally despite the NAS benefits I use a hard drive toaster. 4 bays, usb3 speed, and boxes full of hard drives organized by year, and A/B. A is originals, B is backups. When we are working on something C cloud is an option. And my working partners who have copyright access also maintain their own copies. (At least one) And you can charge a fee for archiving footage but if you do, then the drives should be checked and refreshed on a schedule.
For me it is “Just Do It.” Get back from the gig, put everything back as soon as I get home. Copy all the cards, make backup 1 and backup 2 while putting the gear back and charging batteries. Fill out timesheets and scan receipts. Only when backups are done and verified, put cards back in the cameras and format them clean for the next day. Doing it all as soon as I come in the door is the only way to stay on top of it. There will always be an excuse or something else to get in the way. If you do it immediately, you are still charging hours to the client, you have not started the “next project” yet. You also have everything still fresh in your head, even if the flight home was a wreck. Finishing phase 3, “the shoot”, must include all the details of resetting back to starting points. It makes the prep for the next project so much easier. As for the cables, each cable should be with the item to which it belongs. I have four cameras, each has their own bag, cables, SD cards, and batteries for a day. If I need a camera, that bag and all inside it goes. Yes I have duplicates of cables and batteries onsite, and I am carrying more “weight” but the ease of grabbing a single bag and knowing everything I could need is in there just makes it easy. Each cable in the bag should not interfere with getting anything out. Velcro wraps, twist ties, whatever, there are no “loose cables” in any bag at any time. I know this will not work for everyone, but this works great for me.
It gets out of control very couple of years, but in December I re-tackled my cable issue with some shelves, a label maker and a trip to the dollar store for inexpensive bins. I never throw out a working USB cable because I want peace-of-mind redundancy. Also being the tech guy that many people (friends, family) rely on, I like to ride in on a white horse and help those who are in desperate need of a cable. In addition I have several cable bags/pouches that are well-stocked: one for production, one for emergencies I keep in the car, and one for travel - all of which have 20w and 100w chargers and a selection of different types of cables. I'm not strutting, I've just learned the hard way that being organized is being prepared.
Take a day (or half a day) to figure out what you always use for your youtube and professional career and prep both bags accordingly. While this may mean you've got two sets of AC pouches this does have the advantage of redundancy for things like gaff/marking tape. I do have a dedicated storage area for my gear but my main camera had a set of batteries, lens (caps too), couple of video lights, a Deity D4 mini and a battery bank that never leave my bag once data has been offloaded. Bonus: Number your batteries. Makes it easier to track which batteries are giving you issues, just never repeat a number even after you've thrown them out previously.
Look at Synology as a backup solution. The software is exceptional. As photographer starting to shooting more video, those RAW video files are huge. Now need a strategy for archiving in more data-friendly formats.
Great episode Luc! I use Synology 4-Bay NAS to store the data and I can get to the files remotely. So far- so good. Color mark my cables. Cheers! Happy New Year!
Hey Luc, Happy New Year! I have a very similar list this year starting with the mess that is my office and studio. I suck at finances, running three businesses (doc film, narrative film and blacksmithing). My wife handles my finances and we have been using Quick Books for almost fifteen years. I had it on my computer, I would add in the stuff that I could control, gear purchases , travel and food, then email it to her to do all the financial magic. I know at first QB seems like overkill for people like us, but it's mostly customizable for only the stuff you need. I'd say give it another shot as it seems to be what everyone uses to deal with the finances of a freelance life. Anyway have a great 2025 and thanks for a year of informative videos!!
@LinusTechTips is coming out with their own brand of cables that will be labelled for their power output and data speed. They'd be a great collab and are out in Vancouver.
As someone that went thought the whole accounting thing for my business years ago my advice is to talk to your accountant and get them to setup a system for you. That way it will be done properly (they know accounting software like you know cameras). I believe all of the major software packages now have everything you need and simple apps to log receipts etc so it’s not a big deal once going. It will be a cost a bit to setup but you will spend less later in accountants fees as most of their work will be done. Secondly, I totally sympathise with the storage situation. I’m in the same place. I hope you find something that works.
