Knowledge Bank
3 min read
Back up your footage before you cut a single frame
Footage in one place is footage waiting to be lost. Back up to two places before you edit — the step that is skippable until the day it is not.
Not sure if Produce is your weak phase? The free 3-minute workflow audit will tell you.
The footage you just shot exists in exactly one place: a memory card the size of a stamp. Until it exists in a second place, every minute of filming is one drop, one corrupt file, one accidental format away from gone. Backing up before you edit is the cheapest insurance in the whole workflow, and the one creators skip right up until the day it costs them a shoot.
This step feels skippable because the card almost always works. That is exactly what makes it dangerous. You do it ninety-nine times and nothing happens, so you stop, and the hundredth time is the one where the card fails and the only copy goes with it. The habit has to hold on the boring days to be there on the bad one.
Two places, before the edit
The rule is simple: the footage lives in two separate places before you open the editor. Card plus computer. Computer plus an external drive. Drive plus cloud. The specifics matter less than the number, and the number is two, minimum, on different hardware.
Copy first, then confirm the files actually open, then edit. Do not format the card until the video is published. The card is a third copy for free, and it costs nothing to leave it full until you are certain you are done.
Make it the same move every time
The backup that happens is the one that is automatic. Same folder structure, same destination, same moment in the routine: card out, two copies down, then the edit begins. When it is a step you do without thinking, it survives the tired evenings when thinking is in short supply.
If any of your footage is irreplaceable, an event you cannot reshoot or a one-take moment, treat the cloud copy as non-optional. Re-filming the takes you just shot is annoying. Losing footage of something that only happened once is the kind of loss no edit can fix.
Where Chewbr fits
Back up the footage is step 17 of the 47, the gate between the shoot and the edit. It sits there on purpose: the A-roll, the B-roll and the thumbnail frames are all captured, nothing has been cut yet, and the workflow makes you protect the work before you start shaping it.
Keep reading
Footage safe, you can start cutting: the rough cut, pacing first. The same care about files applies at the other end, when you export the master.