Hello,

I am wanting to save a few of my finished HDV projects (1080 60i) to burn later to either Bluray or HD DVD. What is the best way to archive these projects to do this? So far, I have been unable to export back to tape to my Canon XH-A1. I am open to saving these projects on an external hard drive if I can render them to a format that will transfer easily to Bluray or HD DVD in a year or so without too much loss of quality.

Thanks in advance for your replies.

Cineform Intermediate

I've been wondering the same thing. Would data files work? saved to dvd?

Hello, First time post here.

I just recently bought a HD camcorder and thought about this a lot.

Here is what I do:

I have a dedicated hard-drive that I capture all my video and here is what I do for each project:
<project folder>
\Capture
\Pictures
\Render
\Vegas
\Audio
\Authoring

Once I finish a project, I then copy the entire <project folder> to an offline USB hard-drive. I thought about just rendering the projects back out as HDV but this allows me to have access to the entire project. Maybe make subtle changes when HD is more available.

I just finished a 35-minute DVD project and the folder was about 10 gigs. If that is an average, then I'm figuring about 20 gigs for every hour of capture. I have a 500 gig USB drive so that will hold not quite 25 hours of projects. I think I only paid $130 for the drive. Seems like a cheap way to go. I can always go back to the tape if I need to.

--Sylvan

Agreed-- big cheap external hard driveis the way to go. I use Western Digital "My Book" 500 GB with firewire. I have about 6 of them so far. Plug and play, and still way cheaper than the Blu-Ray or HD-DVD media.

Agreed-- big cheap external hard driveis the way to go. I use Western Digital "My Book" 500 GB with firewire. I have about 6 of them so far. Plug and play, and still way cheaper than the Blu-Ray or HD-DVD media.

I keep a big external drive or two around for "current" project backup. But you're eventually going to need more space.

At present, DV tape is by far the cheapest storage medium for dumping 15GB-20GB worth of video. And particularly, now that Vegas 8 does smart rendering, there's no way to get a better quality final product than to edit the MPEG-2 back to MPEG-2. So once you have it, why not print to tape?

If for some reason you can't print to tape, there's probably something wrong with your PC setup. If the camcorder is flawed or, perhaps, disabled (common in Europe, to avoid some taxes levied on recording devices), I'd buy a cheaper HDV camcorder and get the recording capability.

Sure, tapes aren't forever, but HDs also die, and I'd be much happier in the short term with backups on HD and tape.

I'm currently rendering to DVD, usually in WMV/HD format for playback on my DVD player, and that could, in theory, play back directly on either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. But I'm using much lower bitrates than I'd use on those formats, and I'd be interesting in moving to AVC for those, too.... and anything but the WMV/WMVpro audio that WMV rendering tends to force.

So a top quality print of the final video assures I can have this, as good as it can be, in the future on a standard HD disc. Printing back to tape IS the best quality I can get, and easily store.

Actually probably the best way is to make a digital master, a tiff sequence with no compression. That way file size is not to bad and you do not have any generation loss due to compression. You can then import your sequence back into your timeline and render it out however you want.

Jim

An image sequence would be huge!

I'd use whatever formats it was ingested and edited in. For you that means HDV and probably Cineform. If the project is short enough, you should be able to burn straight to a regular DVD (using HD).

Yes it is but the thread was "the best way to archive footage". If you archive in a format that requires compression then when you recompress to go to dvd or blu ray you have introduced a loss of resolution and compression artifacts again. Once when you did the originial and twice when you did the render for dvd.

To avoid recompressing already compressed video, you should use a non compressed format.

Jim

You're forgetting the fact that the footage is compressed upon capturing and for output too. It's not as if HDV is lossless. Smart renderers will not recompress if the frame has not been modified. He might as well save his renders if he knows he won't be editing them any more.

At present, DV tape is by far the cheapest storage medium for dumping 15GB-20GB worth of video.

Actually, with hard drives costing ~25 cents/GB and an hour of DV or HDV occupying ~12 GB, that's $3 to store the video on a hard drive versus that much or more for most miniDV tapes -- and hard drives can store a longer continuous video with less time required for copies.

Actually, with hard drives costing ~25 cents/GB and an hour of DV or HDV occupying ~12 GB, that's $3 to store the video on a hard drive versus that much or more for most miniDV tapes -- and hard drives can store a longer continuous video with less time required for copies.

Well, letsee... I paid $0.22 per GB on the 1TB external drive I bought last month. I pay $0.56 per GB for Panasonic AY-DVM63MQ tapes, so yeah, HD is pretty cheap... but you do have to pay for the electricity, if you keep it powered up on-line. So it may eventually become more expensive. And it won't likely last as long as the tape... again, if it's kept powered up and running. But you can't argue the speed of recovery :-)

For DVDs, the price is about $0.08 per GB for the kind I use (Taiyo Yuden inkjet printable, I usually by a few hundred at a time), which is the one that's actually DRAMATICALLY cheaper than other forms of storage. But also 4x more annoying to use. I'm likely to fit a finished video on a 63 or 83 minute DV tape; I'm very unlikely to fit on on a DVD. Of course, a quality DVD-R, stored under good conditions (in the dark, not too dry or too damp) ought to outlast both tape or HD... an archival quality DVD ought to outlast most of us.