I am experiencing the same situation. I still feel it in my life. After a while, everything in my life started to turn into chaos like this. I started to get rid of these in the last 2 weeks. I reduced the number of old and unused things to 1. Max 2 cables are enough to do that job, don't need 10 of them. I started to reduce everything, old batteries, bags, cases, cables, converters etc.
I feel the same about taxes but Quickbooks is the simplest option in my opinion it is a small learning curve but once you get past it you can also set up some automation in there to make your life a lot simpler.
I thought I'm the only one having lots of cables, but not knowing anymore what they were used for. I always tell myself that I will make a small patch with a note on every new cable which would cost me a minute and save me tons of time, but, well... 🙂
Hey Luc! Been watching your videos recently and loving them -- I'm a big fan of new years resolutions, would love to see another similar video but resolutions for beginner documentary filmmakers (though these 5 are great for beginners too)!
Hi Luc! Thanks for the amazing videos you put out. In the spirit of New Year’s resolutions, I’ve been curious for some time about how you balance your work and social life. I imagine that while traveling 100 days a year is exciting, it must also be challenging to stay connected with friends, build relationships, or even think about starting a family. For me, being slightly older than you-with a child, wife, cat, and a cheap house in need of renovation-I have to prioritize differently. Even so, I dream of one day living partly off filmmaking. Maybe this could be a theme for a future video? Happy New Year! Best, Jacob
For the nas/storage problem i own and work with an Qnap TS-h1290FX wich is an 12 Bay all flash nas, the cool part about this thing is its compact for its features, you can use U.2 or U.3 SSDs wich are Nvme drives in 2.5" formfactor, its fast enough to edit directly from the nas if you use 10/25 or optional 100gbit ethernet.
i just started using quickbooks and i really like the features. im thinking about upgrading to your plus memebership in order to get individual project tracking
Bought a Synology by with 4 drive bay where every other one I backup for the other one. Have about 20tb storage and it’s even fast enough hooked up with 10gb LAN to my MacBook for 4k editing. When this will run out I will just add another one but that will be a while I’m sure. Has saved me a ton of money in SSD’s and greatly reduced storage stress (:
about the cable, I am now using Ugreen 100w 1.2m(or 1m?) USB3.2 gen2 cable, so far it is fine. But the reason I get Ugreen is they are good quality usb c adapters, include C toA adapter with USB3 speed, C to micro USB adapter, so that save some space and can be a good back up. I also do believe Belkin have good quality USB4 cable with 20Gbps in a very good price, the 40Gbps one seems much more expensive.
For 6 bucks, you can buy frosted-plastic ammo style boxes at Walmart. Get the label machine fired up, and get organized. That’s how I keep cables and every other gizmo, like tons of SmallRig gak, GoPro stuff, etc. Of course, I’ve now got 200 ammo boxes, but they stack and fit tidy in a couple of cheap bookcases.
Archiving Data: It’s a real cost, but for real archiving consider LTO tape, which are rated at 40 years with no overhead like spinning up hard drives. LTO would be. 3rd tier backup, meaning stored offsite. Your data should exist in two other places: a RAID for editing, and a NAS backup for near-line storage. One kludge for direct attached storage is Backblaze, which allows unlimited and inexpensive storage on an annual contract. That’s great until they figure out filmmakers like me have 200 Tb of direct attached RAIDs. The unlimited deal does not apply to NAS devices, only direct attached drives. I’ve got a separate Backblaze account for my NAS arrays, and the monthly on that is currently $350 US +/-. Which is motivation to get going with the LTO solution that real data professionals rely on.
For resolution #5, I can't recommend a bookkeeper enough. You can usually find a fractional one, and you can dial in exactly how many hours you need for them for or figure out an arrangement that works for both of you. They give you peace of mind AND it should cut down on the number of hours the account has to work on your stuff.
