What to do with old footage?
- Thread starter Luke
- Start date
Larry Rutledge
Fest Master
You could buy a cheap 80GB hard drive, dump it all on there and then store the hard drive somewhere.
Chris Stearns
Well-known member
I am curious about this as well.
The way I see it, since all of my footage is on tape, I can just save the Vegas(.veg) files onto a cd and dump the footage. I think it might be necessary to log the file names(ie catdog.avi) so if I ever try and work on these projects in the future, the .veg files will have the correct paths.
I don't know, though, I think I will just render each project to an uncompressed .avi file and save those, and then just dump all my projects so far.
The way I see it, since all of my footage is on tape, I can just save the Vegas(.veg) files onto a cd and dump the footage. I think it might be necessary to log the file names(ie catdog.avi) so if I ever try and work on these projects in the future, the .veg files will have the correct paths.
I don't know, though, I think I will just render each project to an uncompressed .avi file and save those, and then just dump all my projects so far.
Luke
Well-known member
Larry, thats exactly what I have already and I might have to continue doing that. Dieselfoot, I have thought of that as well, and it seems to be the most space saving solution. Unfortunately, tapes shelf life after its been used and sitting around for so long is questionable. I'm just speculating though. I suppose with such cheap storage solutions such as pocket hard drives and the like, I guess it would be the easiest solution. I mean, is there a way to heavily compress a large video file and then uncompress it with no noticeable quality loss?
Luke
Luke
Matt Grunau
Adobe Demigod
I'de simply use Nero and do a backup. I use these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...30&Submit=ENE&Manufactory=8330&SubCategory=71
all the time for backup and DVD's I make. Best DVD-R on the planet.
Nero has a "Backup FIles" option, and will archive and store anything. I had a High School play I needed to take the first act off of the computer, all files including image sequences, audio tracks, in excess of 150g, and I used 13 DVD-Rs. It's now safe and snug. Plus, with the "Verify Data" option checked, it will go over the DVD once is writes to it to make sure there weren't any errors. That really eats into the time it takes, but I had one Imation disc return nothing but errors once, and had I not had the box checked, number 4 of 13 might have been ruined.
Hell, DVD's are so cheap now, you could back up 50 gigs twice for around 10 bucks.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...30&Submit=ENE&Manufactory=8330&SubCategory=71
all the time for backup and DVD's I make. Best DVD-R on the planet.
Nero has a "Backup FIles" option, and will archive and store anything. I had a High School play I needed to take the first act off of the computer, all files including image sequences, audio tracks, in excess of 150g, and I used 13 DVD-Rs. It's now safe and snug. Plus, with the "Verify Data" option checked, it will go over the DVD once is writes to it to make sure there weren't any errors. That really eats into the time it takes, but I had one Imation disc return nothing but errors once, and had I not had the box checked, number 4 of 13 might have been ruined.
Hell, DVD's are so cheap now, you could back up 50 gigs twice for around 10 bucks.
bfischinger
Well-known member
You can also buy online storage at mediamax.streamload.com. If you don't want to pay though you can just get a free 25 gig account. I have a free 25 gigabyte account and its easy to use, 50 gigs is gonna take time to upload. I guess you could just split the files up into 2 zip files and store them online, in two free accounts.
aerosolcheese
Well-known member
They're not cheap, but if you have lots of footage then you may want to invest in a tape drive.
MovieSwede
Well-known member
I bought a External IDE shell. Just mount a hardrive there transfer the files, and when its full and i dont need it just switch the harddrive to a new. Then I have a nice backup.
ronfromkwon
New member
Just a thought or two on this ...
Backup media can still lose data over time - mag tapes, for example ought to be refreshed every six months or so (obviously it depends on how critical this is) I don't know what the longevity of DVD is but there have been suggestsions that some brands have a very short life indeed.
There is an issue of access - how do you find stuff that you archived some time ago?
Personally, I use a date/subject based system : my photos are organised by year/volume/subject - helpful when I remember which year (the volume relates to a CD - each volume fits on one CD, but some years there may be several CDs). A better system is to tag files with keywords, and use a database to keep track of them.
There is the issue of appropriate media - DV files are quite large, so the raw material for a DVD project may well require 10x to 100x the storage for the source material.
Then there may be additional issues of security, privacy and licensing ...
A final thought ...
One of the real issues of long-term backup management is the ongoing support for the hardware and software file format. Physically, the current disk formats may be supported for some time to come - but it was not too long ago that computer files were stored on 8" or 5 1/2" floppy disks. We may rely on the 12cm optical disk format for the forseeable future, but there will no doubt come a time when the only DVD players will be museum pieces.
Worse than that - support for the software is much more volatile. Vegas 6 will open Vegas 3 .veg files - however Sony may decide that Vegas 9 will only open Vegas 5+ files ... It has happened before - and I have some images and documents that I can't directly open (not without finding old versions of the operating system, software ...)
Backup media can still lose data over time - mag tapes, for example ought to be refreshed every six months or so (obviously it depends on how critical this is) I don't know what the longevity of DVD is but there have been suggestsions that some brands have a very short life indeed.
There is an issue of access - how do you find stuff that you archived some time ago?
Personally, I use a date/subject based system : my photos are organised by year/volume/subject - helpful when I remember which year (the volume relates to a CD - each volume fits on one CD, but some years there may be several CDs). A better system is to tag files with keywords, and use a database to keep track of them.
There is the issue of appropriate media - DV files are quite large, so the raw material for a DVD project may well require 10x to 100x the storage for the source material.
Then there may be additional issues of security, privacy and licensing ...
A final thought ...
One of the real issues of long-term backup management is the ongoing support for the hardware and software file format. Physically, the current disk formats may be supported for some time to come - but it was not too long ago that computer files were stored on 8" or 5 1/2" floppy disks. We may rely on the 12cm optical disk format for the forseeable future, but there will no doubt come a time when the only DVD players will be museum pieces.
Worse than that - support for the software is much more volatile. Vegas 6 will open Vegas 3 .veg files - however Sony may decide that Vegas 9 will only open Vegas 5+ files ... It has happened before - and I have some images and documents that I can't directly open (not without finding old versions of the operating system, software ...)