tha's what I was going to say. keep the origional tapes. everything is already on there. if you keep the .veg file then all you need to do is re-capture the footge later on (if you captured digital)

The answer depends on what you might want to do with this archived footage, and also on how often you think you'll need to go back and re-use it. Also, do you think you'll be expecting to need to do something more than simply cut and paste the archived video?

If you only need to use archived video once in awhile, and if you merely need to paste a clip into an existing project, I might lean towards archiving in MPEG-2 format. Even if Sony never decides to provide lossless cuts-only editing of MPEG-2 file, or the ability -- when rendering to MPEG-2 -- to pass-through MPEG-2 files that are mixed on the timeline with DV (much the way that DV is simply copied when a portion of the DV on the timeline is not altered in any way, and the render is being done to a DV file) -- even if they never do all this, their competitors will, and you'll be able to take those MPEG-2 files and re-use them without re-rendering. If your ultimate output is going to continue to be MPEG-2 (DVD) for a long time, this will let you use the MPEG-2 without further degradation.

Having said all that, it sure is simple just to stick a mini-DV tape in the camera or deck and dump the project back out to tape. It is tough to make an argument against this.

Another thing you might look at, if you don't want to continue archiving to DV tape, is to purchase external drives. If you build your own, and if you purchase the disk drives on special, this kind of storage can be amazingly cheap. I am about to purchase my third drive in the past week. This one is a Seagate 160 GByte drive for $40 after rebates (yes, I know lots of people have had problems with rebates, but I've collected on every single one). I can buy an aluminum external enclosure (with fan) for $25 shipped. Thus, for about $75-80 (including the tax and shipping on the disk drive), I've got 160 GBytes. A tape is 13 GBytes and costs $5. Thus, the disk drive is about $0.50 per GByte vs. about $0.40 per GByte for tape. Actually, if you don't mind swapping the disk drive out of the enclosure, you can save the enclosure cost, and the disk drive becomes cheaper.

> Having said all that, it sure is simple just to stick a mini-DV tape in the camera or deck and dump the project back out to tape. It is tough to make an argument against this.

Yup. I archive back to DV tape. So I have one source tape and one master tape for all of my projects. Then I backup the project files and other non-source assets to CD or data DVD (depending on size). That allows me to reconstruct the project from the original source tape, or just recapture the master and make any small edits or transfer to VHS tape. (although lately I’ve been doing my VHS transfers directly from the DVD copy)

~jr

I think MPEG-2 is actualy 4:2:0, not 4:2:2, according to "HDV-What You Need to Know", the new book by Spot and Mark Dileo.

I want to archive to DVD just because I keep thinking the signal on the DV tapes will age like VHS tape, or else disappear when I forget one day and put the things near a magnet, like stereo speakers....

... lately I’ve been doing my VHS transfers directly from the DVD copy ...

Me too. I am such a stickler for quality, that I had a brain freeze and for the longest time didn't even consider using DVD as a source for VHS copies. Suddenly, however, I realized that worrying about the lesser quality on the DVD, compared to the DV tape, was pretty silly, when the quality hit going to VHS is 10x worse than going from DV to DVD.

BTW, I start the VHS recording while the DVD menu is still showing. This provides an extra "title" for the VHS copy that most people seem to enjoy.

I make a special DVD just for dubbing videotape copies. It's got about ten seconds of black silence at the beginning. and a minute or so of black silence at the end. I put the dubbing DVD and a blank VHS tape in a dual DVD/VCR combo deck and hit the copy button.

Laurence,

I rendered up a separate 15 second black section and, when authoring the DVD master for VHS dubbing, I set the "end action" of the main program to point to this black section. Then I make the "end action" of this black section point back to itself. At the end of the program, it will just loop in black and won't go back to the menu until you press the menu button. That way you don't have to be there at the end of the dub to stop it before the black runs out.

The flow on my VHS dub DVD is black section > program > looping black section.

John

Johnmeyer,

Any chance you could point me in the direction of your drive enclosure supplier? Thanks.

Corey

I backup my stuff on hard drives via an enclosure. Can get a 200 gig from CompUSA for $130 bucks. If I use tapes I hold onto those to.

- Ray

www.undergroundplanet.com

I am steadily building an archive of marine life video. The AVI files live on a dedicated internal 250Gb drive and I keep a backup of them all on a 250Gb external drive. Once a year or so I write them all back to DV tape along with the file names using Scenalyzer.

It's belt and braces but I had a horrible few days a couple of years ago thinking I'd lost a whole year's work (2 drives failed in a week).

With hard drive prices falling I may well scrap the tape idea also and keep 2 backups on hard drives.

I really should get one of my backups in a different building tut tut.

It's a little bit of work and probably woudn't be practical for professionals with hours of footage, but my shoots (family) are always less than an hour. I use a file-splitter utility to divide the avi in 1 to 3 parts and put'm on DVD. The utility comes with a little program that reassembles the avi into one file (you place it on one of the DVDs).

However, now that I' capturing with Scenalyzer (having read John Meyer's previous enthusiastic comments), and it captures scenes, the better solution in the future will be just to select the first 4 gigs of files, copy those to DVD and do the same with next 4 gigs, etc.

I like that optical backup solution cause I don't trust DV tapes to last forever and harddrives are subject to breaking down, even if rarely.

That's too expensive! Fry's Electronics used to have 200GB Seagate drives for $48 after rebate. It also had 80GB drives for $17, and 120GB for $20 after rebate (Western Digital drives).
I have never seen them get that cheap before!
Right now, Fry's has 300GB Seagate drives for $99 after rebate!

Yes, I thought of using hard drives for backup, being that they cost about as much as tapes (price per GB), and sometimes even less, while they are WAAAY faster, larger (storage space), more convenient, etc.
As for those saying that DVD is a more reliable storage medium than the tape, I disagree. DVDs can easily be scratched, get dusty, and even without anything even touching them, they age sometimes faster than the tapes. I would put them in the same category as far as reliability goes, and tapes are maybe even longer lasting, unless you are using some special long-life DVDs.

First, hard drives do fail, but usually only if turned on for a few years. If you merely want to archive to the drive, and the drive will spend most of its life on the shelf, it should last a VERY long time. In addition, if you are worried about the information fading over time (and you shouldn't be -- I restore magnetic tape from the 50's and the signal is still very strong) you can purchase Spinrite and it will report on a drive that is starting to lose its signal, and let you recover the data before the drive can no longer be read. I don't think there is any such thing easily available for optical discs, although perhaps one of you knows of something.

As to where to get empty external enclosures, Meritline has them, as do dozens of other places. eBay has jillions of them. The place I use to find out about spectacular deals is Dealnews. You can subscribe to their storage newsletter, and you will receive an email whenever they find a great deal on a disk drive or disk enclosure. Here's a link directly to that page:

Dealnews Storage Archive.

The really good deals involve multiple rebates, so you have to be willing to spend a little time filling out the paperwork, and then bird-dogging the company if the rebate doesn't arrive on time.

The last drive I purchased was the Western Digital 160GB Hard Drive for $20. I had to pay shipping and tax, so the actual cost was about $35, but still pretty amazing. It has already arrived, and has been formatted and partially filled.