Lauri,

This is not an issue. The decoder is not protected with security, as a result it can be run on different PC in the future. So even if the system ID changes the you can always install the decoders, giving you access to the old footage. We archive you can place the decoders with your archive; the key files are cfhd.dll & cfhd.inf (VFW) and CFDecode2.ax (DirectShow.) Or put a copy of the Aspect HD or Connect HD installer with the archive. We are going to make available a Decoders only installer that was make this even simpler.

"The Gigs per dollar are about the same (HD 3GB per $1 and DV 3.25GB per $1)."

Of course .m2t stores in about 1/4 to 1/3 the space, right? So that would mean to get one hour of storage in .avi you would need about 60 or so gigs on the hard drive, and that would mean your $100 300gig drive costs about $20.00 per hours of storage. Still cheap enough for a quality storage medium.

Really at issue here is what level of quality you want to store at. Certainly the less compressed version .avi's are more suitable for professional level preservation, but people forget that on this forum, there are a lot of hobbiest and advanced ameteurs that still have to be somewhat cost concious.

I am also guessing that HD's have about the same shelf life issues as a digital tape. Bearings can dry out, and HDs in storage are probable much mor likely to get moved around, bumped, or otherwise be mishandled. Eventually a disk surface will corrode due to elements just like tape.

Another potential of course, is a hybrid, storage to regular tape backup drives.

So is there any study on the reliability of the two storage mediums ?

I've had several external drives fail on me over the last few months, I wouldn't comfortable with archiving on a drive. I would back up to tape and also DVD and vaccuum seal the DVD with one of those food sealers, since oxygen is the enemy of optical discs. I can only hope one of them will stand the test of time.

David,

Thank you very much for the information. Since the new CF offer for Prospect HD is tempting, the next question is, does this same apply to Prospect HD? That is, is it possible to install the Prospect HD decoder on any PC? Second, will other editing systems besides PPro recognize the decoder?

Lauri,

Yes our 10-bit decoder can be installed on other machines. All applications that support AVI formats should see and be able to use our decoder. Those that are 8-bits will interpret our footage as 8-bits instead of 10-bits. We haven't done extensive testing ourselves, but collectively our users have lots of experience using CineForm Intermediate files with different AVI-compatible apps.

And as you may be aware, we will be wrapping CineForm Intermediate in QuickTime within a couple-ish months (it's working internally now). The QT version will become available on both Mac and PC. We will also offer conversion utilities to change the wrapper format between AVI and QT. The conversion utility will be very fast because it will simply rewrap the compressed file with the appropriate header. QT support will further expand compatibility, but this time onto MacOS.

Quicktime and Cineform.

Does this mean the eventual possibility of exporting finished HDV projects to H264 in future?

We don't directly touch any distribution formats ourselves, even in Premiere. But if an application is AVI (or in the future QT) compatible then it will be able to read our files. If that same app can export to h.264 (or other formats) then the conversion from CineForm Intermediate to anything else can be achieved. I haven't specifically followed plug-ins for h.264 lately, but as soon as they're available in Premiere, AE, Vegas, FCP (later for us), then conversion to h.264 won't be a problem.

David,

One more question: I store the XL H1 image directly to hard disk (Citidisk HDV). Then I use HDLink to convert the m2t files to CF AVI. Do I make a silly mistake somewhere, for I'm not able to select the source file and converted file folders independently of each other?

I would like to read the source clips from the Citidisk HDV (having firewire connection) and store the converted files directly on the RAID array. Currently, I need first to copy the m2t files to the RAID array, and only then convert to CF avi using HDLink. The copy stage is pretty slow and is kind of waste of time. Moreover, if everything is archieved in CFHD files, the copy stage is dummy.

Lauri,

In the preferences panel of HDLink, under Capture Location, set the location and check the box marked "Use Capture Location for converted files."

David, thank you, this partly solved the problem. The remaining issue is to rename the footages to be converted to CFHD-avi. CitiDISK names the m2t-files automatically (CLIP00001, CLIP0002, and so on), and HD-link adds string "-001" to the end of each file name. For archiving one needed a same kind of thing which is in the Batch command of Adobe Photoshop; It enables one to specify the output file name as a combination "name" + "extension" + "automatically increasing serial number" (one is able to specify the number of digits and the starting index of increasing serial number).