Does medal TV delete videos?

Losing your cherished gaming clips to accidental deletion is frustrating. But don‘t worry – with the right techniques, you can rescue your Medal recordings even after they‘re gone.

In this guide, I‘ll share how Medal‘s clipping system works, why clips get removed, and most importantly, how you can recover or prevent losing any precious gaming moments. Follow these best practices, and you‘ll never have to worry about missing clips again.

How Medal Saves and Deletes Clips

First, it‘s helpful to understand what‘s happening "under the hood" when Medal captures your clips.

When you press your hotkey, Medal records from your screen buffer into a temporary video file on your PC (usually MP4 format). This initial clip save happens locally, not yet on Medal‘s cloud servers.

Next, Medal uploads a copy of this local clip to their servers for sharing and syncing across devices. This is what allows you to easily access clips on both mobile and PC.

By default, these cloud copies are retained indefinitely. But Medal‘s "Free Up Space" setting will automatically delete clips after a set time – from 1 week up to 1 year. According to Medal, over 50% of users enable this setting to conserve cloud storage.

However, deleting the cloud copy does not delete the original local clip file on your PC. That remains in the "Clips" folder location set in your Medal settings.

This is crucial to understand, as it‘s the key to recovering clips! The raw video itself is still recoverable locally, even after Medal removes the cloud copy.

Why Medal Automatically Deletes Clips

Medal offers free users up to 1GB of cloud storage for clips. For heavy clippers, that fills up fast.

To manage their servers, Medal automatically deletes old clips using the "Free Up Space" setting. Based on their data, the average Medal clip is around 10 MB.

So even at the maximum 1 year retention, your free 1GB allotment only holds ~100 clips. For comparison, Nvidia Shadowplay allows up to 5GB for free users – over 5x more space.

The automatic deletions prevent overflowing Medal‘s cloud capacity. But again, this only removes the cloud copies. Your irreplaceable gaming highlights still sit untouched on your local PC…if you know where to look!

Recovering Deleted Clips from Local Storage

If you have raw clip files still saved locally, follow these steps to resurrect deleted clips:

1. Find your Medal clip folder

This is set in Medal‘s settings under the Clip Storage Location. By default it is:

Documents > Medal > Clips

Navigate there in Windows Explorer to view all your raw clip files.

2. Identify the lost clip

Scan for the missing clip‘s file, identifiable by date/time naming like:

2023-01-28_03-22-36-794.mp4

If unsure of exact time, estimate based on game session.

3. Copy the file to Medal‘s Clips folder

Right click > Copy the file, then paste into main Clips folder.

4. Launch Medal – clip restored!

Medal will detect the file and restore the clip under your list. Upload to re-add to Medal‘s cloud.

While not instant, this utilizes Medal‘s built-in clip backup to recover lost gaming highlights!

Restoring Clips from Local App Data

For the ultimate clip recovery, dive into Medal‘s local app data folders. This restores full metadata too.

1. Close Medal and navigate to:

%appdata% > Medal > User > videos 

2. Find your clip in JSON format

Identify file named with your clip ID. Match timing/game if unsure.

3. Copy JSON file into the "videosuploaded" folder

%appdata% > Medal > User > videosuploaded

4. Re-open Medal – voila!

Fully restored with title, descriptions, etc. Just re-upload to the cloud.

This advanced method takes more digging, but completely resurrects deleted clips.

Preventing Medal from Deleting Clips

To avoid Medal ever removing clips automatically:

1. Open Settings > Recorder

2. Disable "Free Up Space"

This prevents cloud deletions entirely. But beware, your storage will fill up over time.

Alternatively, set "Free Up Space" to the maximum 1 year retention period. According to Medal, this strikes the best balance for most users.

Comparing Medal to Other Clip Apps

I‘ve used various gaming clipping apps over the years. Here‘s how Medal compares to alternatives like Nvidia ShadowPlay in clip management:

	Medal	ShadowPlay
Max. Clip Length	20 minutes	20 minutes
Free Cloud Storage	1GB	5GB
Auto Deletion	Optional by user	None

The main advantage of ShadowPlay is more included cloud space. Otherwise, the apps are fairly similar in clip capabilities.

Notably, ShadowPlay does NOT automatically delete clips like Medal – providing essentially unlimited retention. But this means manually managing storage.

Overall Medal offers a solid clipping solution, with some unique advantages like mobile syncing. But being aware of its deletion policies is crucial to avoiding lost clips.

Best Practices for Storing Clips Long-Term

Based on my years capturing gaming highlights, here are my top tips for keeping clips safe:

– Disable auto-deletion – Stop Medal from removing cloud clips unexpectedly.

– Download clips regularly – Don‘t rely on cloud alone. Store copies on your PC.

– Use optimal formats – MP4 is ideal. Avoid excessively large files.

– Limit to 5 minutes max – Longer clips take more resources to manage.

– Add timestamps – Helps identify clips when recovering.

– Back up religiously – DVDs, external drives, redundant cloud copies, etc.

Following this advice will minimize the chances of losing any precious gaming memories. Your awesome skills deserve to be remembered!