D-VHS as an Archeive Solution

djamm wrote on 2/20/2005, 8:20 AM
I waas at a trade show and I noticed that everyone was ussing the JVC D-VHS to display HD presentations. It came to me that this could be a great archeival solution for weddings.

My company gives the master footage to customer but now that I will be going wit hard drive solutions and AVI archeival solution is going to be difficult. Not to mention the $100.00 or so dollars wasted in giving the customer 10-12 DV tapes.

The fact that these VHS machines can store 210 min of prestine HDV or SD (stright AVI) on a $5.00 VHS tape looks good to me.

Not to mention I could demonstrate HDV and full SD to customer in house or at Bridal shows.

What would be perfect is if Sony would create a batch master transport to D-VHS function. My KORG Trinity keyboard does this with DAT tapes. The Korg has a 2 gig (this was huge in 1995) to which it records 4 tracks of digital audio. With the batch master function it creates a digital file with all the project information and then creates a complete mirror of the 2 gig hardrive.
thanks to this function I am still able to work on music created back in 1995 as if it were yestureday.

It would truely be handy if I put in one or two $5.00 D-VHS tape and press a button in Vegas to export only relevant footage that is being used in a project and all of the project information.

Then format my AV drive an start a new project fresh. And if I need to work on a old project again simply format again and pop in a tape let it load over night and continue where I left off.

Anyone have any comments on the D-VHS format?

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 2/20/2005, 9:40 AM
In terms of quality, it's excellent. With Quicktime, you can export straight to the player too. It would be nice if Cineform would print to this player. However, because of the tape format, it's semi risky. But carry a couple spares, you should be OK. Unlike analog tape that can still show a picture when the tape is stretched, digital just falls apart. VHS will stretch reasonably quickly given a tradeshow environment. Otherwise, you're onto something great. Mark and I wrote about this in the HDV book after we'd seen Hui Kang (Korean film maker) showing/storing/displaying through a DVHS deck in Hawaii last October.
JJKizak wrote on 2/20/2005, 9:46 AM
With the advent of HDV Mini-DV don't know which one will survive although at this time D-VHS is much lots cheaper. Then again its tape but not knowing the technicalities of how its applied to the tape will it last 30 years? 100years? Will there be anything around equipment wise that can play it? Also same with BlueRay and HD-DVD which claim 100 years but the way plastic decays who knows. The discs might be junk after 10 years and then again will there be equipment around that can play them? The way technology is rampaging those discs may be viewed 20 years in the future as we view 78 rpm records now.

JJK
BillyBoy wrote on 2/20/2005, 10:27 AM
One thing for sure... whatever we're using now will be old news ten years from now. That's how the computer biz is, always was and likely will always be. For example I still have a box full of blank SyQuest tape cartridges that worked with the latest technology just five years back or so which was my super 'large" SyQuest 135 MB tape system. Surely nobody thought those were "small" at the time. Same with my "huge" pair of IBM hard drives a whopping 2.2 GB storage that I paid $450 each for. I just don't have the heart to throw them away, but they sit empty in my junk box, just another relic of the past.
riredale wrote on 2/20/2005, 11:36 AM
Last week someone asked me if I could take a file on a Zip disk. You know, one of those little Iomega hard plastic shelled disks that originally held a whopping 100MB. Well, yeah, I can read it if you give me some time rummaging around in my junk box for my parallel-port Zip drive.

And at the time (late '90s) I thought they were great.