hey everyone,
not sure if i am putting this in the right section of the forum, but here's my question:

What is the best way to back up video taken striaght from the camera?
Since its SO LARGE, what do you guys recommend? any specifics would be a great help. Thanks

Will

Maybe another external hard drive? A RAID system? (Computers aren't my area of expertise, so I can't help you with the details on a RAID system.) If you're looking for permanent long term storage...maybe tape?

What do you mean by "straight from the camera"? Recording directly onto a computer without tape, or video transferred from tape to computer?

If we're talking already taped video, than keep it on tape. Although I have yet to find scientifical research results, most experts agree that good quality tape life span is 20-25 years, while burned DVD media will only last a few years.

Try a "tape life span" search in the "Long black line" forum below for more.

thanks for the help guys...
the footage that i have is from a tape ... BUT then after the footage was captured, the person took the camera and shot over all the film, captured and shot again... they used one tape for about 7-8 hrs captured in 10-20min segments... now which are all on an external harddrive... thats the only place taht they live... I am just affraid of a crash and be completely wiped of them... i need a more permanent backup... thanks again

Yep, that's the problem isn't it. It's like we're on a race track and about to discover that the track is round and ends up where it started. Either you at some point DESTROY your original footage, or fill up way too many drives that one day may be obsolete as you hold out for affordable flash card technology, which unfortunately will probably come with too much compression.

IN the short term get another hard drive and copy them over. At least then two hard drives have to fail to lose them!!! When you have the time export to tape.
Ron Evans

I think you just need to keep buying more external hard drives. If you only want them for backup then get cheap USB drives. A quick look at Best Buy's website shows several 250 GB drives for about $130 which is around 50 cents per gigabyte. They also show a 1.5TB drive that comes in at around 40 cents per gigabyte.

A 250GB drive will hold about 20 hours of video, so if it costs $130 that works out to $6.50 to store the contents of a one-hour tape... not too bad. The points about obsolesence are well taken, but personally I think hard drives are the most practical solution for the time being. I looking at 14 firewire drives and 2 USB drives within six feet of where I'm sitting right now, so that's my choice for storage :-)

Hi Will,

You don't say how important your video is, like "I must have it" or "it's nice to have - but I could get along without it".

If it's a "must have", then I would suggest that you output to DV Tapes X2 (I assume they were captured in AVI) and put one set "off site" in a secure area. Same idea goes if you chose for storing on harddrives.

Like Ervin, I favor the Tape for long term, and harddrives as a second choice.

If Boyd has all his video on just those many harddrives of his, and no where else, then he would suffer a catastrophic loss of material if there are no tape copies or other harddrives "off site" and a fire or other destructive event should occur to those harddrives at his site.

Harold

I think you just need to keep buying more external hard drives. If you only want them for backup then get cheap USB drives. A quick look at Best Buy's website shows several 250 GB drives for about $130 which is around 50 cents per gigabyte. They also show a 1.5TB drive that comes in at around 40 cents per gigabyte.

A 250GB drive will hold about 20 hours of video, so if it costs $130 that works out to $6.50 to store the contents of a one-hour tape... not too bad. The points about obsolesence are well taken, but personally I think hard drives are the most practical solution for the time being. I looking at 14 firewire drives and 2 USB drives within six feet of where I'm sitting right now, so that's my choice for storage :-)

Maybe the problem is the suse of the word storage. It's not really storage when you place something on a harddrive, it's usuage. The difference being that tape can still be much cheaper, but it's not instantly editable the way it is on a harddrive.

Digital VHS storage at mini-dv quality costs 50 cents an hour.

You need to find out if you can export to tape.

The Canon XH A1 and Canon XL H1 so far can not export to tape via Premeire Pro. So see if the HV20 will -- export a min of 6 min as the Canon XH A1 quites recording after 4.5 min with Prem Pro 2.

Bill in Ohio

Let us know if you have success.

Blu Ray disc is another possibility to save onto -- high quality mpg of 2 hours makes a $11 Disc not so bad.

IS this DV or HDV? IT really doesn't matter since it will use the same amount of tape but HDV may cause more issues depending on software available to you. I still think I would copy to another hard drive then backup to tape when you have the time. What software and camera do you have?

Ron Evans

the electronic discounter near my place was selling last week an usb external drive 500 gig for 150$.
at that price, you get 38 hours of video for less than 40 cent/hours.

