I’m skeptical. No production operation has one layer of backups. At worst they should’ve lost a week or so of work depending on their SOP. Even the most shoestring operations run a 3-2-1 system.

It’s possible this is true but that would require serious negligence. Something/someone actively deleting it actually makes more sense. Doesn’t mean it’s the case of course.

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munificent 13 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

My brother works in video production and I have some (very outdated at this point) history in that area.

* Video files are absolutely huge compared to basically every other domain. Just dealing with media is not trivial in the way that we take for granted in software. It's easy to fill terabytes for a production. Just copying stuff around can be a noticeable logistics problem. People still mail hard drives.

* A lot of people working in video production are there to be artistic creators and are not very technical. They are often extremely skilled at producing beautiful work using specific tools, but they often don't have the computer fundamentals we presume.

* Unlike the software world which increasingly a small number of very large companies who can invest heavily in centralized processes and tools, the video world still has a lot of small companies.

* Margins are very narrow and many of these small businesses are barely scraping. Production gigs can be very feast-or-famine.

Put all that together, and it's not at all surprising that a lot of productions don't have the backup discipline you would expect.

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xnorswap 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Even the most shoestring operations run a 3-2-1 system

You may be surprised to learn there's a sphere in which "backups" are merely a tickbox exercise, something set up once, crudely, to be able to put on a form that you have back-ups.

They often lie dormant, untested, and drift from being fit for purpose. This often isn't discovered until it's too late.

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benoau 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This famously happened to Toy Story 2 - but that's nearly 30 years ago it should require an incredible sequence of failures to achieve these days!

https://screenrant.com/toy-story-2-movie-deleted-accident-re...

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actionfromafar 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Backups could also protect against someone actively deleting.

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Forgeties79 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Sure but anyone with read/write access, editing/rendering access requirements, etc. is going to have a lot of permissions in most operations. Most editors (and many above the line) can access, move, delete, etc. footage and cuts. Locking them out of that is tricky if you want them to do their jobs. Doing screeners and alt versions would be a nightmare.

People lose footage but this is a bit odd for a major operation. Again incompetence is real and it’s a reasonable explanation as well. It’s just surprising

	▲	bathtub365 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Why would they be locked out? The state before their changes would just be backed up and could be rolled back to. It doesn’t need to intersect with their permissions at all. Crucially, they just don’t have write access to the backups