Archiving HVX clips that are 40-80GBs

Ike615

Ike615

Well-known member
I shoot mainly theater and use my powerbook G4 to capture footage. This leaves me with pretty big chunks of footage (sometimes up 80GBs). Now I want to save this footage for archival purpose and so that when Blue_Ray or HD-DVDs come out I can release a HD version of it. The problem I have is that I don't know an easy way to break down the huge clips to be able to fit them on a standard 4.7 GB DVD. The only way I can think of doing it is breaking up the clips myself in FCP but this seems very time consuming. Does anyone know of a program that will do this for you?

- Edit - right now I'm just backing them up on internal and external hard drives but that doesn't seem to be as save as DVDs nor as cheap.

- Isaac
 
I think most backup/burning programs will do it... Toast, I think, in the latest version supports "Disc Spanning", but I'm not sure if it actually breaks up individual files. Worth checking.

Stuffit used to do this (in the floppy days, and for segmented web download), and still might.
 
Yes, the Toast 7 web site says it can "Span large files, folders & apps across multiple CDs/DVDs"

Pain in the butt, but the best you can do for now, maybe?
 
awesome, thanks!

one more question. With it breaking the clips up will they fit seamlessly back together when it comes time to working with them again?
 
It should. stuffit works like winzip or winrar in that it takes files-- segments them, then fits it back together when u extract. why not just use HDDs to archive?
 
that's how I'm archiving them right now. But I do around 3 shows a month so it eats up HDDs pretty fast and it's a lot more expensive then buying DVDs, though HDDs are rapidly coming down in price, :). Also if a HDD fails I've lost my master footage, which would be pretty horrible.
 
Ike, you sound like a great candidate for the Quantum SDLT600A. For large volumes of clips it's ultimately cheaper than HDDs or DVDs. And can handle native files up to 300GB per tape. Transfer time is 3x play speed.

We're about to release the Mac software for indexing and controlling the drive (HDLog Gold).

Give me a call and we can probably arrange one for you to try out.
 
Ike, Why not just buy a hard drive and use that as a back up. I know for mine, I have 20 and 30 min clips for my project and just store the drive. Plus I put the Final Cut, Motion, and DVDSP ect. on a 50min Drive it works perfect :)
 
External Firewire Hard Drive enclosure and then several hard drives. Way simple. Though there is the problem of hard-drive failure. Ouchies.

What's that Quantum thing that guy is talking about?
 
Hey Ike,

i dont know how you archive, but id personally never backup on one Medium only...!
Most of the time i copyed to an external HDD and then burned the content on DL-DVDs(which took honestly years....!)

We are shooting a lot of doc-content, it sounds like we got comparable amounts of data.
I have seen the Quantum working in a posthouse when we had to back up 500 hours of 720pn-interviews.
I am really thinking about to buy one of those quantums(they had one in the posthouse that did even 800gig when i recall right).
But this is just worth it if you have a lot of content, and if you can maybe buy it together with some other people...!

But in any case, id never trust just one medium, HDDs break done (yes, outch!), dvds were burnt wrong (double ouch if you realize it in the moment when your HDDs isnt working anymore..!

My ideal workflow would be this: copy the cards to external HDDs, check in the P2 viewer that all the clips play (just play the beginning of them and then skip to the last frames of the clip..), Backup on a Quantum DLT tape, put the place in a different place (for the case a fire burns your office...) and copy the files to your NLE computer when you work on the project, keep the whole folder and file-structure- and delete the files from your NLE-computer when finished.

This way you are save and can go back working on it in the case that you have to edit or work on it once again after some month or years..!

Sorry if this is a little confusing, but i think this is a good workflow, if you figure this out and have some money for all what you need..!

My current internal raid5 has 1600gig netto.
Quite ok for one or 2 doc films...
 
Ike,
are you getting paid for the backup?
Don´t want to sound ruff, but you seem to do client work and you should charge for backing up his footage!
hvx-germanboy stated how long backing up on DVD takes, so unless it is some highend production with a good budget, I´d do my HDD backup and play with luck...
Anyway you should calculate if the HD release of the plays will also pay for the multiple backup and the time spent on it...
Just my 2c.
 
... the big question, also, is whether you can get a robot duplicator that will:

1) Span large files over a bunch of discs, and label 'em properly (1 of 17, etc)., unattended

2) Read such discs back in unattended

Toast doesn't seem to be used with such duplicators, and discribe doesn't seem to have these features. Perhaps on the PC side there's a good solution...

If you could find that, this whole process could be done overnight unattended, and wouldn't be so bad. I've been using a Primera Bravo SE, which is fairly cheap and works nicely to reduce the tedium of making bunches of discs...
 
I think that you have a better chance of your house burning down than your hardrive failing if you are only using it for backup of a projects.
By the drive a 250gb drive for $100 or so.
Copy files to the hardrive
Disconnect the drive and store it in some place safe and cool.
 