Great video, when it comes to storage issues I would say in general shooting 12 bit often times is highly overkill and when you think of the bitrates required for it compared to the improvement in quality compared to a more modest HEVC 10 bit file it's very much not worth the added storage costs. I always try to think about where the videos I create will be displayed and the majority of time it will be online somewhere more than likely in 1080p rather than 4k and if we look at the top platform which is RUclips HD tops out at 12Mb per second and 4k around 60Mb per second so even if you record RAW at around 800Mb per second or more the majority of that data will be lost anyway with the only significant benefit being how much more you can push it in colour grading which even that will not be reflected as well as RUclips as far as I know does not utilise HDR that well. With that in mind if you choose a more modest recording standard with higher compression it will be harder for the computer to decode it but all modern PC's with GPU's or Macs have Hardware acceleration for H.265, you also have the option to create proxies if you are working with a lot of layered videos or sfx to speed up the computer. It will take less time sending data to external editors and with smaller projects even gives you to send them via the cloud due to the smaller video sizes. I started paying much more attention to data rates about a year or 2 ago and it really saves you a lot of space and headache if you break it down this way.
I use for archiving/secondary copy my old pc with unraid software. Good thing is taht no need identical disks for store. But data is secured by parity disk(s). Parity disk must be biggest or at least same size as biggest data disk. You can use any pc up to 10 years old (probably even older). Just requires enough sata connectors to connect disks or slots to add additional controller for more connectors. For example my machine takes ~32w when idle (i7 4770, 16G ram 4x8TB hdd 1 256G ssd). Tested - when take one disk out - data still readable from unraid server. Also disks are readable separately under linux. Usual raid disks arn't. Drawback - it's bit slower than synology or other. For me it's ok.
Luc I relate with your storage anxiety, I recently moved for the second time in a year, everything remains in boxes, cases, and backpacks. I dream of the day where i can have a drawer or a box or a bag for each bit of kit I own. However, the main reason for my comment is (digital) storage. While i dont wish to baptise you with the ways of being a sys. admin. I would say buy yourself an old computer on craigslist or whatever with enough grunt in it to not be cost ineffective to run (a tower PC from the last 10 years, which can cost you relatively little) and buy a handful of Exos >20TB drives put them in the tower and install TrueNAS on the machine. My next suggestion, do it a second time around, and put the same machine at someone you care about's home synch them when possible. Off-site back up all the way! I found myself buying old Optiplex machines for under 80€
#4 Blackmagic Cloud Store (for active projects, multiuser editing and cloud) and LTO for archiving. However, you never feel bulletproof on this subject. “What if…” will always be a thought I guess 😌
Accounting is hard, accounting is boring, accounting is something you either love or hate. Find yourself a part time book keeper. If you are not big enough to justify it, then grow.
As a Videographer i can keep my 4K resolution next year
An employed “swamp rat” beats an un-employed neat freak any day of the week. Keep up the hustle Luc and of course Happy New Year.
I feel like I'm cheating a bit with #5 - married an accountant.
When I see a clean office, I see a videographer who isn’t working.
This is a great trailer for a full season of exciting (and harrowing) adventures into these challenges. I’m staying tuned, especially as I struggle with every one of these.
Conventional wisdom (not bad) on NAS is Synology. Which drives? Iron Wolf or better. Avoid Western Digital. Pick the size based on cost per TB and present capacity needs. Personally despite the NAS benefits I use a hard drive toaster. 4 bays, usb3 speed, and boxes full of hard drives organized by year, and A/B. A is originals, B is backups. When we are working on something C cloud is an option. And my working partners who have copyright access also maintain their own copies. (At least one) And you can charge a fee for archiving footage but if you do, then the drives should be checked and refreshed on a schedule.
+1 on the toaster. I RAID-0 my enterprise drives. Fast cheap backup.
