Most studios have a shelf of hard drives with a year written on masking tape, and nobody is sure which ones still spin up.
Some studios keep everything because deleting feels dangerous. Others wipe drives for the next shoot and hope nobody asks. The first group finds out through a storage bill that grows every month, the second when a client calls about the CEO interview from two years ago.
A retention policy answers two questions for each kind of file: how long you keep it, and where. A folder of camera cards and a 4 GB master get very different answers, so one number for “the project” doesn’t work.
In short
- A retention policy answers two questions for each kind of file: how long you keep it, and where.
- Keep camera originals for a year or two, then only selects, and masters for five years or more.
- Follow the 3-2-1 rule: three copies, on two different types of media, with one copy off site.
- A year of footage from four shoot days a month costs about $29 a month in Deep Archive or about $200 on B2.
- Write the policy into the proposal and the delivery email, and schedule the deletes.
What clients come back for
Each kind of request needs a different part of the job.
- A new format of an approved video needs the master.
- A new logo or a corrected title needs the project file, with its graphics and fonts.
- A shorter cut or a new edit needs the project and the camera originals.
- Shots for a different video need the originals, plus the releases that say where those people can appear.
- An argument about what was agreed needs the contract, the approval and a copy of what you delivered.
Decide which of these you’ll still accept two years after delivery, and you know which parts of the job to keep.
Retention by layer
These are rules of thumb, not a standard. Adjust them to your clients and your storage budget.
| Layer | Rule of thumb | Where it lives after delivery |
|---|---|---|
| Camera originals and sound | 1 to 2 years, then selects only | Two archive drives, one off site, or cloud cold storage |
| Project, graphics, fonts, music | As long as you’d reopen the edit (a year is a fair default) | Next to the originals |
| Masters and textless versions | 5 years or more | Archive drive plus cloud |
| Review versions | Until the job closes | Your review platform |
| Delivered package | As long as the masters | Next to the masters |
| Contracts, releases, licenses | While the video is in use, plus the legal window | Scanned, with your business records |
Camera originals are most of the bytes, so this is where the policy matters. A year or two covers the usual re-edits.
Footage nobody can shoot again deserves longer: an event, an interview with an executive who may leave, a factory before the renovation. When the period ends, keep the interviews and the best b-roll as selects and let the rest go.
The project file is small and useless on its own, since it only opens properly with the same media, fonts and plugins. If you later trim the originals to selects, the project loses its links.
Premiere’s Project Manager and Resolve’s Media Management can copy just the media a timeline uses, with a few seconds of handle, so the edit still opens at a fraction of the size.
Masters cost almost nothing to keep. Apple puts ProRes 422 HQ at about 220 Mbps for 1080p at 29.97 fps, so a two-minute master is around 3.3 GB. Keep the textless version and audio stems too, if you made them.
Review versions have the shortest life. Once the client approves and the window for last fixes closes, v1 to v6 matter only as a record of the conversation. If your review platform keeps every version with its notes, the record is already there and the local review exports can go.
The delivered package is a copy of exactly what the client received. Keep it as long as the masters, because it settles what was delivered and under which music license.
Documents follow the life of the video rather than the job. A release is your proof that a person or a location agreed to appear, so it has to outlive every copy of the footage that shows them (our release form post covers what goes in one).
Licenses stay with the music and stock they cover. For contracts and invoices, the period depends on your country’s tax and limitation rules, so ask your accountant or lawyer.
Where each copy lives
After delivery, footage moves from the fast working drive to cheaper storage, and the 3-2-1 rule is a good test of whether that storage is enough.
A 2012 US-CERT paper on backups, crediting the photographer Peter Krogh, puts it as three copies of any important file (one primary and two backups), on two different types of media, with one copy off site.
For a studio that’s usually an archive drive in the office, a second drive somewhere else, and a copy in the cloud or on tape.
Archive drives are the cheapest way to start. Buy them in pairs and plug them in once a year to open a few files. A drive that sat on a shelf for three years may not spin up, and you want to find out while the other copy is fine.
Cloud cold storage is cheap to keep and slow to bring back. Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive lists about $1 per TB per month, with retrievals that take 12 to 48 hours and a 180-day minimum charge.
Backblaze B2 lists $6.95 per TB per month, with no minimum period and the files ready right away.
LTO tape is what broadcasters and bigger studios use. A tape drive writes the files to a cartridge, and an LTO-9 cartridge holds 18 TB.
The drive is the big purchase, and recent drives only read the previous generation (LTO-9 reads and writes LTO-8), so old tapes have to be copied forward every few years. It starts to make sense once you archive tens of terabytes a year.
What keeping costs, next to a reshoot
Two cameras rolling three hours each in ProRes 422 HQ at 1080p come to about 600 GB. Four shoot days a month is almost 29 TB a year. At Deep Archive’s price, keeping a year of footage costs around $29 a month, and on B2 around $200.
The masters from the same year barely register. So the real decision is about the camera originals, weighed against going back to shoot. A reshoot means another crew day, the gear, the travel and the same people in front of the camera, and some footage can’t be shot again at any price.
Write it down and schedule the deletes
Put the raw footage policy in the proposal (the post on giving clients raw footage has clauses) and repeat the periods in the delivery email, where our delivery template has an archive line. Archive every finished job the same way, with the steps in the folder structure post.
Then give each archived job a date, on the drive label and in the calendar. When it comes up, do what the policy says: step the originals down to selects, or delete them and note that you did.
Deleting is part of the policy. Footage of people who can be identified is personal data under laws like the GDPR, whose storage limitation principle says personal data shouldn’t be kept longer than its purpose needs. This isn’t legal advice, so check the rules where you work.
How this works in RecReview
RecReview isn’t built to hold camera originals. Uploads are capped at 2 GB per file on Creator, 5 GB on Pro and 10 GB on Studio, so cards and project archives belong on your drives or in cold storage. What RecReview holds is the review layer and the record around it.
Every cut you upload becomes the next numbered version of its task and keeps the file you uploaded. Anyone on your team can download the original of any version from the task’s version list.
Each version records who approved it and when, and the task’s activity history shows when each version was uploaded and sent to the client (more on proof of approval).
All of it counts toward the workspace’s storage: 500 GB on Creator, 2 TB on Pro and 5 TB on Studio, with a bar under Billing in the workspace settings.
When you stop working with a client, archive it. It moves to an Archived section of the client menu, with its tasks, versions and history intact, and you can restore it whenever you like.
Archiving doesn’t free space by itself. Space comes back when you delete videos, so download the originals you want to keep first. More on version control.
