Archiving footage?

S

Superkid_JJ

Member
I’ve shot several weddings and a couple projects and am just about to run out of space on my 500gb external drive. My wife is about to have our first child and I know I’m going to have the camera glued to my baby probably 24/7, so I was wondering how most of you archive your footage.
Would it be best to just spend about $100 every so often to get a large external drive and just store it in a safe place when full or would a Bluray burner be better?
Just wanted to know if anyone had any archival systems that worked well for them.

Thanks,
 
I prefer bluray for about a dozen reasons. But there are a few solutions out there. I just don't have the energy to go through this all again right now. We cover it about once a month.
 
I use 8BG cards, back-up to 2 identical drives, and also burn a DVD+DL disc with the DATA from the card... i wouldn't have my footage on only 1 place, I chose for 3 copies on 2 different locations (the DVD+DL are store elsewhere)
 
Yeah, I spent about an hour searching thru old forum topics for this information and still couldn't find answers that really addressed my question. Bluray looks like a good option since it would also give the opportunity to burn finished bluray discs, but last time I checked, bluray media is kind of pricey and I'm concerned with the read time on discs. How long does it take to transfer data from a bluray back to a computer? Also, in my relatively short experience with blurays, they seem to have less integrity then dvds or cds. Either that or bluray players are more finicky.

I’m sorry if I jaded any senior members to the plight of HD newbies. Links are good sometimes, even links to other forum topics that handled it previously. I mean, I know the search engine on this forum is great but sometimes newbies don’t even know what question to ask so it can be difficult to find an answer. And I suggest that if you’re so exhausted from answering this question, you should probably take a nap. I may be a newbie, but I’m not stupid. Get this answer enough times, users may go elsewhere with questions.
 
hey kid_jj, we have a great community here! on occasions questions get asked too many times and that makes it hard for people to keep track... Now you mention about the search engine being great, for my experience is not, but you can still find answers.

People here are very friendly and helpful, lets keep it nice... maybe PerroneFord came across the wrong way, but if you get the time to know him and other people here you'll find they're very smart and can always guide you the right way!

Welcome to the Forum!
 
Agreed. This place is a great resource. With a baby on the way, my mind is all over the place. Thanks!

And if it matters, I've decided to go both Bluray and external hard drive.
 
Nothing beats stone as archival media, people will see your priceless carvings thousands years later. Then comes paper. Then film stock. Tape would be distant fourth (don't forget that you will need a reader too).

I think having a BD and an external HDD is good enough, though I still use DVDs, not BDs. Time to switch I guess. Just don't buy LTH crap. I don't like tape, even for archival purposes. And yes, I saw tape streamers failing to restore data several times.
 
Blu ray is still unproven, pricey but improving and slow in my view.

LTO makes senses and so does redundant HDD backup
 
David, BD is as proven as CDs and DVDs. Important features of BD-R over DVD-R include inorganic vs. organic dye, scratch-resistant coating, better error detection and correction. Price-wise, BD are about the same now as DL DVDs. Having just one BD disc instead of 5 DVDs is attractive. I am still using DVDs for backup because I use 4GB cards, but time for BD has come, recorders can be found for less than $200 now. And you don't need a dedicated tape drive to read it.
 
We may have different views as to what constitutes "unproven."

I been archiving to CDs and DVDs for more than a decade or so.

Blu ray has yet to become mainstream.

You'll find DVD drives on virtually every computer. Not so with blu ray.

Hence, my comment.

best
 
Superkid_JJ said:
Bluray looks like a good option since it would also give the opportunity to burn finished bluray discs, but last time I checked, bluray media is kind of pricey and I'm concerned with the read time on discs. How long does it take to transfer data from a bluray back to a computer?
Click to expand...

I am buying 25GB BluRay disks for about $2.50. I speced an internal BluRay burner last week for a friend at $108. Anyone who thinks that's pricey should check out the costs for a HD deck and tapes.

As far as how long it takes to get back into the computer.. a heck of a lot faster than most tape. LTO can be an exception *IF* you take load and seek times out of the equation.


Superkid_JJ said:
I’m sorry if I jaded any senior members to the plight of HD newbies. Links are good sometimes, even links to other forum topics that handled it previously. I mean, I know the search engine on this forum is great but sometimes newbies don’t even know what question to ask so it can be difficult to find an answer. And I suggest that if you’re so exhausted from answering this question, you should probably take a nap. I may be a newbie, but I’m not stupid. Get this answer enough times, users may go elsewhere with questions.
Click to expand...