Ummm... Nik... after hearing a statement like that, I'd never hire you! BTW, do you live in one of the wildfire areas?


No offense, dude. I've never had a house burn down. I've lost countless drives. Some after very little use. Many after they were sitting unused for long periods of time.

I've lost plenty of DVDs and CDs, too. I'm not saying don't back up to a hard drive. I'm saying, back up as many ways as you can - at least two or three copies of anything REALLY important.
 
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I also wouldnt work the risky way,

if its not crapp what i am producing, holy ****, i want it to be safe!
Maybe soem of you are missing this horrible experience, when your drive just died, or your DVDs were not burnt propper, and you find this out when you have no other backup...!

I described earlyer what i think could be a way,
depends how much money you can spend, but specially for big files, i would go for HDD, plus DLT, plus copy to editing pc-WORD!
 
The standard in the IT world is three backups, if I recall correctly.
Same goes for our important stuff.
But than the client is charged for it.
Either calculate it into the final budget, or list it separately as a markup.
With SD tape I never bothered (except DigiBeta or lots of tape) to charge extra, but with HD and backing up to HDD(pricey) and DVD(time consuming) it has become necessary.
 
responses to all

responses to all

Thanks all who have been responding to my question. It's given me a pretty good idea of what direction I need to go in.

I'm hearing pretty much the same thing from everyone. You can't trust just one medium to backup on.
From what I hear P2 cards are pretty full-proof. So we just need them to come down in price by a lot but at the same time increase greatly in GBs. Then that would be an awesome medium to backup files on. That's just me wishing.

For now I think I'm going to do the HDDs and DVDs which are very time consuming but will definitely be worth it when either a HDD crashes or a DVD doesn't work. I have over 2TBs of space on internals and externals so I have plenty of room to fill but then at the same time plenty of things to backup.

Dan Montgomery said:
Ike, you sound like a great candidate for the Quantum SDLT600A. For large volumes of clips it's ultimately cheaper than HDDs or DVDs. And can handle native files up to 300GB per tape. Transfer time is 3x play speed.
Click to expand...
That sounds very intriguing. I'll definitely give you a call.


Spartacus said:
Ike,
are you getting paid for the backup?
Don´t want to sound ruff, but you seem to do client work and you should charge for backing up his footage!
Click to expand...
Both my brothers are actors so I film their shows and those are the ones I want to back up. I do get paid to film their shows (my brothers get me a lot of jobs in the theater world) but I don't get paid to back them up (because theaters don't really care about that). The shows my brothers are in do however, have more of a sentimental value and those are the ones I want to back up. I'm not backing up the other ones besides having multiple masters of the final DVD or if I'm shooting in SD just saving the tapes.

ullanta said:
I've been using a Primera Bravo SE, which is fairly cheap and works nicely to reduce the tedium of making bunches of discs...
Click to expand...
I've actually tried multiple automated burners and printers. The Disc Maker Pro and the Primera Bravo Pro. I have a mac and they say it's compatible with one but both worked horribly on my computer. They would burn the discs at incredibly slow speeds (around 20 minutes per disc on a 16x burner while my 4x burner was burning at the same speed or faster) and I couldn't leave it by itself because when it was printing it would suddenly start printing horribly wrong colors and as I result I would lose 5-6 DVDs and an hours worth of burning time. So I sent both of those back and I'm sticking to burning DVDs on my two 16x superdrives. It sucks but I ended up spending the money I originally spent on the Bravo Pro, on a new Mac Pro. I think it's a much better buy.
 
Price-grabber has the sony blueRay drive for $679.00 (down from $999 just a month ago) and I have seen the 25gig disks for $19.00. Yes its 2x-2x-2x but its 25 and 50gigs. Still slow but that will change soon.

Do a Google to fine the best prices.

Good luck!
 
I'm just curious what information you guys archive. Do you archive all the original information from the P2 cards? Or do you archive only the good clips that have been reviewed and trimmed? I would think the latter can save a lot of storage space.
 
Sumfun said:
I'm just curious what information you guys archive. Do you archive all the original information from the P2 cards? Or do you archive only the good clips that have been reviewed and trimmed? I would think the latter can save a lot of storage space.
Click to expand...

It depends what you are doing...of course i would always use one of the biggest efforts of P2: watching the footag(also immediatly while shooting, thats when the mind is the freshest and the situation still changeable..) and then delete the clips you dont need..!

After that it becomes a littlle more difficult, but you can still delete single clips(on pc in the p2viewer for example-Yes, thats dangerous, when you delete a clip there, its gone...!)

But in any case you have to decide what you wanna keep or delete before backing up, i wouldnt change any folders, or even subfolder names after backing up, otherwise you wount find it anymore when you need it one day...!



Hey IKE: good luck for hoping that P2 itself will be a backup one day.....i see no chance this ever happening...!-unfortunatly..!
:violin:
 
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