Archiving P2 - HELP???

L

larryz22

Member
We use our HVX's for both daily news and production work. What is the best way to archive the footage: DVD, Hard Drive, Digital Tape, etc.? Also, can you just copy the video and audio files from the "CONTENTS" and have a complete file for use at a later date?

Thanks,
larryz22

P.S. - Sorry I put this same post in the "HVX200" forum by accident.
 
Archiving is a personal choice. DVD is the cheapest form but not really that long term and hard drives are cheap and can hold a significant amount of data. It all depends on your cost, storage needs, plus other factors.

As for the P2 contents, you can't just copy the audio and video files. If you want to copy and use the MXF files later you need to keep all the P2 card data intact including the contents folder and .txt file.
 
larryz22 said:
Also, can you just copy the video and audio files from the "CONTENTS" and have a complete file for use at a later date?
Click to expand...

NO!

Why would you think you can discard information, and yet still have a "complete file for use later"? If you don't save everything, you won't have it.

Always copy the complete contents folder, including the lastclip.txt file. Always. I can't fathom why someone would want to make more work for themselves, going in and copying video and audio folders separately -- why? To save space? you'll save maybe .000001% space that way.

ALWAYS copy the entire CONTENTS folder, INCLUDING the lastclip.txt file. Always.

As far as what's the best media to archive to -- it's just computer data; archive it wherever you want. You can put it on data tape (like LTO3), hard disks, dual-layer DVDs, blu-ray data discs, HD-DVD data discs, whatever you like.
 
dunno, just never bothered. I think I figured it was something the camera used, probably when it switches off to another card mid-clip. But I just never saw why Vegas would need it. So far everything still seems to work...

Maybe I've written so much software over the years and I know how much useless **** I put in my code and figure they do the same with the firmware... :)
 
They might -- but what if someday you want to migrate your footage to a different system, and that different system needs that file? Then you'd be hosed... for the 12 bytes that the file takes up, I strongly advise everyone to keep it, and for that matter, keep everything...
 
It depends on how much and how often you have to back up. A 2x Blu-Ray burn will take over an hour and a half for 50 Gigs, Super DLT is twice as fast and can hold more. Also look at expected life, DLT is generally thought of as 30+ years while theoretically an optical disks data is 100+ years.
 
Optical media might hav a 100 year life, who knows?
The thing that is a little worrisome is that optical media needs to be taken out of the case and handled, which means it could be dropped and slide across the floor media side down (obeying the law of peanut butter sandwiches) and then where are you? I prefer removable media that comes in a cartridge that the drive mechanism opens. This seems safer to me.

Also think of volume of info to be stored, for how long, and how much does that cost; each type of media makes sense within a certain range of required storage volume, archivability and cost. Small occasional projects might be nice and cheap to store on DVD, but if you have multiple long form projects going with 600 G to 1 Tb each, optical discs will drive you crazy, hard drives will be better and tape might be best.
 
Optical media isn't THAT sensitive to scratches, and is available with hard scratch-resistant coatings like those developed by TDK -- these disks are used for archiving medial records, for instance. The coatings are available on CDs, DVDs, and are standard on BluRay disks. I believe HD DVD has something as well, but I'm not sure if it is on every disk.

If you do get a disk badly scratched and it becomes unreadable, you can polish them using a Skip Doctor.

A friend of mine is a dance teacher and she doesn't take care of the CDs she uses when teaching -- she's a non-technical klutz (left brain vs. right brain) and probably does all the things one shouldn't to these disks. On occasion she has a disk where a track will skip, and she gives them to me to fix (at which point I also make a copy of the disk afterwards, just in case). I've never not been able to fix a disk, even those that had deep scratches.
 
but if you have multiple long form projects going with 600 G to 1 Tb each, optical discs will drive you crazy, hard drives will be better and tape might be best.
Click to expand...
Ah, but what about when optical discs reach 1.6 to 3.9 terabytes in size? Not the pathetic blu-ray, which is way too small and slow, but the eventual HVD - holographic video disc, from Fuji, or the Tapestry system from Toshiba/InPhase/Maxell. Tapestry's slated to come out "any day now" starting at 300GB @ 160mbps transfer speed, and eventual size is 1.6 terabytes @ 1gbps. When that system comes out, optical will look like a practical archiving solution. I don't know when the HVD is "supposed" to come out...

As for today, as Mark said, the best candidates seem to be hard disk for intermediate storage, and data tape for deep storage. LTO3 delivers 400 gigabytes per $40 tape (at 80 megabytes per second!) and a drive costs about $2000.

Quantum makes an MXF-aware tape-based system specifically optimized for archiving MXF video, in both DLT and LTO3. The LTO3 press release is here:
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=69905&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=985062&highlight=

Quite a bit more expensive, but maybe worth it if you need to frequently search and access your archive. If it's just for sticking stuff on the shelf that you may never need to access again, I'd lean towards a cheaper LTO2 or LTO3 solution.