Look man... I was knee deep in a statewide video conference being streamed from California to FL, and two email issues in the state between VIPs. I had my hands full today, and just didn't have the time or energy to get involved in a discussion that has no right answer. Just as it hasn't for the past 20 years. Good archival methods for video are hard to come by unless you can print it to film. I have a running archive of over 100TB. I have backed it up any number of ways. And the solutions I use currently are more than any non-corporate user here is going to pay for. So short of that, going out to HDD and BluRay is about as good as it's going to get. Tape has it's place too, but it's huge failing is that it's always proprietary and fleeting. I've personally moved through four iterations of tape backup onto incompatible meda, and finally said never again. No tape in our environment, and I couldn't be happier.

You want to get into data archive discussions, email me at my office. I'll give you all you ever wanted to hear. But bring your Visa card, because none of the good solutions come cheap.
 
At one point I thought hey I will use 8GB cards and backup each one to a nice dual layer DVD. Makes perfect sense really except a 8GB card doesn't exactly give me as much shooting time as I would like considering the camera only has one slot.

I have no problem using Blu-ray but if I want to do a direct backup of the entire card folder structure what size would be best? I could use a 16GB card and waste the other 8GB of space. The next step up is a 32GB card which will not fit on a single layer BD.

So I guess my question is can a card be split between two BD discs or can two cards sit on a single BD disc and still keep the proper folder structure for Final Cut Pro or other NLE's that need the folder structure? I guess I could always do a spanned zip but that is an extra step that makes the whole process take even longer.
 
I have spanned private folders to DVD's before, and they worked fine... there shouldn't be any problems putting multiple card on a BD...

I use 8GB cards and back up to DVD+DL, I usually need 3-4 cards per camera, per shoot!. I don't like to have a days worth of work on a single card. I'm also considering on going to BD for archival (plus the HDD)...

But for now i back up to a drive and start burning right away, while thats going back up another card & start burning another disc. I usually burn to a few DVD+DL at the same time (having multiple burners) and the drives are cheap, about 20 bucks each. So in theory you can have multiple burners and back everything to discs in a matter of minutes


Now the tape solution is insane to me... i know it has it's purpose, but If i decided to go tapeless. why would i want to deal with it later!... to me tape is as good as dead, both for video and data!
My workflow goes something like this: "I want the video here and i want it now..." no time to look for it on tapes at a shelf (i don't even want to get up and look for it)

my 2 cents
 
Superfresa66 said:
Now the tape solution is insane to me... i know it has it's purpose, but If i decided to go tapeless. why would i want to deal with it later!... to me tape is as good as dead, both for video and data!
Click to expand...

Tapes does still have it's place in data backup, but for me it's hard to justify the tape space for long term archiving because I know that in 10 years time I probably won't have a working tape drive capable of reading that media. BUT, HDDs are going the same way over time too. How long will it be before no one has an IDE port on their computer?

Yes you can buy SATA to IDE adapters, but how long will they be generally available? If you need to drag footage off in 10 years, will you still be able to find that adapter - assuming the HDD bearings haven't already seized?

Where will SATA be 10 years from now? Will we still be using the same drives we have today? Who knows? But if we've moved on from SATA then logging from older IDE drives could be even hard still.

My workflow goes something like this: "I want the video here and i want it now..." no time to look for it on tapes at a shelf (i don't even want to get up and look for it)
Click to expand...

For recent projects that may well be the case. It certainly is for me. But once the final product has been delivered, the footage is usually archived not not referenced again, or at least not very often. If it took an hour to get the full hi-def footage again for a project I did 10 years ago, I'd probably be more happy I could still do it rather than unhappy at how long it took.

If you want to back up to DVD/BD then it's probably worth spending the extra cash and using proper archival media rather than cheaper media from the local store. Cheap media can easily degrade if not stored properly, and you may find that in as little as 2 or 3 years those backups are useless. Archival media is a little more robust (claims of 100-200 years).

Blu-ray is good for larger backups - and I have used it several times. However, it's relatively fragile compared to CD & DVD and is highly susceptible to finger marks cause read problems (more than CD or DVD ever was).

