Question Looking for a image and video compression solution

[Shahmatt]

So this is a general question on strategy as well as tools. I'd appreciate any advice.

The photos and videos I take on my Xiaomi Mi9T phone get backed up to my PC using Syncthing.

Every month or so, when the phone storage gets full, I bulk transfer everything to other folders on my PC which syncs to my Unraid NAS (also via Syncthing).

The trouble is, of course, that whatever is transferred out becomes unavailable on the phone. For a while I was using Google photos which keeps things on the cloud. But I was wondering if I could use the hardware I have on hand to have a bit more control over my data.

An easy solution might be to use Handbrake on my PC to batch create a lower quality copy of image and video in the phone synced folders. Syncthing would then automatically replace what's on the phone with the lower quality version.

For example, a 1080p 140MB 1min video can be downgraded to 480p 12.5MB. This would allow me to keep in the phone storage images and videos for a much longer period without needing to clear.

The second part would be a viewing tool. Google photos is amazing due to its face recognition feature, which I use a lot. Is there anything else as good? I'd appreciate the suggestions.

 

[lvt]

Do you have an idea how many GB or TB you would need for your photos and videos?

 

[Shahmatt]

Do you have an idea how many GB or TB you would need for your photos and videos?

Currently all the videos and photos I have occupy a space of 370GB. I'm assuming at least 50% (say 200GB) is for videos. That's about 15 years of images.

I don't need to keep the entirety of the collection on the phone. But if I can cover the last 2 years it would be nice.

 

[lvt]

Currently all the videos and photos I have occupy a space of 370GB. I'm assuming at least 50% (say 200GB) is for videos. That's about 15 years of images.

I don't need to keep the entirety of the collection on the phone. But if I can cover the last 2 years it would be nice.

With your phone's 128GB of storage, you won't want to exceed 50% of its storage in order to not slow the phone down or wear it flash memory prematurely.

The best solution for you might be investing $3/month for 200GB on Google so that you can keep the latest 200GB of photos and videos available 24/7. The older data can be archived and remain available locally on your HDDs (ideally a 1TB HDD for data + 1TB HDD for backup).