Problem
An agency's invoice covers editing hours but not third-party storage or transfer costs, creating disagreement when large raw-footage deliveries consume substantial paid bandwidth.
Solution
Root Cause / Diagnostic:
Modern multicam 4K workflows generate terabytes of raw data, incurring substantial egress and cloud storage charges that are overlooked in baseline labor quotes. If pass-through production infrastructure expenses are not delineated upfront, unbudgeted overhead erodes project margins.
Actionable Fix:
1. Insert an explicit clause in the SOW capping free data ingestion at 100 GB, with excess raw ingest billed at $0.15/GB or actual platform cost (e.g., AWS S3, MASV, LucidLink).
2. Utilize dedicated accelerated transfer tools like MASV or Signiant where transfer costs are directly charged to the client's billing account via portal links.
3. Establish a 30-day post-delivery cold-storage retention window, after which raw project archives are either purged or maintained at a billable monthly rate of $25/TB.
Pro Tip:
Have the creator provide a designated client-owned cloud storage bucket or LucidLink filespace so all bandwidth and storage costs bill directly to their infrastructure.
Modern multicam 4K workflows generate terabytes of raw data, incurring substantial egress and cloud storage charges that are overlooked in baseline labor quotes. If pass-through production infrastructure expenses are not delineated upfront, unbudgeted overhead erodes project margins.
Actionable Fix:
1. Insert an explicit clause in the SOW capping free data ingestion at 100 GB, with excess raw ingest billed at $0.15/GB or actual platform cost (e.g., AWS S3, MASV, LucidLink).
2. Utilize dedicated accelerated transfer tools like MASV or Signiant where transfer costs are directly charged to the client's billing account via portal links.
3. Establish a 30-day post-delivery cold-storage retention window, after which raw project archives are either purged or maintained at a billable monthly rate of $25/TB.
Pro Tip:
Have the creator provide a designated client-owned cloud storage bucket or LucidLink filespace so all bandwidth and storage costs bill directly to their infrastructure.