Archive Solution

dregenthal

dregenthal

Veteran
Some time back, (when we were measuring hard disks in megabytes), I used to back up my drives to tape. It was a reliable solution (especially when you remembered to verify the data). In time CD-ROM and then DVD became a faster and more economic solution, and the price of larger hard drives dropped significantly.

I look forward to Blue Ray or HD DVD (and players) as a presentation solution in the hopefully the not too distant future but for the present (Jan ’06) I’m wrestling with archive storage solutions . . . Cheap or not I’m not crazy about having to buy hard disks, a dozen at a time, in order to have an acceptable means of storing my raw files.

Yeah, I get it, redundant backup needs to be a part of my plan . . . and I'm willing to struggle with dual layer DVD as a part of the process, for now. What I’m wondering is, how some of you are going to handle the archive issue? I’m considering LTO-2 as the leading candidate. I like tape for this function – it’s cumbersome and time consuming, but it’s a lot less fragile and will normally survive being dropped or some of the other things that would be “curtains” for a disc. Has anyone already got what they consider to be the “best” solution in place?

Thanks, Reg
 
Reg,

That's a great question, and probably one that I think is the most overlooked with the HVX. It's also one that's gonna put the price of owning and operating an HVX above most people's expectations.

Here's a portion of what I wrote before, and it still applies I believe. I haven't heard any good ideas about how to handle the archive problem. (from thread http://www.dvxuser.com/V3/showthread.php?t=43133):

..........................................
For example, let's say you want to shoot an independent film on your hvx-200.
The final print will be around 90 minutes long after editing. Your total filming time will more likely be around 200 minutes long (I'm being very generous here). Already that's 290 minutes for your first project with the HVX. (final edit plus all the raw footage)

If you filmed in 720p (24 fps) DVCPROHD, you'd need 116 gigs just to keep the movie on your hard drive. (each gig of memory gives you 2.5 minutes of DVCPROHD 720p recording time).

Looking at this, you'll probably need a raid setup or hard drives giving you at least 400 gb, probably more like 1 tb or space, to work with. (1 tb of drive space will give you almost 42 hours of recording time in DVCPROHD 720p). This sounds like a lot, but in reality it isn't.

Eventually, you'll need a way to archive your footage once this space is all used up....possibly an intermediate codec?

For me, this is one way the HDV system is better, the fact that it's still tape, and you're basically creating your footage archives as you film. You can also dump your finished edit back to the HDV format on some cameras. It becomes a lot cheaper to have a large collection of HDV footage versus a large collection of DVCPROHD footage.

.....................................

Basically, the essence of what I was trying to post is 1 TB gives you almost 42 hours, which is a decent amount if you're just filming independent films. BUT....if you are looking to get into anything that uses a lot of space (news, live events, or just a bunch of different projects) or can easily see yourself putting more than 42 hours on your camera, this is definitely a question you'll need to ask yourself.

I'd like to hear what the experts have to say. (I'm not one, so please excuse me if I got anything wrong above)
 
biggest thing to remember is that disk is cheap - even cheaper then HD tape

1 TB of disk (unraided) can be had for 600 dollars - if that is 42 hours of footage, think about how much that would cost in dvc pro tapes
 
Meanwhile, you can get 1000 dvds in bulk for less than $400.. That's 4.7TB right there... Well... Effectively it's somewhere closer to 4.2TB because 1TB isn't 1000MB or something.. But still, that's the *cheapest* way to go. Don't forget that you'll be dedicating a LOT of time to burning those... You'll at least double your work time unless you have an auto disc loader you can just have running over night and verify everything in the morning just in case. Another thing to keep in mind is that I'm talking about single layer discs, which means you'll be doing a LOT of copying back to your HDD when you want to use it again. If you're using 720 24P you'll be getting about 10 minutes, give or take, on each disc. You can go the DL route but that completely negates the "cheap" part of this solution as your cost will instantly quadruple, if not more, at current prices. You also need to be wary of which manufacturer you buy with discs. Here is a guide that I've found useful in the past. I've found them quite accurate... I bought Sonic discs and the work just about as badly as they say, Taiyo Yuden on the other hand work exactly as well as they say in my experience.
http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/dvdmedia.htm

