My video collection has steadily being increasing after a recent phone upgrade. It is burning through a lot of storage.

Hoarding has been my hobby anyway. So I was searching for an efficient video archival system. This is what I ended up with after a lot little optimizations here and there.

Every video  is shot on 4k, I know this is a bit overkill. But compressing a 4k to 1080p seems better in terms of quality rather than shooting in 1080p. Here is my current workflow

  1. Deleting is the way: I know it’s hard, but whether it be videos or photos, deleting my way through them led me to realize what I am finding truly meaningful. Also you don’t need dozen versions of the same baby face.
  2. Preparing for conversion: On my phone, I use an app called Automate to periodically move all the videos from main camera folder using a glob based rule.

[!NOTE] Conversion process destroys all video metadata, so proceed with caution. But there is still a way to recover those later. The method that I used to recover creation date is only possible if the filename itself contains date.

  1. Conversion using Handbrake: 

    • I use the below settings for conversion
    • 1080p HENVC with 23 CQ and preset set to ‘Slow’. Since I convert using a GPU, the above settings gave me the best quality to size ratio.
    • Storage wise this lets me save almost 1/4 of the space while maintaining acceptable quality.

  2. The converted file usually ends up without the original metadata, that means the creation, modification, timestamps, etc. would not be present. Now we need to get back the original metadata. 

  3. Here comes a handy tool for the rescue called Exiftool.

  4. It grabs the creation date from the filename itself and modifies the file with new date. After installing run this command : exiftool “-alldates<filename” “path-of-videos-without-quotes”.

  5. Since the metadata is back, you could now store them in any way you want(In my case, Immich)

Also to save on photo storage space, I have now started capturing in HEIC format which was hidden in my camera app. On  paper HEIC is better that the traditional jpeg(16 bit to 8 bit color depth) while saving 50% on storage size. 

Personally I haven’t experienced visible loss in quality. Keep in mind that HEIC does not support older hardware, so if you need compatibility it’s better to stay with the trusty old jpeg.