Archiving HVX footage

D

dvaddict

Active member
Besides Hard Disks, which aren't the most reliable option, what else do you guys see as a viable archiving media? Tape (LTO, DAT, etc.) or maybe MO disks. Any thoughts?
 
DLT tapes. Drives are fairly affordable and the tapes aren't too terrible. You could probably score a 35/70Gig drive for pretty cheap and store over half an hour of 1080i on one tape. Of course if you've got some money to burn you could get one of the latest - what are they up to now - 160/320Gig drives and store an entire feature on one tape.

For anyone not familiar with tape backups, be warned that when you look at capacities, you should typically use the lower number when storing your video files. So if you get a 40/80 drive with tapes, expect 40 gigs of video, NOT 80.

Philip Williams
www.philipwilliams.com
 
It is my intention to burn the clip files onto DVD-DL, at least until Bluray DVD will be available.
Pretty fast, pretty secure. No danger of data loss for a certain period of time. No longtime archive solution though (unless I find an intern to copy every DL DVD twice and verify faultless copying).
Or might do a generation jump and opt for a holographic disc archive instead of bluray.
 
we are grappling with this issue now - consider filming a feature - how much footage is that - It could be tens of hours in which case the tape backup even becomes expensive.

Redundant harddrives might be the way to go - copy the files over to a second drive.

its still not a great solution - this i think is the biggest weakness in the P2 strategy - dont get me wrong - i love it for everything else but the sheer amount of data to backup with no perfect solution is daunting
 
I highly recommend DLT tapes as very economical solution. About a year ago, I bought a used 35/70 GB drive on Ebay for only $300. Although the DLT drive is SCSI, it works perfectly with a SCSI to USB 2.0 adaptor, eliminating the need for a SCSI card (approximately $70 for the adaptor). And although new DLT tapes retail for around $40 each, you can easily find folks on Ebay selling bundles of new DLT tapes for a fraction of that cost - often as cheap as $5 per tape! I use my DLT drive on a 2.6 GHz Windows XP machine, and not only is it fast, but the Windows backup tool gives me a constant view (in Windows Explorer format) of all the files I've ever backed up to DLT tape. Finally, the DLT format (and the newer Super DLT format) is a standard in the IT industry. The format is definitely not going to go away any time soon. Although I'll be curious to see how Blu-Ray or HD-DVD pan out, a used DLT drive is a far cheaper and more dependable solution that works great right now.

-Brian
 
jrv3034 said:
One can rent a DVCProHD deck and backup to HD tapes.
Click to expand...

Totally agree to your comment. For large and very large productions, rent a DVCProHD tape deck and backup to HD tapes. It's within budgetlimits. Sure ;-)
 
I don't like the idea of backup tapes because you can't play them directly. With DVD-R Dual Layer you can throw in the disk and push play. It's the right size to backup each P2 card to a disk. It would be the handiest in the editing room. If you only have 4 gig P2 cards you can back them up to regular old DVD-R's on your powerbook.
Sam
 
SamEdwards said:
I don't like the idea of backup tapes because you can't play them directly. With DVD-R Dual Layer you can throw in the disk and push play. It's the right size to backup each P2 card to a disk. It would be the handiest in the editing room. If you only have 4 gig P2 cards you can back them up to regular old DVD-R's on your powerbook.
Sam
Click to expand...

Veyr interesting idea... I'm thinking about the HVX with a 4GB P2 card, Should be around $7000. Record 4 minutes of 1080/24p, and have your assistant dump to laptop, burn to DVD, rinse and repeat as necessary. Very cool.
 
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