A decent tape drive is a lot more expensive to set up... I haven't looked that deeply into it so I may have missed some cheaper options out there but mostly I've found that they start around the $2000 price range. But if you do have a tape drive you can rest assured that they won't need to be treated as gingerly as an HDD... But don't go throwing it around like a frisbee, they will still break. I'm sure everybody knows that but I'm just listing pros and cons and limitations... I'm very sad that tapes don't double as toys... :(

Edit: I was refering to DLT type archive drives... You could always use a dvcprohd deck but I forgot that option as I was typing this.... And I'd rather not think about the price of one of those anyway. Isn't the AJ-HD1200A over $20,000 or something? *shrugs*

HDD options give you the flexibility to quickly copy data over and access all your footage instantly. You can edit on them and if you decide footage is junk later you can remove it to make more room.. But we should always keep "junk" footage just in case we need to blackmail actors and crew. :D This option can run you between $600 and $1000 for 1TB depending on whether or not you assemble your own array or buy something like the terastation.

Disclaimer: This is just my opinion from information I've gathered over the last 4 months in researching this particular element of the HVX workflow. I do not take responsibility for any damage done to your equipment, footage or person(s) in any direct or indirect way.

Edit: As was the original purpose of the thread... I'll be using a combination of 2TB of HDD space and 4.7TB of dvd space for archiving after it's been through the HDD... To start. I'm sure I'll need more after a year or so but by then we can see how HD-DVD or BD or even the new holographic disc is coming along.
 
There's also this tape backup software for a mac using either a dv deck, a mini dv camera or a digital 8 camera.

http://coolatoola.com/

Apparently it backs up the data to the tape not the video. Using a DV deck you can get a significant amount of data on those.

I was thinking that if you could hook this up to a DVHS set this would be the ultimate "cheap" data back up (I was assuming you could use the firewire connection to record data on to a DVHS. I checked into it and I was told that DVHS only records an MPEG2 signal onto DVHS tape through the firewire connection.
 
disk clearly wins pricewise

disk clearly wins pricewise

smelni said:
biggest thing to remember is that disk is cheap - even cheaper then HD tape

1 TB of disk (unraided) can be had for 600 dollars - if that is 42 hours of footage, think about how much that would cost in dvc pro tapes
Click to expand...

That's a good point, and looks like it'll probably be the only option of working with the HVX for archiving.
Tape backup is an option, but it's difficult to find a solution that even gets below $1/GB, while hard disk can probably at least get to $.50/GB, but I haven't looked TOO hard.

It might become a 'little' more difficult to transfer footage than the old tape days, for example, if a news editor wanted some footage from you on his desk in 5 hours, you could usually just get a courier to bring the tape over.
If everything's on hard disk, you're gonna need to send over an entire hard disk, and you're not gonna want to part with other footage that the editor shouldn't be looking at, so this might cause some minor inconveniences. It'd be more convenient if you do this type of work to be able to copy a tape and send it over.

Anyone have ideas for a workaround for this?
 
smelni said:
biggest thing to remember is that disk is cheap - even cheaper then HD tape

1 TB of disk (unraided) can be had for 600 dollars - if that is 42 hours of footage, think about how much that would cost in dvc pro tapes
Click to expand...

Math is not my strongest suit, so if I'm off on this let me apologize in advance. In round numbers, at about 1 gigabyte per minute (1080/60i, 1080/24p) I'm thinking a terrabyte might hold more like 16 hours . . . and would be tough to hand off too <g>. I just read that while filming MURDERBALL they accumulated 200 hours of video. Probably a good thing they were shooting mini-dv.

