Storage and cost
Video storage for filmmakers.
Three tiers, and the mistake of running two of them as one.
Three different jobs all get called storage. Working storage runs the edit. Delivery storage is what a client opens. Archive is what you are glad you paid for the day someone asks for a re-cut two years later. Here is what belongs in each tier, what each one costs, and what breaks when a single product is asked to do two of them.
Video hosting for filmmakers · 5 GB free · Paid plans from USD 9/month
Updated September 2026
One word, three jobs
A film library is not one thing.
It is three, and they price differently.
The moment storage stops being a one-off annoyance and starts being a structural problem is the moment you notice you are paying three separate bills for what you thought was one product. That is not a billing error. It is the shape of the work. A cut needs speed, a client needs a page that opens, and a finished film needs somewhere cheap to sit for a decade. No single product is good at all three, and the ones that claim to be are quietly bad at two of them.
Working storage
A fast local disk or a small array, attached to the machine that cuts. It holds camera originals, project files and renders in progress. It is judged on sustained read speed and on nothing else. Nothing that travels over the public internet is a substitute during an edit, and no cloud tier on this page pretends to be one.
Delivery and review
Where a client watches and downloads. Small, hot, seen by people who are not you, and judged on how it looks and how fast it opens. This is the tier that is allowed to be expensive per terabyte, because it is the only one anyone outside the building ever touches.
Archive
Cold, large, rarely opened, and the cheapest per terabyte of the three. It exists for the day someone asks for a re-cut two years later, or for the version of you who deleted the drive. Its job is to sit still, stay intact, and cost as little as possible while doing so.
The sorting
What lives in each tier,
and where it belongs.
The three columns disagree on speed, audience, size and price. That disagreement is the reason they are three tiers and not one.
The first collapse
A review host is an archive
until the invoice stops.
This is the common one. The film is delivered, the link works, the client is happy, and the project folder gets deleted off the array to make room for the next job. The platform is now the only copy. Every platform that sells delivery has a written policy for what happens when you stop paying, and none of those policies were designed with your master in mind.
60 days
Vimeo source files after a lapse
Vimeo: if a paid membership lapses to Basic, source files stored on Vimeo are deleted after 60 days and cannot be recovered. The HD and SD versions remain.
2 years
Google, over quota
Google: if you are over your storage quota for 2 years, Google might delete your content across Gmail, Drive and Photos. It is written as a might, not a guarantee.
20 GB
Dropbox free link, a day
Dropbox: Basic accounts and trials are capped at 20 GB of shared-link traffic and up to 100,000 file downloads per day.
The test
The second collapse
An archive is not, and never was,
is a delivery platform.
The opposite mistake is quieter and happens to more technical filmmakers. The archive is solved, correctly and cheaply, and then it starts getting used as the place clients are pointed at. A folder link goes out, a producer forwards it to eleven people, and the tier that was priced to sit still is suddenly doing the one job it was never priced for.
Dropbox's published daily ceilings for shared links, fetched 9 September 2026. A file-storage product has delivery limits because delivery is not what it is for. One 40 GB master forwarded around a client's team is already past the free ceiling for the day.
The arithmetic
An archive is a bucket,
or a button next to the film.
Here is the comparison stated the way it should be stated, which is against us. Four terabytes of delivered masters and selects, kept for a year, with a project pulled back once. One column is a bucket you operate, billed by the gigabyte you keep and the gigabyte you move. The other is a switch inside the library that already holds the film you delivered.
Our list prices in US dollars, fetched 9 September 2026 from our own pricing page. Our cold tier is on Max and Studio; Max includes 1 TB of cold and Studio 2 TB, then $20 per TB a month in whole terabytes. The other column describes how pay-as-you-go object storage is billed rather than any one provider's rate.
Putting it in place
Splitting one library
into three, in an afternoon.
Draw the line at the render
Everything that existed before the final render is working storage and stays on local disk or the array. Everything that exists after it is either delivery or archive. This single line removes most of the ambiguity, because it is the point at which files stop changing.