For me it is “Just Do It.” Get back from the gig, put everything back as soon as I get home. Copy all the cards, make backup 1 and backup 2 while putting the gear back and charging batteries. Fill out timesheets and scan receipts. Only when backups are done and verified, put cards back in the cameras and format them clean for the next day. Doing it all as soon as I come in the door is the only way to stay on top of it. There will always be an excuse or something else to get in the way. If you do it immediately, you are still charging hours to the client, you have not started the “next project” yet. You also have everything still fresh in your head, even if the flight home was a wreck. Finishing phase 3, “the shoot”, must include all the details of resetting back to starting points. It makes the prep for the next project so much easier.
As for the cables, each cable should be with the item to which it belongs. I have four cameras, each has their own bag, cables, SD cards, and batteries for a day. If I need a camera, that bag and all inside it goes. Yes I have duplicates of cables and batteries onsite, and I am carrying more “weight” but the ease of grabbing a single bag and knowing everything I could need is in there just makes it easy. Each cable in the bag should not interfere with getting anything out. Velcro wraps, twist ties, whatever, there are no “loose cables” in any bag at any time. I know this will not work for everyone, but this works great for me.
It gets out of control very couple of years, but in December I re-tackled my cable issue with some shelves, a label maker and a trip to the dollar store for inexpensive bins. I never throw out a working USB cable because I want peace-of-mind redundancy. Also being the tech guy that many people (friends, family) rely on, I like to ride in on a white horse and help those who are in desperate need of a cable. In addition I have several cable bags/pouches that are well-stocked: one for production, one for emergencies I keep in the car, and one for travel - all of which have 20w and 100w chargers and a selection of different types of cables. I'm not strutting, I've just learned the hard way that being organized is being prepared.
Looking forward to a future video where you have found your storage solution and share with us, as that is something I struggle with as well
Take a day (or half a day) to figure out what you always use for your youtube and professional career and prep both bags accordingly. While this may mean you've got two sets of AC pouches this does have the advantage of redundancy for things like gaff/marking tape.
I do have a dedicated storage area for my gear but my main camera had a set of batteries, lens (caps too), couple of video lights, a Deity D4 mini and a battery bank that never leave my bag once data has been offloaded.
Bonus: Number your batteries. Makes it easier to track which batteries are giving you issues, just never repeat a number even after you've thrown them out previously.
Look at Synology as a backup solution. The software is exceptional. As photographer starting to shooting more video, those RAW video files are huge. Now need a strategy for archiving in more data-friendly formats.
Great episode Luc! I use Synology 4-Bay NAS to store the data and I can get to the files remotely. So far- so good. Color mark my cables. Cheers! Happy New Year!
Hey Luc, Happy New Year! I have a very similar list this year starting with the mess that is my office and studio. I suck at finances, running three businesses (doc film, narrative film and blacksmithing). My wife handles my finances and we have been using Quick Books for almost fifteen years. I had it on my computer, I would add in the stuff that I could control, gear purchases , travel and food, then email it to her to do all the financial magic. I know at first QB seems like overkill for people like us, but it's mostly customizable for only the stuff you need. I'd say give it another shot as it seems to be what everyone uses to deal with the finances of a freelance life. Anyway have a great 2025 and thanks for a year of informative videos!!
@LinusTechTips is coming out with their own brand of cables that will be labelled for their power output and data speed. They'd be a great collab and are out in Vancouver.
Yup
And they also build NASes :)
Dude your channel rocks. Just discovered it this week.
As someone that went thought the whole accounting thing for my business years ago my advice is to talk to your accountant and get them to setup a system for you. That way it will be done properly (they know accounting software like you know cameras). I believe all of the major software packages now have everything you need and simple apps to log receipts etc so it’s not a big deal once going. It will be a cost a bit to setup but you will spend less later in accountants fees as most of their work will be done.
Secondly, I totally sympathise with the storage situation. I’m in the same place. I hope you find something that works.
I am experiencing the same situation. I still feel it in my life. After a while, everything in my life started to turn into chaos like this. I started to get rid of these in the last 2 weeks. I reduced the number of old and unused things to 1. Max 2 cables are enough to do that job, don't need 10 of them. I started to reduce everything, old batteries, bags, cases, cables, converters etc.