With the P2 format tape is possible but not for all the P2 HD variations.

So the only option is a hard drive or DVDs.

In my case it's removable mirrored RAIDs for long-term storage and striped RAIDs for works-in-progress.

Off-site storage is a very good idea and that's implemented to some extent where copies of finished shows are stored elsewhere. In fact, it's on the other side of a mountain so it's safe in the event there's a nuclear blast (but not if it's an air burst).

Here is where a good logging tool in an editor is your friend. If you label your tapes, follow the media management recommendations, and backup a project, keep the version of editor, and media capture device, you should have a "backup." You just need to backup the project without the media. Later, you can batch log the media from tape again into the original project. The overhead is smaller and need to remember to keep a copy of any imports with the project.

This all depends on your editor, of course. This won't work with Windows Movie Maker. I use Avid Liquid and it has media management and backup. That is a key difference between the pro tools and the $100 editors.

George, the problem is there are no tapes in this case. The same tape was used over and over again for 7 to 8 hours. The videos only exists on the hard drive now. I agree with you that normal use is capture, save batch capture file, save project file then one can always recover from tapes. NLE's will often note misplaced files and offer to recapture too. In this case there are only a few options. Backup to another hard drive in the short term and output to some more permanent medium in the long term- tape or optical disc. For me tape is the only reliable long term media at the moment. Defective pieces of tape can be spliced over if needed but damaged FAT on HDD etc will render everything useless or a very expensive data recover service fee.
Ron Evans

I read the part of "from a tape" and thought they were recording tape at the same time. Too early to read well.

OK i don't really know if this will be of any help.. but i trust hard drives more then tape or disk backup. The reason why is because they cost almost nothing and you can back up to more the one drive and store them in more then one location... Now tape backup is something i always do when i am done with a project. so print to tape or exporting to tape is fine if your willing to deal with having to recapture and the loads of tapes you will have to store.

Bill says use blu ray and i have a blu ray drive and video looks amazing and you can always use it as data BUT!!!! blu ray is so new who knows what the disks can handle, how long will they last.

lets pretend you don't like hard drive because your scared of data lose. would something like this change your mind. WARNING don't look at the price there are cheap ways to do this but this device just is one of the first few out there... so if it's something you would be interested in i can shot you an email with what i use.

http://www.drobo.com/products_demo.aspx

anyway what ever you decide good luck with your search.

~Mike

I read about these a while back, then kind of forgot. But late last week I made a trip to a local computer store and while looking at some blanks, I saw the golden disks, both CDs and DVDs. They are advertised as the "100 year disk".

Has anyone looked into this option? What do we know at this point about them?

I would record everything from the hard drive to digital tape for long term storage.
You can always find a deck to play back almost any tape format. In 5 years, today's hard disk storage may be obsolete and you may have a computer that is unable to read the format. Also look at the cost factor for storing perhaps hundreds of projects in a few years.
Allen W

I would record everything from the hard drive to digital tape for long term storage.
You can always find a deck to play back almost any tape format. In 5 years, today's hard disk storage may be obsolete and you may have a computer that is unable to read the format. Also look at the cost factor for storing perhaps hundreds of projects in a few years.
Allen W

Allen i have to disagree. Yes hard drives are changing already they are going solid state more expensive for the time being but still the same formats just flash not disk based...SAFER FOR MEDIA... and as far as a computer not being able to read the format it would take decades for a format to be killed off.. look at divx it was the worst format ever,,, now divx is HUGE!!!...

as far as finding a deck... i know that i can play back any digital format on my computers ANY. there are codecs for anything. but where will you find a deck in 5 years that can playback most media. if anything the tape and the decks will go bad in 5 years.

Now Allen I do think it's always best to have your finals on tape. You never know when someone needs a copy or you wont have your computer around, or you go from one platform to another MAC TO PC or the other way around.

what i do is i back up EVERYTHING to hard drives no matter what.. the first reason i do that is because it's faster if i need to re edit or pull up some footage i dont have to recapture. but i have like 8 tapes and counting that i put aside and i start at the front of the tape (not all the way roll it 1 min, in case you need to slice and fix) and i justs export to tape until it's full.

