Archiving video

videonewbie wrote on 12/4/2002, 9:41 PM
This post has nothing to do with VideoFacrtory specifically.

I was wondering what most of you did with your video for storing it long term. I have quite a lot of disk space, 160GB currently, but although that sounds like a lot, when a tape is captured in DV AVI format, it's still pretty big. Although 160 GB will hold a lot of completed DVD projects, the space will soon disappear if I capture all tapes to the disk and then leave them there.

So do most of you delete the AVI files from the HD when you have created the final movie? If so, what do you do if you subsequently decide you want to revise the movie? This isn't a real problem for me right now, because I've only just started, but I can easily see how even large disks get filled up very quickly. I'm interested in advice on your various schemes.

Thanks in advance,

Martin Horton

Comments

JohnnyRoy wrote on 12/4/2002, 10:15 PM
Martin,

What I do is archive the finished product back to DV tape and delete the AVI files from my hard drive. So I have a collection of source tapes and another collection of master tapes. Chances are that you're not going to want to edit it again so the archive is really just in case something happens to the DVD or you need to make a copy for someone on VHS or some other media. You could always recapture it from the master and if you need to change a part, recapture some of the original footage for that part only. Then splice the changes back together with the rest of the master footage.

~jr
IanG wrote on 12/5/2002, 3:38 AM
That's what I'm doing, though I can see myself making a change to using DVDs (as data disks). It's not just the video I want to archive, there's the audio and stills too, along with the VF project file. I'll have to try zipping some avis and see what sort of compression I get.

Ian G.
miketree wrote on 12/5/2002, 5:03 AM
I've got the same dilema at the moment. It's just a question of cost vs quality really.
dv tapes aren't cheap & yuo can't get a lot on them. If you keep them all, you'll need to build an extension to act as your library. Alternatively you could save them as mpg2 files and store on dvd - slight loss of quality if you need to re-render but a lot cheeper if you have a dvd writer. You could store as divx files - a lot smaller, but yet again, a loss in quality. I'm toying with the idea of copying the dv to vhs to store my pre-edit footage & dvd for my edited. It's unlikely that I'll need the source footage, but if I do, The quality shouldn't be too bad captured from vhs. If it's really important, I'll keep the dv.
Former user wrote on 12/5/2002, 4:17 PM
IanG, you won't gain much from zipping the DV files. I tried once, and since they are already compressed, they don't compress much more.

DV tapes (or in my case Digital 8 tapes) are probably the best and cheapest storage medium overall, with no loss of quality.

Stills and audio can be stored on CD-R's or Zip disk. Just label things where they make sense. Organization is the big key and my weakest link.

Dave T2
Simmer wrote on 12/5/2002, 5:00 PM
Currently I'm having to backup to a seperate HD (I have 2 HDs (both 120Gig), the first is a two partitioned device, parition 1 is OS/system, second partition I use for capture. The second HD I am using for storing/backing-up media). This method I don't like much and am looking at other options also.

I have been toying with the idea of backing up to DVD but havn't tried it yet.

-Mike
IanG wrote on 12/5/2002, 5:35 PM
Dave, thanks for that - I hadn't realised how "compact" avis are! I haven't given up on DVDs yet though, I just need to find the perfect excuse to buy one!

Ian G.
JohnnyRoy wrote on 12/6/2002, 5:25 PM
Mike,

> dv tapes aren't cheap & yuo can't get a lot on them.

I get DV tapes for about $6 each. Each tape holds one hour of DV which is 18GB of data from your hard drive. That’s $0.33 per Gigabyte. I think that’s pretty cheap. That means a 120 GB of DV storage on tape costs $40. I don’t think you can buy a 120GB hard drive for $40 (at least not yet) so its cheaper than keeping it on your hard drive. DVD’s hold 4.7GB and cost about $4 each. That’s $0.85 per Gigabyte. If you buy the cheap DVD’s for $2.00 each that gets you down to $0.42 per Gigabyte. Any way you slice it, DV tape is still cheaper. (unless you compress to MPEG but now you’re sacrificing quality).

~jr
IanG wrote on 12/7/2002, 4:03 PM
DVD-Rs in the UK are comfortably less than $1 each (buying 25 at a time), so the economics are heading in favour of the DVD.

Ian G.
Simmer wrote on 12/9/2002, 9:36 AM
Thanks JohnnyRoy and IanG.

Question:

Tape is usually the archival medium of choice. However, if 18GB is about max
these days, then if I have some files larger then 18GB (I have up to 25GB AVIs) then
there must be software/hardware available that can span media.
I know this is available for DDS/4 and DAT type devices.
Is this available for DV?
Otherwise I'd have to resort to MP2 or something but I really don't want to loose quality on source material.

Thanks

-Mike
IanG wrote on 12/9/2002, 3:52 PM
I've come across s/w that will span cds, but it copies disks rather than files. I suppose you could setup an archive partition, but it's not exactly convenient!

Ian G.
p_l wrote on 12/10/2002, 12:22 AM
How about getting a 90min. DV tape, which should allow you to archive 27GB of DV-AVI? They may be a bit thinner, so stick to 60min. tapes for anything under 18GB.
IanG wrote on 12/10/2002, 9:16 AM
It looks like you can now get file backup s/w that spans cds/dvds. I haven't seen anything I felt I had to buy, though.

Ian G.
videonewbie wrote on 12/10/2002, 8:54 PM
Thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread. It seems to me that the answer is to leave it on the original tape. Which leads to another question, to which I think I know the answer, but always good to check. All of what follows I state as fact, but if I am wrong in any particular, I'd appreciate corrections.

A VF project file only contains pointers to media files, no actual media. Thus, if I capture a DV tape, create a video and then delete all the media files, I should be able to capture that DV tape again and the project should be intact. This assumes no frames dropped on either capture. In other words, unlike an analog capture, a digital capture should be exactly the same every time.

Any problems with that logic?

Martin Horton


IanG wrote on 12/11/2002, 5:34 AM
Looks ok, though the file names will need to be the same, including the location, i.e same drive id and folder. VF handles missing media very well and gives you options for how to deal with it, including selecting alternate files.

Now there's an idea for some avante garde creations - produce a project, remove the media and then randomly select stuff to replace it. My turn for the Turner prize, methinks!

Ian G.