archival dvd requests
 

do any of your clients ask for archival dvd. do you charge a premium for them? i generally print designs directly on my dvds and printable archival dvd's are around $2.5 each.

just wondering.

How does an archival DVD differ from a conventional DVD?

If you mean all the files you used to create the finished product, then the answer is no. You should keep one for yourself, but I would never give it out or sell it.

I agree wholly with David. If the client now has all the files, they can start hacking their own copies out. Chances are good that the quality won't be as good as what you produced, which makes your footage look bad... and keeps future sales out of your pocket. If it were simple and affordable, I'd go as far as copy protecting the DVDs they get.

Archival storage should be done on DV tape. Not DVD!

Please explain. Tape is susceptible to material breakdown, demagnetization, and destruction by the mechanical failure of a faulty player (i.e., a tape-eating VCR). The mechanical nature of a tape means that only so many copies of it can be made before it eventually suffers too much wear-and-tear to be copied again, and multigenerational duplication in this form risks introducing drop-out. OTOH, the organic dye in a DVD will probably last more than a decade, and can be duplicated ad infinitum with little worry about introducing errors. (And you rarely hear about DVD readers eating the discs.) Additionally, DVDs can store the project files and associated media right along with the video data on the same medium, making it less likely you will misplace some single critical component of your project.

My advice is the opposite of yours. If you value your video, RAR it up and put it on DVDs, and then if after 10 years you still value it, transfer it to new DVDs (or whatever new storage medium has come along in the meantime).

Tapes deteriorate quite rapidly. The major networks have found that analog videotape sometimes deteriorates below the level of usability in some cases in as little as 2 years. The same with a variety of formats of digital tape used for offline computer data storage - the little backup tape cartridges that physically resemble DV tapes have proved to be a total disaster for long term data archiving.

i was talking about burning the compledted dvd to an archival gold dvd. archival dvds last about 100 years vs about 20 years for a conventional dvd. the archival dvd's are less prone to oxidation. they generally cost about 2-3 dollars each.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...ughType=search

I would expect it to be a nice marketing gimick to offer but not of much practical use. Think of how recording technology has changed since 1906 .... or even since 1986. Other than in the hands of antique collectors I think it's going to be very unlikely that the playback decks and TV sets that your customers will own in 2025 are going to be compatible with the disks you sell them today, archival or not, much less playback equipment their great grandchildren will own in the year 2100. Try to find an 8-track player to listen to your collection of classic "car stereo" tapes out in the box in your garage today or parts to repair a 1970's vintage reel-to-reel deck that you have lovingly kept around. For that matter, try to find 8-track cassettes or reel to reel audio tape at all and it was only 20 years ago - less than the expected lifespan of a conventional DVD - that a reel-to-reel deck for your home stereo was still the audiophile's cat's meow!

Robert & Steve,

Take a look at this site:
http://www.film-to-video.com/dirty_little_secrets.html

and then tell me that you are so sure that DVD is the way to archive!
Terry

Didn't say it was a good archival medium, only that it is probably a better medium than tape, certainly better than analog videotape. I do think a premium priced "archival DVD" is kind of silly, even assuming that it works as advertised, since the playback gear needed to read the sucker isn't likely to be around even for the lifespan of regular DVDs, much less after the time has elapsed where a conventional DVD has deteriorated but the so-called archival DVD is supposedly still readable. NASA has this problem right now where there is a wealth of raw telemetry data still waiting to be analyzed from the Apollo, Mariner, Voyager, and Surveyer missions that is stored in warehouses full of 9-track magnetic tape reels yet all of it is virtually unaccessable because new 9-track drives and the parts needed to maintain the existing inventory when something wears out are essentially unobtainable nowadays.

We tell clients that if they value the material,
 

they should do a transfer as formats change. We give them masters on mini-dv, or dv cam (depending upon the project) and warn them not to play them.

None of the concerns addressed on that site are applicable to this conversation, with the sole exception of DVD shelf life; the 2-5 year shelf life given in the article is, I think, a deceitful underestimation. I expect my writable DVDs to last at least 10 years; I've had writable CDs for much longer than that and none of them have gone bad.

All the stuff about MPEG-2 is nonsense. You would never want to recompress your archival footage to be a playable DVD. You're only interested in using the DVD as a storage medium for digital data.

Finally, we're talking about archiving projects that originated in the digital domain. Resolution is not a concern; the original resolution of the project will be perfectly preserved so long as it is not recompressed.

Dollar for gigabyte, DVDs are still the best bang for your buck.

Sorry for taking so long to respond.

Thank ya...

agreeed 100%

Burning raw files
 

I have taken to burning all the raw video & audio from a project to DVD-R, and I quit using the cheaper "no name" and have moved to only using Sony media (though I should probably also move to burning at 1 or 2x instead of 8x).

It some times takes 8 DVDs (single layer) to archive the project, but then I know I have the raw footage safe and sound. At least for 8-ish years.

jason