DVD vs. Tape

[Otistet]

I've got a huge screening soon and was wondering what the opinnion is of exporting to DVD vs. Tape (minDV) to screen. I have had DVD's cause a lot of nausea in the past and am wondering if tape would be more reliable.

Thanks for any expertise.

[dasonras]

Are you speaking in terms of reliability/compatability or resolution?

[mikkowilson]

Tape.


It just works. Always.


- Mikko

[Otistet]

I'm speaking from a reliability issue. DVD's seem to be a bit of a crapshoot and murphy's law states that at a screening, the dvd will have a problem and skip.

[The Cash]

I agree with mikko. You'll be safe with the tape. DVD's are better for distribution. If you are sending your work ie. to TV Station, they will always ask for a tape. Not to mention that DVD compress your footage and slightly reduces it's quality.

[Otistet]

Thanks. I figured as much but needed some backup to go with a final choice.

[DavidBeier]

mini-DV is always gonna be higher quality than DVD since the DVD has to compress the already compressed mini-DV footage. Of course, if it's a choice between DVD and VHS...

[Demistate]

I would say Option C: Buy a seperate hard drive for backup

I say this, because most DVD media decays quickly, and if it's written with certain burners (Espically the sony models from the earlier G5 Macs) you will find that your disc may not work after 2-5 years (just my expierence). Tapes give better quality, however DV tape (espically consumer grade) is prone to dropout. And we all know what kind of four letter obscenities we like to scream when we see that happen.

Hard disc drives can be bought for about $50 per 250gb. 50 bucks to back up that much space is very cost effective, and they can be stored SAFELY, and they require the least ammount of finaggling with, if you do want to re-edit your project down the line, or pull footage from it. You can still archive your files with a free program called TUGZIP, which uses 7z compression technology to make even more use of the space, and still segment files to be put onto DVD's for off site archiving. (Crucial for really being covered)

Spend $60-$100 on an internal---> External drive case, and just swap the drives out when you need to pull an archive.


Trust me on having more than one backup, because DVD's are crappy and will give read errors after some time, and MINI DV tapes are prone to dropout.

[vidwerk]

Average compression of a DVD is 20:1 while DV tape is that of 5:1 native compression.

vidwerk.