What should you do if you have too much video footage to manage?

• A. Delete everything
• B. Break it into shorter clips
• C. Archive old footage
• D. Keep everything

Answer: (B)

When you have more footage than you can easily handle, the key move is to break it into shorter, more manageable clips. Turning long, unwieldy reels into bite-sized pieces makes organizing and editing dramatically easier. Short clips let you quickly audition what you have, compare takes, and assemble scenes without getting lost in hours of material. It also makes tagging and searching much faster—you can add metadata like scene, camera, take, and notes to each clip, so the right moment is always easy to find. This modular approach fits well with non-linear editing workflows and helps with collaboration, since teammates can work on different clips without wading through everything.

Archiving old footage is a good follow-up step to free up space and keep only what you need at hand, but for actively editing or reviewing material, breaking into clips restores immediate access and control. Deleting everything loses potentially valuable material, and keeping everything in one massive pool remains unwieldy.