Hello:

I am new to the video game and come from a computer programming background.

I have a Sony PDX10 camcorder.

I am big on making backups of valuable data so I want to do the same with my miniDV tapes.

I would like to output to DVD's or as an alternative external harddrives.

I want to keep the data in the same format as what is on the miniDV. I understand that 1 hour of video is little less than 14 gig.

What software do I need to accomplish my backups?

Any suggestions?

Thanks for the help.

If you want to backup to an external HDD, all you need is the program you use to capture the video onto your computer (most likely your editing app, whether it be Premiere or Final Cut Pro or whatever). The video is captured as an .avi file (for PCs, that is), and you can simply drag-n-drop that file into your HDD.

For DVDs, you would need an app that could split the avi file into 3 parts and then reconstruct it later (well, that, or you could capture just a little less than 20 minutes at a time). There are a couple of apps that can do this, but they escape me at the moment.

Of course, these is also always backing up to another miniDV tape. Probably a little less reliable in the long run, compared to a hard drive or DVD, though. HDD may be your best choice -- you might consider getting something like one of the ADS drive enclosures, so you can just swap out hard drives as they get full.

DVDs have greatly varying quality and the real shelf life of the data on those discs is not guaranteed. The cheapest/most reliable method is likely to be miniDV backups followed by hard drives. The cost per gigabyte is pretty low for really important back ups to Hard Drive and miniDV for the rest makes sense. As John said, just get something like a FW 3.5 inch hard drive disk enclosure and go to town...