I feel the same about taxes but Quickbooks is the simplest option in my opinion it is a small learning curve but once you get past it you can also set up some automation in there to make your life a lot simpler.
QNAP and Synology is the way to go
I thought I'm the only one having lots of cables, but not knowing anymore what they were used for. I always tell myself that I will make a small patch with a note on every new cable which would cost me a minute and save me tons of time, but, well... 🙂
Hey Luc! Been watching your videos recently and loving them -- I'm a big fan of new years resolutions, would love to see another similar video but resolutions for beginner documentary filmmakers (though these 5 are great for beginners too)!
I ended up about 80TB for 2024. If you find the solution, I'm all ears. Best of luck to you in 2025.
Hi Luc! Thanks for the amazing videos you put out. In the spirit of New Year’s resolutions, I’ve been curious for some time about how you balance your work and social life. I imagine that while traveling 100 days a year is exciting, it must also be challenging to stay connected with friends, build relationships, or even think about starting a family.
For me, being slightly older than you-with a child, wife, cat, and a cheap house in need of renovation-I have to prioritize differently. Even so, I dream of one day living partly off filmmaking. Maybe this could be a theme for a future video?
Happy New Year!
Best,
Jacob
Not enough room. Awesome video! All great highlights.Thank You
For the nas/storage problem i own and work with an Qnap TS-h1290FX wich is an 12 Bay all flash nas, the cool part about this thing is its compact for its features, you can use U.2 or U.3 SSDs wich are Nvme drives in 2.5" formfactor, its fast enough to edit directly from the nas if you use 10/25 or optional 100gbit ethernet.
i just started using quickbooks and i really like the features. im thinking about upgrading to your plus memebership in order to get individual project tracking
Bought a Synology by with 4 drive bay where every other one I backup for the other one. Have about 20tb storage and it’s even fast enough hooked up with 10gb LAN to my MacBook for 4k editing. When this will run out I will just add another one but that will be a while I’m sure. Has saved me a ton of money in SSD’s and greatly reduced storage stress (:
I back everything up onto a cloud drive and external hard drives. So far thats been fine.
8K 120 FPS just too large of a file ;)
about the cable, I am now using Ugreen 100w 1.2m(or 1m?) USB3.2 gen2 cable, so far it is fine.
But the reason I get Ugreen is they are good quality usb c adapters, include C toA adapter with USB3 speed, C to micro USB adapter, so that save some space and can be a good back up.
I also do believe Belkin have good quality USB4 cable with 20Gbps in a very good price, the 40Gbps one seems much more expensive.
For 6 bucks, you can buy frosted-plastic ammo style boxes at Walmart. Get the label machine fired up, and get organized. That’s how I keep cables and every other gizmo, like tons of SmallRig gak, GoPro stuff, etc. Of course, I’ve now got 200 ammo boxes, but they stack and fit tidy in a couple of cheap bookcases.
Archiving Data: It’s a real cost, but for real archiving consider LTO tape, which are rated at 40 years with no overhead like spinning up hard drives. LTO would be. 3rd tier backup, meaning stored offsite. Your data should exist in two other places: a RAID for editing, and a NAS backup for near-line storage. One kludge for direct attached storage is Backblaze, which allows unlimited and inexpensive storage on an annual contract. That’s great until they figure out filmmakers like me have 200 Tb of direct attached RAIDs. The unlimited deal does not apply to NAS devices, only direct attached drives. I’ve got a separate Backblaze account for my NAS arrays, and the monthly on that is currently $350 US +/-. Which is motivation to get going with the LTO solution that real data professionals rely on.
For resolution #5, I can't recommend a bookkeeper enough. You can usually find a fractional one, and you can dial in exactly how many hours you need for them for or figure out an arrangement that works for both of you. They give you peace of mind AND it should cut down on the number of hours the account has to work on your stuff.
#1 I use velcro ties with different colors for colorcoding.
#4 without a doubt is my number one.
