# Handling digital media masters

Master files -
either original sources or as close as possible -
are precious and should be carefully tracked.

Digital media files -
e.g. photos, videos, music -
are often large and binary encoded,
which poses special challenges for their tracking.


## Git-annex

Digital media masters are tracked with git and git-annex.

Git is a version control system -
a repository for historic versions of file contents of a folder.
Git-annex is an extension to git,
better at handling large files.

Conceptually,
git-annex tracks changes to data same as git,
but where git tracks the *contents* of files,
git-annex instead tracks file *checksums* into git,
moving aside the actual data (to an "annex")
and tracks which annex currently holds data with which checksums.


## References

* [media-master][Source of this document]

[media-master]: <https://source.redpill.dk/media-master>.
  "Digital media master material"