There is NO right or wrong answer to any of this. All technologies have their upsides and down sides, and you have to pick which ever is the least worse for you.

Oh, and something to think about going forward, as things move towards 4K footage, and even 3D, how much MORE storage do you think you are going to need then?
 
It will not mater if we will still use SATA 10 years from now because all of your SATA drives will be dead anyway. Drives are supported for usually 5 years. Most of them will last that long and go for an extra couple of years. I have had SATA drives fail in 3 years and I have had IDE drives fail in 8 or 9 years. My whole point is that every month after 5 years your risk goes up that the drive will fail. The odds of a library full of SATA drives being good after 10 years is very very very slim.

The argument that they will last longer if they are on a shelf is not true either. I cannot find the article right now but drives can and do fail even sitting on a shelf. This is even more true if they do not spin up for a few years. If you do have drives on a shelf it is very important every couple of months to hook them up and let the drive spin up and access data.

Data tape backup is not dead either. Not when you can backup 1TB worth of data to a $50.00 LTO4 tape. A lot of Red shooters are using LTO4A to backup their data. We have a Red camera at work but we do not yet have a LTO4A drive because they are so expensive. Once you buy it however the media is super cheap and can last I think up to 20+ years. When you have TB's worth of data to backup every other solution on the planet is sad compared to LTO tape backup.
 
Thomas, what you say is true about hard disks. It's also true that optical media will degrade, as will tape. The time it takes to degrade is based on many variables, including temperature, humidity etc.

As for LTO tapes, if an LTO drive you bought 10 years ago dies today, the chances are you had LTO1 tapes in your library. Many drives you buy today can't read them, and as time goes on fewer and fewer drives will read them (reading only the newer, larger tape capacities). So, even in this situation, what use will LTO tapes be in 10, 15, 20 years time when the newer drives will only read (say) 16TB LTO10 tapes (or what ever they are then)? This is the big problem with new technology.

The question really boils down to several variables, like:

1) Is the backup problem a short term one (i.e while you are working on the project)?
2) Do you need instant access to the data (i.e. keep it online)

If the answer to both these questions is yes then you will probably choose HDDs, possibly in a RAID for extra data protection and speed.

3) Do you need large capacity backup?

If the answer is yes then HDDs (usually in a RAID) fit the bill, LTO tapes come a close second (simply because they are not online). Blu-ray still falls shot for some projects while being big enough for others (say a short film). HDDs and Blu-ray give instant random access, but Blu-ray is much slower to recover the data (though newer higher speed drives are 30MB/s+).

4) Do you need "long term" backup - i.e. 10, 25, 50 years?

If this is the case then there is no cheap option that can guarantee your data will be around. It takes proper data management, which includes environmental considerations and active management to move the data to new media as time goes by. Old media will become less and less reliable/robust as time goes on, so actively making new generation copies is the only real way to manage the library over extensive periods of time.

5) What is your budget?

This is going to be the ultimate deciding factor for many people. Investing in an LTO drive without ANY media is about the same as buying 20TB of hard disks today. Economically things start to go LTO's way at about 100TB and over, assuming that prices of hard disks and tapes remain where they are today. That's 50 hard disks or LTO4 drive + 125 LTO4 tapes. Given that a 2TB HDD is a much smaller investment than an LTO4 drive, the chances are there will never be a good time to invest in the LTO4 drive for the average person/small company who's backup requirements grow incrementally, say 2TB - 5TB a year. Oh, and it really would make sense to have a backup LTO drive incase the first one fails when you need it most - so really that's 40x2TB drives you could have bought before you even buy the first LTO4 tape :)

6) What control do you have over environmental influences?

This has a big impact on how well any type of media will survive.

7) ..... you get the idea....

I'm really not against tape. LTO4 tapes are a good investment if you have a large library to back up, and you know that your library is going to grow rapidly. In these circumstances it makes sense to have current projects on local RAIDs for instant access, backed up by both on-site and off-site backup on tapes. But, that's really a big step for most people to take.
 
Exact,

I have been doing some research on Blu-ray reliability and trying to separate opinion from quantitative data. Could you tell me what this quote is based on?

"However, it's relatively fragile compared to CD & DVD and is highly susceptible to finger marks cause read problems (more than CD or DVD ever was)."

Is that your opinion or from a documented study. Opinion is OK, nothing wrong with that, I just want to know the source.

Best Regards,
Grant
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top