Back Up Your MPO Library: A Routine for Irreplaceable Stereo Originals
Stereo originals are unusually fragile data. A stereo pair is two files pretending to be one; an MPO is one file a careless “optimiser” can flatten into a single 2D JPEG. Fujifilm W3s and 3DS consoles are long out of production — their originals are irreplaceable by definition. This is a backup routine sized for a hobby library, not an enterprise.
The routine
- Ingest untouched. Copy camera cards to an “Originals” folder organised by date/device. Nothing edits these files, ever.
- Two copies, different media. One on your working drive, one on an external drive or a cloud library. Different buildings beats same desk.
- Derivatives live separately. SPM masters (aligned SBS) and exports go in their own folders, so a bad batch can never overwrite an original.
- Verify yearly. Open a sample from each year; storage fails silently, and finding out during a restore is too late.
Stereo-specific traps
- Cloud “optimisation” — photo services that recompress or strip “extra” data can destroy an MPO’s second view or an HEIC’s depth. Test any new service with one file before trusting it with the library.
- Renaming sprees — left/right pairs keyed by filename break when renamed carelessly; rename pairs together, or use MPO containers.
- Metadata loss in processing — batch paths can strip EXIF (the ExifTool method); originals keep what derivatives lose, which is the point of keeping them.
What “backed up” means
If your house drive and your only copy die in the same week and the library survives, it was backed up. Everything else is just stored. For a library gathered over years of stereo shooting, one cloud copy plus one external drive is a proportionate answer.
For the cloud copy of the pair, pCloud is the straightforward store-it-untouched option this routine assumes.
Affiliate link: this site may earn a commission at no cost to you. See our Affiliate Disclosure.