Copy Master Tapes Footage

H

hanguolaohu

Active member
Hi, I shot a doc with 130 hours of footage and am concerned about future dropouts in my master tapes while tape logging. Do most filmmakers after finishing a project copy their master tapes footage onto DV tape? How does one manage timecode jam sync?

Do they digitize everything onto hard drives such as Lacie or other high quality hard drives, and just buy extra cheaper EIDE hard drives as a backup? I already have a great Lacie drive, but wanted to backup on an EIDE hard drive housed in a non-name-brand firewire enclosure.

I don’t have enough cash for a huge RAID system or a $4000 DSR-45 with jam-sync timecode, so any cheaper solutions would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Alex
 
Re: Copy Master Tapes Footage

130 hours! man, that's a lot of footage.
I may not be the best help here, but I'm just finishing a 22h of footage edit and will give you my honest opinion.
First: did you shoot with only one camera? If you need to sync sound between two or more cameras, make sure, 100% sure, that you have captured the slates, specially if the camera was rolling and you did more than two takes.
Second: if you want to capture ALL of the footage, without logging each take, make sure you break it into sections, name them specifically, and keep notes about them, LOTS of notes. It's awful to be looking for a take, or even an insert and spending hours just to find it. And even worse, when you've seen it and "knows" where it is. Label each tape accordingly as well. ( i guess you know all that ). Be organized, it will save you time.
Third:you know that you'll need a lot of hd space. What lacie do you have again? I'm not sure it's enough.

I think your question was about transfering from one tape to another to avoid timecode breaks. It works, you will have to do it 130 times, though. But if you have many timecode breaks, it might very well be worthy it.

Anyways, I guess you know about those things right? Timecode breaks, logging or capturing "now". So, the best thing I can say is: get to know your footage very well and what you want out of it. And be ready to spend endless hours editing. I'm sure you are.
Hope it helps a little.
Good luck!
 
Re: Copy Master Tapes Footage

This seems like the kind of situation where OfflineRT might come in handy. Each hour of DV footage is, what... 14GB? That's over 1820 GIGABYTES OF FOOTAGE!!! I'm just finishing a feature lenght project, for which we shot 36 hours, and it was PAINFUL to store and edit in full resolution. I can't even begin to imagine 130 hours.

I would strongly suggest duplicating your tape to MiniDV to get good timecode with no breaks, then import the footage as OfflineRT while CAREFULLY LOGGING EVERY TAPE. Then, when you're done editing, re-import the full rez footage with a batch capture from the good-timecode tapes. And store the master tapes in a secure location, several miles from where the backups are.

Good luck!
 
Re: Copy Master Tapes Footage

I called a dub house today and they said it’s not possible to dub the 24p advanced encoding using a SD deck, as the DVX-100 uses special 24p advanced encoding done by the camera only. The only way to do it is to upconvert to HD 24p, and then downconvert back to DV. This seems like overkill. My main question is how people make 24p advanced timecode accurate dubs of DVX-100 footage.
 
Re: Copy Master Tapes Footage

...uh , i have no idea wha they are talking about..(it sounds like they dont either). but you can just dub it from one deck to another and everything will be fine. .. or you could capture to the hard drive, and then export to tape again. either way it will all be the same. .. it would be easier just to go from deck to deck though.
 
Neil: when you say "deck to deck" is it possible to go to (or from) the dvx to (or from) a small 3 ccd panasonic camera? I have 60 tapes I want to back up just for emergency back-up, what';s th ebest way to do this without losing any quality? Is it possible to line up the timecode automatically in this process? thanks!
 
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