Should You Archive Your Video?
Videos can be expensive to host and stream, so you should periodically review your government videos to make sure they remain relevant and accurate. Be prepared to take action if a video no longer delivers value.
Get Redundant
To protect against data loss, you may want to invest in external hard drives or data tapes that can be stored in a data library. Redundancy and backups protect your project during system upgrades or storage failures.
As one agency video producer said:
“We lost about 23 terabytes (TB) of assets due to an error that occurred during a system upgrade. We were able to cobble together much of the data from our external drives, but it taught us a valuable lesson about not skimping on the backup systems. At the very least, I’d recommend having two backups of your data—one on–site that you maintain regularly, and one off–site that is updated on a semi–regular basis."
In the Cloud
Another option is online or “cloud” storage. See if anyone in your organization already has a paid account with a storage company. If not, search for “online video storage” companies that allow you to upload your videos.
If you post videos on YouTube, for example, you don’t have to worry about space, bandwidth or the threat of deletion. But, while YouTube is free, the videos you post there won’t have the source files you need to edit them in the future. YouTube also is not fully 508-compliant, so it's best used as an alternate hosting tool.
Content Lead:
Jonathan Rubin
Page Reviewed/Updated: August 8, 2012