The HVD/Tapestry solution seems to be the perfect way to go because it's potentially instant-access (i.e., you should be able to play back footage right from P2 Viewer or P2CMS); it's faster-than-realtime delivery so restoring your archive should be quick, and it's small and cheap media. But the early-adopter drive price is rather enormous, at a projected $15,000.
 
The size of the LastClip.txt file is . . .

14 bytes. Not kilobytes, bytes. 112 1s and 0s.

It takes you a millisecond more to click and drag over the Contents folder and the txt file than it does just to click on the Contents folder.

Think of it this way, too -- there may come a time when you want to put the contents of a card back on a card -- you'll need everything if you want to do that.
 
Barry:

Quantum makes an MXF-aware tape-based system specifically optimized for archiving MXF video, in both DLT and LTO3. The LTO3 press release is here:
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=69905&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=985062&highlight=

Quite a bit more expensive, but maybe worth it if you need to frequently search and access your archive. If it's just for sticking stuff on the shelf that you may never need to access again, I'd lean towards a cheaper LTO2 or LTO3 solution.


I've spoken to people at trade shows that are doing multiple long form projects and need to archive oodles of material. Speed is not the driving issue but rather safe, secure archives are that can be restored in a reasonable amount of time. LTO Tape does this really well.
Sure we'd all love to have the terabyte optical disc system with random access speed, but the point is what are you going to do till that is available and you can afford it?

There is no one solution but rather a long series of interim solutions that are good for a time period. In order to triangulate a fix on a solution think volume - price - speed.
 
Right now I am dumping every card I shoot to G-RAIDS. You can get a 500 gig
G-RAID 2 for $365.00. I also use Raylight for the MAC so I am editing right from .mxf. Saves time and space not having to re-wrap a QT. Once the G-RAID gets about 60% full I dump all that data to a bare drive and keep both.
 
That thread is indeed interesting,

i have been thinking about a quantum again and again, but i am still waiting to get "the next generation", but i am not sure when this is going to come..!?

Anyone got any news here?
From what i saw of the last years, quantum doubled capacitiy every 2 years with a new generation of tapes and recorder, keeping the "same price"...i think that would be the best solution for the moment...!

I also wrote once about a Sandisk annoucment that they would invent 100GB solid state media, that you can write on once.....no clue if they are really bringing that out, but if it had a reasonable price, it could be interesting too....!
 
hvx_germanboy said:
That thread is indeed interesting,

i have been thinking about a quantum again and again, but i am still waiting to get "the next generation", but i am not sure when this is going to come..!?

Anyone got any news here?
From what i saw of the last years, quantum doubled capacitiy every 2 years with a new generation of tapes and recorder, keeping the "same price"...i think that would be the best solution for the moment...!


LTO 4 is in the pipe line but the LTO 3 version just came out this past june so it might be a while till the LTO4A hits the market.

Again, its what are your needs now - do you multiple long form projects happening right now that you need to back up or is it just your own work.

People from various sized production companies that i have spoken to with series in production or multiple long form projects running are desperate for dependable archival storage. Their needs are now and they have lots of volume to archive. though drives are getting cheaper, tape makes sense because of the volume that can be handled. While a desktop LTO3A is expensive, the LTO3 auto loader is only half again as much and for that you get 6.4 TB of capacity in a pretty small form factor. That makes sense for a production company as it can sit on a network and serve a number of clients and packs a lot of storage. An autoloader might not make much sense for the in home office however.
Click to expand...
 
The problem with copying all of the video from the P2 card is that we only archive footage that is important for later use. For example, we may go and shoot a very bad structure fire. That is something we will archive.

On the same day and card we may shoot the "Pet of the Week" at the local S.P.C.A. and a "beauty" shot for weather. This is footage that we never archive and it would be taking up space on a DVD, Digital Tape, or other backup media.

So now we have footage on a P2 card that can be discarded and some that needs to be archived. Can I just grab the Video and Audio files from the Contents folder or do I have to go and find the file name in each folder and archive that.

There is alot of news footage that doesn't get archived, because you will never use it again and it will take up alot of wasted space.

P.S. - We do archive all the footage from the P2 card when it comes to production work for clients.

Thanks,
Larry
 
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NO! Don't just grab video and audio files, that's a complete disaster waiting to happen.

Just use P2CMS instead -- copy the clips you want to save and export them to your archive. It'll keep track of all the associated files and keep the directory structure properly organized.
 
P2 Contents Management System. It lets you view the contents of a card, preview clips, edit the metadata, ingest the files into a database, search the database, export one clip or multiple clips, archive to a blu-ray disc system, etc.

For doing what you want, it's perfect. You'd put in a card, select the clips you want (by thumbnail) and say "Export" and export just those clips onto your archive drive.

And, it's freeware. Google for the p2cms download.
 
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