Data storage (aka what to do once you have the pretty moving pictures)

[enehta]

I am rather new at this whole thing, so please bear with me.

The lab I'm working in is planning on buying an HVX200 for research purposes (videotaping subjects in various experiments), and while we're pretty clear on everything else we need, I'm still having a hard time figuring out what the best way to archive the data is. I've been bashing my head against the problem for at least a week now (to the point where my supervisor wants to just record to the tapes, since it's easier, even though it means we wouldn't get to use any of the features that sold us on the camera...), and finally decided to come here for advice.

Hopefully we'll get a lot of use from this camera, but at least in the short term (next few weeks) we'll be gathering at least 20 input-hours of footage that we'd like to have at 720p 60p. (so, 2400GB worth of data) Do we get a pile of hard drives? A mountain of DVDs? A tape backup system? Something else which would be ideal for our purposes but which I'm not aware of?


Thank you so much in advance for your help.

[Jim Carswell]

enehta,
Redundancy is vital. My workflow starts with shooting either to my Firestore or P2 cards depending on the shooting situation. Then I back up the MXF files onto a hard drive and than onto dual layer DVDs. When going into FCP the mxf files become Quicktimes on my NLE's hard drive. This leaves me with two back ups that I keep in separate locations.

I hope that helps.
Jim

[Mark Smith]

Currently I have a Quantum SDLT 600A on loan as a demo. I'm writing some thing up on that unit and will have it up maybe early next week, with some pictures and other impressions. This is a tape back up unit that does 300 gig/cartridge.

[THoff]

That Quantum is alot more than just a 300GB/cartridge tape drive -- it's the only MXF-aware tape drive that I'm aware of. I'm really looking forward to your impressions.

[Justin Kuhn]

Yeah, I've been waiting to hear more about that as well.