How to archive AVI files

Eug7 wrote on 7/30/2003, 1:32 PM
All my activity is recent, I'm converting our family home analog video's to DVD. The tapes are up to 19 years old and are deteriorating. Although I have the DVD and a back up DVD tucked away, ideally I would like to retain the AVI.

We're talkin' 27GB for a 2 hour video. Since I have no experience with digital video. I don't own a DV camera. If i were to invest in one can I archive the entire 2 hours onto DV tape from the captured AVI.

Comments

BillyBoy wrote on 7/30/2003, 1:46 PM
Short answer:yes.

Many digital cameras, I'd probably say most of the prosumer and consumer grade models have a feature called 'pass-through' (sometimes called something else) where if you hook the camera up to a VHS recorder or some other analog source the material can either 'pass through' the camera and come into a application like Vegas in digital form or it can be copied to the camera's DV tape in effect making a DV version on the fly. There are 'black boxes" (analog to digital convertors) that do the same thing. They are cheaper however for few hundred more you also get a camera.

As far as archiving the DV AVI format is ideal if you want to store on DV tapes. It is a compressed format, so not the same as uncompress AVI which would take far more space and the only practical option for storing uncompressed AVI is on a hard disk.

Quality wise especailly if your source was old analog tape, you'll never see the difference in quality between uncompressed and DV AVI. Also if you use the Vegas encoder it can stand up to multiple generation editing without losing any noticeable quality.
Eug7 wrote on 7/30/2003, 1:56 PM
BillyBoy,

If I were to use the pass through feature to get the analog to the DV tape, what's the capacity of the DV tape at best quality?
farss wrote on 7/30/2003, 4:09 PM
With DV tape you don't really have a 'quality' setting.

There are two ways to write the data to tape, DV and DVCAM, well actaully there's a lot more but they're the two you are most likely to encounter.

There is no quality difference from a pure video perspective but the way DVCAM is written gives less risk of dropouts so if your aim is archival storage DVCAM is the way to go.

In that mode the MiniDV tapes hold around 40mins, the large format DV tapes hold 180mins. If you record in DV you fit more due to the lower write speed and get 60mins and 340 mins.

The only problem is that decks / cameras that will write DVCAM are more expensive, my suggestion, if you can, hire say a DSR11 VCR and archive onto DVCAM tape.
Chienworks wrote on 7/30/2003, 4:09 PM
MiniDV tapes hold about 62 minutes in SP mode and 93 minutes in LP mode. There is no quality difference between these two modes. However, the LP mode does have a few problems, mostly that tapes recorded in LP on one camcorder/deck may or may not play back properly on a different machine.

There are some longer tapes available, 80 or so minutes in SP and 120 or so minutes in LP. These tapes are thinner and more susceptable to breakage and stretching. They should probably be avoided if possible.
BillyBoy wrote on 7/30/2003, 8:24 PM
I only use the SP mode and get about 61 minutes too. Anybody know how long the shelf life is suppose to be for DV tapes once they're recorded? I just use them as my final safety net, burning a DVD for all my projects and also keeping a copy on a hard drive, I mean multiple hard drives, boy I got a lot now. ;-)
tadpole wrote on 7/30/2003, 8:49 PM
i always keep an avi copy of all my projects on dv tape (60 minutes per tape kinda of stinks)

Think the real question here is where are our blue-laser -FMD disc recorders? :(
120 GIG optical discs would be soooo nice

anyone have an eta on when we can expect these to hit the shelfs?
or should i place another bulk order for DV tapes?
mikkie wrote on 7/31/2003, 8:33 AM
"Anybody know how long the shelf life is suppose to be for DV tapes once they're recorded?"

Good question, and I'd have to assume about the same as any tape medium, and perhaps not approaching DVD in theory anyway. Found a tidbit on adam wilt's site that mpg2 at comparible bit rate was roughly equiv. to DV quality - so far seems to be true though haven't been playing with it for more then a week or so, and with the matrix being similar, doesn't seem to be a big quality issue. Might be one route to go archiving, using the DVD as backup medium rather then writing a regular DVD? If concerned about the way mpg2 works, all I frame should still be smaller then DV.
RichMacDonald wrote on 7/31/2003, 12:09 PM
Alternative: Do you have a CD burner? I archive my avi and veg projects to CD using backup software? In particular, I use Dantz Retrospect, which I consider to be the best available for a single user. (They have good network stuff as well, but I don't use it.)

27GB is about 39 CDs worth of archive. So you have to do a lot of inserting, ejecting, and replacing of CDs. And about 5 min (depending on your burner speed) per CD to burn, plus another 5 min to verify. But it works in the background, so you can do other things at the same time.

Sounds slow and painful, but CDs are cheap. I have hundreds of CDs backed up, and find it completely acceptable for single user use. Plus, I avoid wear and tear on the camcorder, risk of the DV tape deteriorating, etc. And I have the whole project saved, so I don't have to recapture and rebuild.

For a one-time situation like yours and seeing you don't own a DV camera, it seems like the best choice. CD burners and CDs are cheap. Retrospect will run you $130 or so, but its also good for backing up your computer. OTOH, if you don't need backup software, find yourself a copy of WinRAR and zip the files into CD-sized portions, then burn as normal.
the_rhino wrote on 7/31/2003, 3:51 PM
Same idea - just newer tech. . .

Use DVD-R/+R to do the backup. Save all of your stuff to one partition. Use Ghost, etc. to do a partition backup but use DVD-R/+Rs instead of CDRs. Make sure you verify your data [as mentioned above] You don't want a bad Disk in the middle of 6-8 backup disks.