All of which suggests that, in a few years, the [blu-ray/hd-dvd] disc ought to be the best archival format. Sadly, the format wars is pushing this day farther off than it might have been otherwise, but it will eventually be the case that this is the cheapest media going.

Of course, a quality DVD-R, stored under good conditions (in the dark, not too dry or too damp) ought to outlast both tape or HD... an archival quality DVD ought to outlast most of us.

On another someone posted about a customer whose archival DVD copy of their wedding video was unplayable after less than two years stored in a safe deposit box. He's now thinking about using flash memory drives to store his finished videos, on the theory that solid state devices are more durable than anything else. This wouldn't be cheap at $30+ for 4 GB of storage, but if it really is more reliable than other options that's worth something.

Another problem with DVDs is the time required to burn them, as opposed to just making a copy of a finished video from one hard drive to another. Blu-ray may not be too bad in that regard but the discs need to get quite a bit cheaper to be cost-effective. In terms of durability there are indications that HD-DVD is more rugged in practice than Blu-ray, but new disc coatings may help with the latter.

It's hard to beat the convenience of hard drives, but as mechanical devices I wouldn't rely on those without at least one duplicate copy.

On another forum someone posted about a customer whose archival DVD copy of their wedding video was unplayable after less than two years stored in a safe deposit box. He's now thinking about using flash memory drives to store his finished videos, on the theory that solid state devices are more durable than anything else. This wouldn't be cheap at $30+ for 4 GB of storage, but if it really is more reliable than other options that's worth something.


I bet this person was not using media comparable to Taiyo Yuden. I have DVDs spanning back years and this has not yet happened to me. Still, it pays to be vigilant...

...Of course, a quality DVD-R, stored under good conditions (in the dark, not too dry or too damp) ought to outlast both tape or HD... an archival quality DVD ought to outlast most of us...
Taiyo Yuden or not, a standard formulation DVD-R should not be considered an archival medium. The aluminum layer is not sufficiently sealed by the plastic substrate.

I've done some research related to archiving of digital materials for a private library in S.F. Our conclusions were:

1) Aluminum (standard formulation) DVD-R give 2 to 20 years.

2) Gold DVD-R (that's right, gold instead of aluminum) give from 100 to 300 years.

We ended up digitizing their audio and video collection to gold CD-R or DVD-R, (making 3 copies, 2 with the library and one with me) concurrently loading up hard drives for immediate access as needed in the library.

Maybe your needs don't extend quite that far, but anyone relying on standard DVD-R media for long-term archive is gonna' be disappointed eventually.

Some of the best archival media comes from MAM-A (formerly Mitsui):
http://www.mam-a.com/products/dvd/Gold%20DVD/DVDR%20Gold.htm

Lots of good info on that site.

Kodak makes a great gold CD, calling it a "Photo CD" that is in use by many libraries for long-term storage.
http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/bytopic/electronic-records/electronic-storage-media/kodakpho.html

The optical disc industry in general is preparing to deal with long-term archive issues:
http://www.osta.org/odat/

Finally, the UK National Archive says "...CD-Rs with a gold reflective layer and phthalocyanine-based dyes have been assessed, since recent research suggests that these are the most stable, and have the greatest life span."
here http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/selecting_storage_media.pdf

I see there are even gold-layered DVDs which are inkjet printable. Interesting...

http://www.mam-a.com/products/gold/standard.html

People have to get past the analog mindset of archivalness as "avoiding degradation in perpetuity". In the digital world there are other considerations:

Media longevity
Reader + driver availability
File format obsolescence

Therefore, it is not imperative that the media last forever; merely to outlast the other two factors.

Quite so. In the case of the private library I was working with, the collection is over 40 years old, and they were indeed concerned about 100-200 years.

The useful life of most of the content I deal with is perhaps 2 years. Standard DVD-R is just a little chancey, but HD is fine for that time range, IMHO.

It is important to recognize that a DVD-R that we burn today may be nothing in as little as 2 years, depending. A DVD-R with gold reflective layer is not only good for many more years, but also will have fewer errors in 2 weeks, good for sending to a replication service.

CD and DVD standards have a significant amount of error correction built-in. They'll work until one day the errors become too significant to correct, then that's it. The aluminum reflective layer is really starting to deteriorate immediately as oxygen infiltrates the DVD. Gold is *much* more inert, oxygen doesn't degrade it. There are some silver and silver/gold forumulations as well.

The useful life of most of the content I deal with is perhaps 2 years. Standard DVD-R is just a little chancey, but HD is fine for that time range, IMHO.

Why would you say HD is less chancey over the next two years than DVDs? From what I hear, Blu-ray in particular can be more fragile with repeated use than DVDs. I wonder how long before there's a gold-layer Blu-ray disc...?

Why would you say HD is less chancey over the next two years than DVDs? From what I hear, Blu-ray in particular can be more fragile with repeated use than DVDs. I wonder how long before there's a gold-layer Blu-ray disc...?

HD = Hard Drive not High Def

HD = Hard Drive not High Def

Which can be abbreviated HDD (hard disk drive) to avoid confusion...