Great video, when it comes to storage issues I would say in general shooting 12 bit often times is highly overkill and when you think of the bitrates required for it compared to the improvement in quality compared to a more modest HEVC 10 bit file it's very much not worth the added storage costs. I always try to think about where the videos I create will be displayed and the majority of time it will be online somewhere more than likely in 1080p rather than 4k and if we look at the top platform which is RUclips HD tops out at 12Mb per second and 4k around 60Mb per second so even if you record RAW at around 800Mb per second or more the majority of that data will be lost anyway with the only significant benefit being how much more you can push it in colour grading which even that will not be reflected as well as RUclips as far as I know does not utilise HDR that well.
With that in mind if you choose a more modest recording standard with higher compression it will be harder for the computer to decode it but all modern PC's with GPU's or Macs have Hardware acceleration for H.265, you also have the option to create proxies if you are working with a lot of layered videos or sfx to speed up the computer. It will take less time sending data to external editors and with smaller projects even gives you to send them via the cloud due to the smaller video sizes. I started paying much more attention to data rates about a year or 2 ago and it really saves you a lot of space and headache if you break it down this way.
Colour coding for the cables 🤓
and I also really need to do that
You made me feel better about myself. Swamp rat brotherhood!
What watch are you wearing Luc??
I use for archiving/secondary copy my old pc with unraid software. Good thing is taht no need identical disks for store. But data is secured by parity disk(s). Parity disk must be biggest or at least same size as biggest data disk. You can use any pc up to 10 years old (probably even older). Just requires enough sata connectors to connect disks or slots to add additional controller for more connectors.
For example my machine takes ~32w when idle (i7 4770, 16G ram 4x8TB hdd 1 256G ssd).
Tested - when take one disk out - data still readable from unraid server. Also disks are readable separately under linux. Usual raid disks arn't.
Drawback - it's bit slower than synology or other. For me it's ok.
I can only talk from personal experience and it may just be a coincidence but I've had multiple Kondor Blue cables break on me...
Luc I relate with your storage anxiety, I recently moved for the second time in a year, everything remains in boxes, cases, and backpacks. I dream of the day where i can have a drawer or a box or a bag for each bit of kit I own.
However, the main reason for my comment is (digital) storage. While i dont wish to baptise you with the ways of being a sys. admin. I would say buy yourself an old computer on craigslist or whatever with enough grunt in it to not be cost ineffective to run (a tower PC from the last 10 years, which can cost you relatively little) and buy a handful of Exos >20TB drives put them in the tower and install TrueNAS on the machine. My next suggestion, do it a second time around, and put the same machine at someone you care about's home synch them when possible. Off-site back up all the way! I found myself buying old Optiplex machines for under 80€
#4 Blackmagic Cloud Store (for active projects, multiuser editing and cloud) and LTO for archiving. However, you never feel bulletproof on this subject. “What if…” will always be a thought I guess 😌
Anyone else misread the title as “resolutions” like 1080 vs 4k and wonder what the heck Luke is talking about but click anyway?
Accounting is hard, accounting is boring, accounting is something you either love or hate. Find yourself a part time book keeper. If you are not big enough to justify it, then grow.
wait for the linus tech tips cables!
My impossible is simple - to make at least one personal video project next year.
I thought you will talk about camera resolutions.
Shoot 1080 and upscale
Picture information in the sprocket holes? We expected better from you, Mr. Forsyth.
Just go for Thunderbolt 5 cables - they do all
Why was I expecting you to talk about 5.6k, 6.2k, 8K and 12k and how we wont watch anything on a device beyond 4K 🤣
There's always Hamilton! Spacious, Cheap(er) and big and growing film community 🤷♂
First comment! Happy new year’s everybody 🎉🎉
1 minute ago and no views?
I literally thought you were going to say 8k or 4k DCI. 🤦♂
Bro looks fluey af
Finally i do something i can earn 5/5 with it. 🤣
Maybe i have to work on these Resolutions too 😅
Was the misspelling of Impossible in the thumbnail intentional ? 🤣
W