No question, hard discs have the advantage. DVDs are cheap, yeah, but I cringe just thinking about how long it would take to back up just one hour of data (and how many discs). Again, blue ray may be a good solution when it finally arrives and prices stabilize.

I'm still looking for a "today" solution for backing up mass quantities (SNL) of data. That's why I was wondering if anyone, other than myself was looking at tape . . . specifically LTO-2 or maybe LTO-3. None the less I really appreciate everyones feedback on this -- thanks!
 
For cheap mass backup I think the LTO-2 and LTO-3 make the most sense. It's faster than video tape, way less expensive per gig, and the drives are significantly less expensive than a video deck too. Plus it retains all the metadata, and you can restore your project without having to "capture" video again.

DVDs for small projects may make sense, but for large quantities of data I think a 200gb LTO drive probably merits careful consideration.
 
yeah, it's gonna be a bit ironic that the HVX has been heralded as a tape free-workflow when it looks like the most economical way to archive footage will be with tape.
Does anyone know for sure whether the 200 GB compression (100 GB uncompressed) for LTO is lossless? I assume it is, just want to make sure.

Still, one thing holding back the HVX will also be continuous recording time. It'll really alienate the documentary and live event coverage people who want to use the camera.

Still, for commercial, music video, indie filmmaking, it'll definitely be the best, or so it seems.
 
LTO is data tape -- it's absolutely lossless. Lossy compression applied to data would be an absolute disaster.

But, when looking at LTO or DLT or whatever, never look at the compressed size -- P2 data is already compressed, and the LTO/DLT drives will not be able to compress it any further. So look at the 200/400 tapes, and expect to get 200 out of them.
 
cool, thanks for that info Barry!
you're always a great help to us less experienced and knowledgeable members!

-david
 
If you're going to go with dvds, I found an autoloading dvd external dvd burner that could help.
http://www.meritline.com/auto-loading-dvd-burner-dupliactor-25-capacity-dupliq-dq-5610d.html
Not sure how good it is but with the limits of dvd and the fact that it takes about 9 minutes for a single layer, 16x dvd it's probably worth it to archive span overnight. This one doesn't work with mac however and I don't know if nero does spanning even if you set up virtual pc... Something to look into at any rate.
Does anybody know of a compatable mac autoloader?

Edit:Just looked into it and apparantly nero does span, nero being the program that the loading arm is compatible with. So there's a viable option. The only tape drives I could find around the $700 mark had 33gb limits with the tapes costing $70.... That doesn't seem worth it.
 
oxrs said:
. . . Edit:Just looked into it and apparantly nero does span, nero being the program that the loading arm is compatible with. So there's a viable option. The only tape drives I could find around the $700 mark had 33gb limits with the tapes costing $70.... That doesn't seem worth it.
Click to expand...

I have not researched it completely but so far I'm finding LTO-1 drives at just over 2k . . . albeit a difference function/purpose, that's a little bit more than a P2 Store and a little less than the cost of an 8 gig P2 card. 100-200 gig tape prices vary but start a little over $20. Kinda makes you wonder what the first round of Blue-ray recorders (and media) are going to cost . . .
 
True. It's a universal theme with these technologies it seems to me... Put a larger investment in at the begining and things get easier and cheaper over the long run. Keep in mind I'm not talking about hundred thousand dollar cameras here. I was trying to come up with a lower initial investment solution. If you've already got a computer, you buy the auto loader and... *shrugs* 2000 single layer dvds, top quality of course. Taiyo Yuden or something. That sets you back less than $1700. So it depends on how much space you need. For smaller productions and companies dvds on over night burn seems like a much better option price wise. Before you even have a tape drive you have 9TB of space to burn. Spend a few hundred dollars on cd wallets or cases and you're set. If you need more than that or you get a lot more footage in a shorter space of time you need the speed and capacity of tape for sure.
 
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