How To Backup (or "Offline") Your Video Files

[kernel_sanders]

OK. There's been a lot of talk about the improved workflow involving hard disk recording, etc.

But no-one really talks about "offlining" your video files once you've finished to free up your hard disk space.

With good-old tapes what I love is that your workflow is usually:

Shoot to tape (and hard disk if you want to skip the capture step and still have a backup)
Capture
Edit
Offline capture files and backup the non-video files (usually fitting on a CD-ROM)If you ever needed to edit the files again, you could just recapture, and because of the magic of timecode it would all work again. Ie. the original tape masters were your backup. And all you would need to archive would be your video edit files and any other assets such as stills etc, that were used in your project.

One of the advantages of HDV is that this workflow still works (as you are still recording to miniDV tape - and can simultaneously record to hard disk like a firestore if you need to skip the capture process).

With the HVX200, however, there is no facility to capture HD to tape as it only supports 25MBps mini DV formats, and doesn't have a DVCPro HD deck.

So, you are forced to capture to P2 or a Firestore Drive.

Which is fine. But once you've finished your project, how do you backup the massive capture files???

And you do you archive your finished project.

With SD or even HDV, you can always export or "print" back to tape so that you have a final high quality version of your finished work.

With the HVX200's TRUE HD, the way that you'd back up your capture files and the final exported video files (without losing quality) are:

Write out to DVCProHD deck (Con: expensive to get a deck)
Back up using regular computer backup software which will mean:
Writing to high-capacity magnetic tape media such as DLT, or;
Spanning DVDs (a pain for massive HD captures, and the unreliability of DVD-R media for long-term storage)Is that correct?

At the moment, it seems like investing in a DLT drive or something similar would seem to be the best option for long-term storage and cost-effectiveness.

When you shoot hundreds of hours of footage, having an organised workflow and archival strategy is vital.

What are pro's doing?

[Barry_Green]

We just leave the footage on hard drives. External hard drives are a lot cheaper per minute than high-def videotape. And unlike the "magic of timecode" ;) there's no restoring and batch recapture and digitizing at all. Just plug the drive in again and voila, your project is ready to edit instantly.

LTO2 or LTO3 does seem like a reasonable alternative, especially because backing up and restoring would be quite fast (LTO3 runs at about six times as fast as realtime, so an hour of footage is backed up or restored in 10 minutes). But nothing beats hard drives for convenience and cost. No $5,000 deck to buy, no time spent archiving, no time spent restoring.

Some are uncomfortable with having footage on a hard disk. I don't plan on hard drives being a permanent archive solution, but they're certainly working fine for this interim gap. And regardless of what backup solution you choose, redundancy should be part of your strategy -- two copies, in different locations. That helps protect against fire/theft/flood wiping out your only copy. And while there's an element of risk that a hard disk won't spin up, having it on two hard disks should lower that risk to an acceptable level.

Holographic blue laser is what I'm looking towards for a permanent archive solution. At 160 megabits per second it's nearly as fast as a hard disk, and at 300gb (in the first iteration) it's large enough to store five hours of 1080, or 13 hours of 720/24p, on a little $4 strip of film. You could easily afford to make multiple backups at that rate. And the drives are intended to reach an eventual capacity of 1.6 terabytes.

[Editor321]

Is there any loss in image quality using the work flow of transfering footage from editing system to tape (for storage), then back to editing system?

I would think not since Im not compressing the footage (as in transferring to a DVD) but wanted to verify that digitizing the footage a second time did not cause the image or audio quality to be reduced.

[Tom Lowe]

As Barry says, my strategy for now is to keep redundant backups on separate external firewire/usb drives, and keep those drives in separate locations.

Even as I shoot my first feature I think I am going to download the p2 cards via laptop to two separate 300GB externals before reformatting the cards, just to be sure, and then keep the best footage on my desktop's hard-drive plus two more externals, which will be physically seperated at night and stuff.

I don't think my crew would forgive me if I had to tell them, "That was a great day of shooting yesterday... unfortunately, we have to do it all over again."

For a more permanent archive solution, why not just bring your harddrives to a post house and have them export your crucial, finished projects to DCVPro tapes?

[turing]

Re: DVCPro - there would be no quality loss, it's a digital copy. slow as shit, but a copy nonetheless ;)

HDs are a lot easier, and frankly if you are careful to buy RAID rated drives (which means they handle heat and vibration better) then you'll be fine with two separated copies.

I keep three copies of the data on my workstation.

In the field I'd mirror any copies as soon as they were made to another drive of the same size, easiest to do with a synchronization tool like rsync.

For longer term archiving... 320Gb drives are the cheapest price per gig right now, and that's a fair amount of storage.

[kernel_sanders]

Thanks everyone for your comments.
I've been continually buying more and more external firewire drives as time has proceeded.

Just crunched the numbers and you're all right. Hard disk is better in terms of gigs / dollar, even when compared to mini DV tapes.

It does mean that having a well planned out IT archival strategy is becoming much more important in the life of a video professional.

And also making sure that you're organised about where you place your assets.

There's nothing worse than plugging your external drive into another computer and realise that some of your assets were missing because they were on another drive! :crybaby:

[Editor321]

kernal,

Not sure how external hard drives are cheaper than mini dv for storage.

I can store 60 min of SD footage on minidv tape for $2.50/tape. Ive read where 20 gigs holds about 90 min of DV. (4.5 min / gig) or 13.3gigs for 60 min.

So then, twenty tapes will hold about 266 gigs at a cost of $50 bucks (532 gigs for $100).

It appears by my foggy math that minidv for storage is still much cheaper than external hard drives.

I know Im overlooking something.

[kernel_sanders]

Sorry, you're right. When I crunched the numbers I mixed up the results (never do maths after a long day!).

I can get mini DV tapes for $AUD 5 each. Which stores around 13 GB. So miniDV stores 13 / 5 = 2.6 GB per dollar

A 300GB drive costs around $AUD 149. So hard drive stores 300 / 149 = 2.0 GB per dollar.

So you're right, miniDV is the cheaper format based on these numbers (ie. more GB per buck).

[Cryogenic Filmworks]

kernal,

Not sure how external hard drives are cheaper than mini dv for storage.

I can store 60 min of SD footage on minidv tape for $2.50/tape. Ive read where 20 gigs holds about 90 min of DV. (4.5 min / gig) or 13.3gigs for 60 min.

So then, twenty tapes will hold about 266 gigs at a cost of $50 bucks (532 gigs for $100).

It appears by my foggy math that minidv for storage is still much cheaper than external hard drives.

I know Im overlooking something.

But... have you taken into account the time it takes to recapture and the wear and tear on the heads? I think the availability of having your footage right there outweighs the small difference of cost.

[dregenthal]

I bought a reconditioned (Dell)/Quantum) PowerVault 110T for $750, and my first 5 LTO-2 tapes on eBay for $120. Additionally I still back keeper stuff to DVD (from 4 gig cards). So far this scheme has been flawless (for me).

[chrisbhall]

Can anyone suggest a specific RAID 1 drive for such backups? I seem to be having trouble finding them. Thanks.

[chrisbhall]

Actually I think I'm going with one of these:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/MirrorRAID/
or
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/ProRAID/

[Cees Mutsaers]

Barry, what kind/brand/type of HDD are you using ?