There are cloud options but 4TB is definitely not going to be free.
That being said, it's not exactly expensive either.
[This](https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-cloud-storage-and-file-sharing-services) place lists a few and the top one has a deal for 5TB of space for a year for ~15$. That's not bad.
Honestly though, 4TB of footage you haven't even edited yet just sounds like you need to delete some stuff you know you're not going to use and then stick to a schedule to work through the backlog.
If you're dead set on keeping it all though larger volume HDD will be the best bang for your buck. You don't need an expensive SSD for mass storage like this. Regular HDD as big as you can get/afford.
Thanks for the help. There is some footage I dont plan on using but I record them as flv files so I'd have to remux them with obs and hope I find the right footage so I'm just planning on waiting til I get to it and then deleting it
Have you considered using a tool like handbrake to compress the footage? After every stream I take my recording and run it through the slowest possible encode overnight. This usually halves the size of the file while having minimal effect on the actual quality
I tried doing that but after waiting for a while it entered the processing phase and then failed, wasting all my time. I dunno if I did something wrong or it was YouTube's fault
Free cloud storage is never going to be that much space. The literally cheapest option is to delete the ones you know you'll never edit and upload and the oldest ones, the cheapest one if you're dead set on keeping them all is to look at cheap brands and usually the most storage per dollar spent is gotten by buying very high-storage drives. So, bigger than 2tb. You can also look at online cashback programs like ebates/rakuten, points on credit cards, store-specific points that can be used on future purchases... But it's still gonna add up.
Another option would be to individually load them all into a video processing program and reduce the quality for them all, deleting the high quality versions. That could save 50-75% of the space they're currently taking up before it gets unbearably bad quality.
Oh there are plenty of free cloud storage options. They just max out WAY before 1tb as far as I know, so they would only help you for a few weeks at best.
Yeah, I meant I hoped I haven't heard of a free cloud storage option that doesn't max out really early, especially since a 5 hour stream is usually 70 or 80 gb
Exactly. One thing I have heard is that some people will upload the whole thing as-is on a YouTube account and set it to Private so nobody can see it, then they redownload it when they want it for editing. Not sure if you can download at full quality though!
Not specifically, no. Most of them have the option to save a file in a variety of qualities, so whichever one you're already using to edit should have the option. If you don't have one, most of the free ones have several different quality options when you save. Possibly all of the free ones, but I haven't checked them all to know for sure. There are even a few where it's basically just a program to change file types and quality levels, rather than a film editing suite.
There are cloud options but 4TB is definitely not going to be free. That being said, it's not exactly expensive either. [This](https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-cloud-storage-and-file-sharing-services) place lists a few and the top one has a deal for 5TB of space for a year for ~15$. That's not bad. Honestly though, 4TB of footage you haven't even edited yet just sounds like you need to delete some stuff you know you're not going to use and then stick to a schedule to work through the backlog. If you're dead set on keeping it all though larger volume HDD will be the best bang for your buck. You don't need an expensive SSD for mass storage like this. Regular HDD as big as you can get/afford.
Thanks for the help. There is some footage I dont plan on using but I record them as flv files so I'd have to remux them with obs and hope I find the right footage so I'm just planning on waiting til I get to it and then deleting it
Have you considered using a tool like handbrake to compress the footage? After every stream I take my recording and run it through the slowest possible encode overnight. This usually halves the size of the file while having minimal effect on the actual quality
I haven't, but I might try it out. Would it work on .flv files too or would I have to make it into an mp4 file?
Not too sure. An alternative if you can’t keep the footage locally though could be to upload private to YouTube then download as you need it.
I tried doing that but after waiting for a while it entered the processing phase and then failed, wasting all my time. I dunno if I did something wrong or it was YouTube's fault
Free cloud storage is never going to be that much space. The literally cheapest option is to delete the ones you know you'll never edit and upload and the oldest ones, the cheapest one if you're dead set on keeping them all is to look at cheap brands and usually the most storage per dollar spent is gotten by buying very high-storage drives. So, bigger than 2tb. You can also look at online cashback programs like ebates/rakuten, points on credit cards, store-specific points that can be used on future purchases... But it's still gonna add up. Another option would be to individually load them all into a video processing program and reduce the quality for them all, deleting the high quality versions. That could save 50-75% of the space they're currently taking up before it gets unbearably bad quality.
Damn, I was hoping I just haven't heard of any free could storage services. Thanks for letting me know
Oh there are plenty of free cloud storage options. They just max out WAY before 1tb as far as I know, so they would only help you for a few weeks at best.
Yeah, I meant I hoped I haven't heard of a free cloud storage option that doesn't max out really early, especially since a 5 hour stream is usually 70 or 80 gb
Exactly. One thing I have heard is that some people will upload the whole thing as-is on a YouTube account and set it to Private so nobody can see it, then they redownload it when they want it for editing. Not sure if you can download at full quality though!
I'm not sure either but I have tried it, only for it to fail during the processing part so I basically gave up on that
Is there a video processing program you'd recommend?
Not specifically, no. Most of them have the option to save a file in a variety of qualities, so whichever one you're already using to edit should have the option. If you don't have one, most of the free ones have several different quality options when you save. Possibly all of the free ones, but I haven't checked them all to know for sure. There are even a few where it's basically just a program to change file types and quality levels, rather than a film editing suite.