When asking this question to people working with video you get very interesting conversations. I am hoping to find out what the general opinion is so please let me know yours. Of course you can measure size using several measurement sticks like storage size, duration or number of clips and you get completely different discussions depending on which is used.
- Storage size – the amount of GB the videos need on disc
- Duration – Playing all videos in a row takes how long?
- Number – The actual number of video files on disc
Here are my findings for what is a large collection, using number of videos as a measurement stick
100 clips
Maybe, it depends. If I send you 100 videos of 15 minutes each and ask you to find the scene with the white rabbit it will feel like a large collection to browse. On the other hand if you have worked with the 100 videos for some time you might feel like you are in control and you probably have a clever folder structure and naming convention in place.
500 clips
This is the point when it starts to get messy even with a well organized folder structure and naming of all clips. You probably need some extra details, and without this you are starting to build your own video management system.
1,000 clips
I will not say it is impossible but it becomes very difficult and certainly time consuming to work with such a large video collection. It will be difficult to find what you are looking for and a video asset management system would save lots of time.
10,000 clips
At this size you have a system in place and are using it to find your clips fast and easy. The software you use needs to help you get an overview of large portions of the collection, so that you can browse without searching. It’s like when you navigate in Google maps instead of searching via text.
100,000 clips
You don’t have a large collection, this is huge by any standard.
140,000,000 clips and more.
Guess who that can be :)
Thank you for reading