Put one file in the hot tier per project
The viewing export, at a high bitrate, is what a client opens. It is small relative to the master and it is the only thing that has to be fast. On the hot side that is 100 GB on Lite, 500 GB on Pro and 1.5 TB on Max, and bandwidth is not metered, so the number of people who watch it does not change the bill.
Send the master and the selects to cold
The delivered master and the selects that made the cut are the off-site copy of what a reshoot could not replace. They go cold the day the grade is approved. Archiving frees the hot space immediately, and a cold master is one re-hydration away from the review room when a re-edit becomes real.
Count your copies, not your terabytes
The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security puts it as three copies, one original and two backups, on two different media types, with one kept off site. The cloud archive is a strong candidate for the off-site copy. It is not, on its own, all three.
The two sentences worth remembering
Questions
Frequently asked
How much cloud storage does a filmmaker actually need?
Far less than you shot, because only one of the three tiers belongs in the cloud twice over. Camera originals and project files stay on the local disk or array the edit runs from. What goes online is the viewing export a client opens, the delivered master, and the selects that made the cut. For a shooter finishing a project a month that is a few hundred gigabytes of hot storage and a few terabytes of archive by year end: 100 GB hot on Lite, 500 GB on Pro, 1.5 TB hot plus 1 TB cold on Max.
Can I edit straight off cloud storage?
No, and no product should tell you otherwise. An edit needs sustained read speed and instant scrubbing, and nothing that travels over the public internet is a substitute during a cut. Working storage is a fast local disk or a small array attached to the machine doing the work. The cloud tiers exist for what happens after the render, not during it.
Is a review or hosting platform a safe place to keep finished work?
Only while you are paying. Vimeo states it plainly: if a paid membership lapses to Basic, source files stored on Vimeo are deleted after 60 days and cannot be recovered, while the HD and SD versions remain. That is a delivery product behaving exactly as designed. It is not an archive, and it should never be the only copy of a master.
Is it cheaper to run my own archive bucket?
Usually yes. Pay-as-you-go cold object storage bills by the gigabyte you actually store, with no tier to buy and nothing bundled around it, so a bucket you operate yourself comes in under a managed cold tier. Four terabytes on the cold tier here is $960 at list for a year, or $720 on Max where the first terabyte is included. If you are comfortable with a bucket, a lifecycle policy and a restore script, run your own archive and spend the difference on something else.
What actually happens when I archive a master here?
It leaves the live library. A cold master does not stream, embed or appear in a review room until you bring it back. The hot space it used is freed immediately, restores are size-verified on arrival, and the monthly re-hydration allowance is twice your cold pool, resetting on the 1st. Cold storage is on Max and Studio.
How large a file can I upload?
Up to 5 TB per file, subject to the storage available on your account. Moving masters between hot and cold has its own threshold: the web dashboard handles files up to 20 GB, and anything larger moves through the macOS app part by part, so a laptop that closes mid-transfer resumes instead of restarting.
What is the 3-2-1 rule, and does a cloud tier satisfy it?
The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security states it as three copies of your information, one original and two backups, saved on two different media types, with one copy kept off site. A cloud archive is a good candidate for the off-site copy. It is not the whole rule on its own, and a single provider holding your only master is the exact arrangement the rule exists to prevent.
Size the hot tier, then price the cold one
Storage is the only meter here. Lite is 100 GB hot at $9 a month, Pro 500 GB at $25, Max 1.5 TB hot plus 1 TB cold at $75, Studio 2 TB hot plus 2 TB cold at $250. Blocks beyond a plan are $40 per TB hot and $20 per TB cold, a month.
Sources
- 1.Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, Tips for backing up your information (ITSAP.40.002): the 3-2-1 rule (fetched 9 September 2026)
- 2.Vimeo Help Center, FAQ: lapsing from a paid account to a Basic account, source files deleted after 60 days (fetched 9 September 2026)
- 3.Google Drive Help: what happens when you run out of storage, including the two-year over-quota deletion clause (fetched 9 September 2026)
- 4.Dropbox Help Center: daily shared-link traffic and download ceilings by plan (fetched 9 September 2026)
- 5.uncompressed.io pricing, plans and storage blocks
- 6.uncompressed.io: the Vault, and the storage and seats each plan includes