Use your MiniDV cam as a backup device...

[TwistedLincoln]

I think this kind of software has been around for a while, but this is the first time I've actually seen it. It looks interesting: http://www.firestreamer.com/fs/Default.asp

The premise: use your camcorder as a tape backup device using MiniDV tapes. While this isn't exactly a great solution (seems like it would put lots of use on your tape heads), it seems to work with most cameras. So a cheap $250 MiniDV camera could be used to archive HVX footage on your old MiniDV tapes. And at 12gb per tape, each cassette would give you the equivelent of 3 DVDs.

 

[vidled]

Cool! Nice find!

 

[Barry_Green]

This idea has been around a long time, and it's never really gone anywhere because fundamentally it's a bad idea. DV tape is not data tape, was never designed as data tape, and doesn't work well as data tape. The error correction in DV tape can play royal havoc with digital data.

The only way to be sure you're backing up okay would be to send two copies to the tape, which cuts your data size to 6gb, and takes a full hour to back up that six gb.

So the choice is: back up 4.7gb on a fifty-cent DVR in 5 minutes? Or back up 6gb on a $5 tape in 60 minutes?

It's a neat idea technologically, but it's woefully impractical.