This thread will easily be a old school tape junkie vs the new media geeks.

everyone is untiled to there own way of doing things... what we need to do here is just provide what we are doing so that Will can make his choice.

At my news station we currently have the interns transferring all the old tapes to hard drives for better storage. it was a big decision that looked a lot like this thread

good luck will

~Mike

P.S. I am not defending hard drives vs tape or the other way around.. i just think it's better but to be fair.... 45 Mins of HD on tape is 45 mins... 45 mins of HD on hard drive is alot more then DV.

Allen i have to disagree. .

Perhaps you're right. Perhaps you're not.
My 3/4" tapes & deck from the early eighties still work fine. My Betacam deck still works fine. I have loads of original & master VHS & Super VHS tapes from the eighties that are still in mint condition and play fine. All of these decks can still be purchased on E-bay and at video auctions and can still be repaired if they break down. The way I figure it, if they haven't failed in the last 25 years, they'll probably be here in the next five. Now my Radioshack TRS-80, my old Commodore and Amiga computers, my DOS based PC, my Video Toaster and original Newtek Flyer, gone with the passing wind. Can't even get parts to retrieve old data. All original programing done with DOS. What the heck is that? Can't even find a floppy diskette player to play those original 5 inch floppies. Most of the 3 1/2" disks don't work and I have a small box of failed hard drives that I refuse to get rid of because my bank accounts & other personal information is stored on them. I can't even find any punch cards that I went to school for. One of my editing computers uses DPS Velocity which is still faster than almost any other editing program on the market. But the computer itself. Windows NT. Other than being a host for Velocity and a few other programs I use for editing, the PC is obsolete. No Firewire, USB port, unable to use a printer. Thankfully my other editing computer with Velocity is a newer version.

The one thing all the computers had in common when I purchased them. . They were the end solution and I wouldn't have to worry about obsolence. Not!

The point is, computers, software & hardware change faster than a blowing wind.
So far the tapes and decks have withstood the passage of time.
Planned obsolence will almost guarentee your computer will be obsolete within five to ten years based on past history.
Perhaps your right, perhaps you're not.
History will be the judge. So far it hasn't been kind to computers.
Allen W

DVDs are supposed to be good for 50 years (at least the manufactured ones). I believe that is also true of the burnable types. HD Blu-ray at 25 GB should allow you to store your m2t file and transfer quickly. I have seen $11 per single side and prices will drop. I would prefer in most cases to use my used tapes for such backup, but not a player with A1 and PP2 at this time.

Biggest drawback on tape is that it oxidizes over time. HDV can drop for a 1/2 second due to a bad spot on tape. So over time the tape degrades in signal just look at old analog VHS tapes -- only good supposedly to 10 yrs., however they still play although progressively noisy. Digital should as long as the head reads the tape ok will stay good untill oxidation causes digital data losses. I don't know how long that takes.

Bill in Ohio

Hollywood DVD's may last 50 years or more, but I seriously doubt the burnable DVD's will last anywhere near that amount of time. I'm not an expert but I have a feeling that tape will outlast a burnable dvd.

This topic falls under personal preference big time. But no matter what choice you go with there is a risk... pros and cons for every media.

~Mike

Hollywood DVD's may last 50 years or more, but I seriously doubt the burnable DVD's will last anywhere near that amount of time. I'm not an expert but I have a feeling that tape will outlast a burnable dvd.


Tape has proved to be surprisingly fragile. The oxides are reasonably stable, the substrates are very stable, but the binders that hold them together are quire ephemeral. There are lot's of data tapes out there that have become unreadable in just one or two years and there are huge libraries of audio and video tapes in the hands of broadcasters and archivists that are quickly becoming marginal. To keep long-term, tapes need to be stored under very controlled conditions.

Data tapes I don't know much about.

I have a 3/4 videotape from 1979 that plays fine. I haven't tried it in a couple of years because I moved the 3/4 machine out of my editing room but that 1979 3/4 tape was fine the last time I tried it about two-three years ago.

There was one brand of 3/4 videotape that was made back then that became "sticky" over time and had a very unnacceptable videotape life. At this point in time most videotapes that were recorded in the 80's still play fine as long as they weren't stored in places that exhibit huge temperature and humidity shifts.

The scary part is one dodgy videotape can wreak havoc on a Video deck.

As for harddrive storage, what is the oldest harddrive currently in use among the forum members?