Buy XH A1, or rent and wait for AVCHD?

[Jeff Kellam]

Originally Posted by Mark Fry

Good luck, Jerry. Don't get rid of the old GL2, you'll need it for playing the old tapes. How will you archive your footage from the HMC-150?

There are a lot of ways to store footage. I have always stored footage on my local storage system when capturing from the A1. I learned to do this from hours and hours spent capturing tapes before retiring my old DV & HDV cameras. It's a nightmare PITA to do this years later.

I also backup using a HD dock like this:
Newegg.com - Thermaltake BlacX N0028USU External Hard Drive SATA Enclosure Docking Station 2.5" & 3.5" USB 2.0 - External Enclosures

to then keep a backup copy(s) on loose hard drives in a safe place.

It's a lot faster, safer and cheaper than tapes.

Example:
16GB SDHC card = 90 min video at highest quality.
40 recording sessions = 3600 min or 60 hours = 640 GB
640 GB hard drive = 60 hours
Current cost = $85 for 640 GB = $1.42 per hour of storage X 2 (backup) = $2.84 hour for storage.

If you use a cheap $5.00 tape it's still cheaper and you still don't have a backup to the tape.

Plus, for a 16GB SDHC card, you can capture to the working drive and backup the footage in 5 to 10 mins instead of wasting 90 minutes (for a 16GB card) waiting for a tape to playback. It's really just an amazing workflow. It's given me the digital photography syndrome (of taking lots of test shots and shots you know you will discard) with video. You can take test shots and make tweaks and see the results as quickly as you put the card in the computer.

[Jerry Norman]

Yes, this is pretty much exactly what I do now with the GL2, and will probably do with the new HMC150. In fact, I do have all my old tapes, but I have NEVER gone back to a single tape after the initial capture. They are just there as a secondary backup.

What I do want to get better at with my new system is a way to index my offline clips so I can find them more easily via keywords. I use Vegas and will probably do this with its Media Manager. So far my use of Media Manager has been limited to cataloging hundreds of clips that might be used in a single project.

Originally Posted by Jeff Kellam

There are a lot of ways to store footage. I have always stored footage on my local storage system when capturing from the A1. I learned to do this from hours and hours spent capturing tapes before retiring my old DV & HDV cameras. It's a nightmare PITA to do this years later.

I also backup using a HD dock like this:
Newegg.com - Thermaltake BlacX N0028USU External Hard Drive SATA Enclosure Docking Station 2.5" & 3.5" USB 2.0 - External Enclosures

to then keep a backup copy(s) on loose hard drives in a safe place.

It's a lot faster, safer and cheaper than tapes.

Example:
16GB SDHC card = 90 min video at highest quality.
40 recording sessions = 3600 min or 60 hours = 640 GB
640 GB hard drive = 60 hours
Current cost = $85 for 640 GB = $1.42 per hour of storage X 2 (backup) = $2.84 hour for storage.

If you use a cheap $5.00 tape it's still cheaper and you still don't have a backup to the tape.

Plus, for a 16GB SDHC card, you can capture to the working drive and backup the footage in 5 to 10 mins instead of wasting 90 minutes (for a 16GB card) waiting for a tape to playback. It's really just an amazing workflow. It's given me the digital photography syndrome (of taking lots of test shots and shots you know you will discard) with video. You can take test shots and make tweaks and see the results as quickly as you put the card in the computer.