storing Video

[Will Crain]

hey everyone,
not sure if i am putting this in the right section of the forum, but here's my question:

What is the best way to back up video taken striaght from the camera?
Since its SO LARGE, what do you guys recommend? any specifics would be a great help. Thanks

Will

[Mark Holland]

Maybe another external hard drive? A RAID system? (Computers aren't my area of expertise, so I can't help you with the details on a RAID system.) If you're looking for permanent long term storage...maybe tape?

[Ervin Farkas]

What do you mean by "straight from the camera"? Recording directly onto a computer without tape, or video transferred from tape to computer?

If we're talking already taped video, than keep it on tape. Although I have yet to find scientifical research results, most experts agree that good quality tape life span is 20-25 years, while burned DVD media will only last a few years.

Try a "tape life span" search in the "Long black line" forum below for more.

[Will Crain]

thanks for the help guys...
the footage that i have is from a tape ... BUT then after the footage was captured, the person took the camera and shot over all the film, captured and shot again... they used one tape for about 7-8 hrs captured in 10-20min segments... now which are all on an external harddrive... thats the only place taht they live... I am just affraid of a crash and be completely wiped of them... i need a more permanent backup... thanks again

[Alessandro Machi]

Yep, that's the problem isn't it. It's like we're on a race track and about to discover that the track is round and ends up where it started. Either you at some point DESTROY your original footage, or fill up way too many drives that one day may be obsolete as you hold out for affordable flash card technology, which unfortunately will probably come with too much compression.

[Ron Evans]

IN the short term get another hard drive and copy them over. At least then two hard drives have to fail to lose them!!! When you have the time export to tape.
Ron Evans

[Boyd Ostroff]

I think you just need to keep buying more external hard drives. If you only want them for backup then get cheap USB drives. A quick look at Best Buy's website shows several 250 GB drives for about $130 which is around 50 cents per gigabyte. They also show a 1.5TB drive that comes in at around 40 cents per gigabyte.

A 250GB drive will hold about 20 hours of video, so if it costs $130 that works out to $6.50 to store the contents of a one-hour tape... not too bad. The points about obsolesence are well taken, but personally I think hard drives are the most practical solution for the time being. I looking at 14 firewire drives and 2 USB drives within six feet of where I'm sitting right now, so that's my choice for storage :-)

[Harold Schreiber]

Hi Will,

You don't say how important your video is, like "I must have it" or "it's nice to have - but I could get along without it".

If it's a "must have", then I would suggest that you output to DV Tapes X2 (I assume they were captured in AVI) and put one set "off site" in a secure area. Same idea goes if you chose for storing on harddrives.

Like Ervin, I favor the Tape for long term, and harddrives as a second choice.

If Boyd has all his video on just those many harddrives of his, and no where else, then he would suffer a catastrophic loss of material if there are no tape copies or other harddrives "off site" and a fire or other destructive event should occur to those harddrives at his site.

Harold

[Alessandro Machi]

Originally Posted by Boyd Ostroff

I think you just need to keep buying more external hard drives. If you only want them for backup then get cheap USB drives. A quick look at Best Buy's website shows several 250 GB drives for about $130 which is around 50 cents per gigabyte. They also show a 1.5TB drive that comes in at around 40 cents per gigabyte.

A 250GB drive will hold about 20 hours of video, so if it costs $130 that works out to $6.50 to store the contents of a one-hour tape... not too bad. The points about obsolesence are well taken, but personally I think hard drives are the most practical solution for the time being. I looking at 14 firewire drives and 2 USB drives within six feet of where I'm sitting right now, so that's my choice for storage :-)

Maybe the problem is the suse of the word storage. It's not really storage when you place something on a harddrive, it's usuage. The difference being that tape can still be much cheaper, but it's not instantly editable the way it is on a harddrive.

Digital VHS storage at mini-dv quality costs 50 cents an hour.

[Bill Ritter]

You need to find out if you can export to tape.

The Canon XH A1 and Canon XL H1 so far can not export to tape via Premeire Pro. So see if the HV20 will -- export a min of 6 min as the Canon XH A1 quites recording after 4.5 min with Prem Pro 2.

Bill in Ohio

Let us know if you have success.

Blu Ray disc is another possibility to save onto -- high quality mpg of 2 hours makes a $11 Disc not so bad.

[Ron Evans]

IS this DV or HDV? IT really doesn't matter since it will use the same amount of tape but HDV may cause more issues depending on software available to you. I still think I would copy to another hard drive then backup to tape when you have the time. What software and camera do you have?

Ron Evans

[Giroud Francois]

the electronic discounter near my place was selling last week an usb external drive 500 gig for 150$.
at that price, you get 38 hours of video for less than 40 cent/hours.

[Dean Sensui]

With the P2 format tape is possible but not for all the P2 HD variations.

So the only option is a hard drive or DVDs.

In my case it's removable mirrored RAIDs for long-term storage and striped RAIDs for works-in-progress.

Off-site storage is a very good idea and that's implemented to some extent where copies of finished shows are stored elsewhere. In fact, it's on the other side of a mountain so it's safe in the event there's a nuclear blast (but not if it's an air burst).

[George Ellis]

Here is where a good logging tool in an editor is your friend. If you label your tapes, follow the media management recommendations, and backup a project, keep the version of editor, and media capture device, you should have a "backup." You just need to backup the project without the media. Later, you can batch log the media from tape again into the original project. The overhead is smaller and need to remember to keep a copy of any imports with the project.

This all depends on your editor, of course. This won't work with Windows Movie Maker. I use Avid Liquid and it has media management and backup. That is a key difference between the pro tools and the $100 editors.

[Ron Evans]

George, the problem is there are no tapes in this case. The same tape was used over and over again for 7 to 8 hours. The videos only exists on the hard drive now. I agree with you that normal use is capture, save batch capture file, save project file then one can always recover from tapes. NLE's will often note misplaced files and offer to recapture too. In this case there are only a few options. Backup to another hard drive in the short term and output to some more permanent medium in the long term- tape or optical disc. For me tape is the only reliable long term media at the moment. Defective pieces of tape can be spliced over if needed but damaged FAT on HDD etc will render everything useless or a very expensive data recover service fee.
Ron Evans