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#1 |
Regular Crew
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Birmingham, AL
Posts: 85
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Long term storage w/o Blue Ray? Is this a solution?
I started thinking about this last night and the costs of the blue ray or HD burners speculated to be around $2000 is another thing pushing the cost of the hvx200 way past the initial $6000. I already own a Wiebetech TrayDock, which is basically a firewire hard drive that you can put your own hard drives into. These days you can buy a 250 gig drive for around $100. Considering that it probably has closer to 240 gigs of actually storage, that's about 10 hours of 720p24 material. Compare that to 10 x 1 hour HDV tapes at around $10 a piece and it's basically a dead heat.
I was planning on going this route anyway, so I'm not sure how Blue Ray burners would help me. I already get old VHS or mini Beta SP tape cases and store my old hard drives in them, so perhaps this could be a solution ona larger scale for the hvx200. I'm very good at missing something obvious, so perhaps I'm missing the advantage of the Blue Ray. But, presently, could someone explain to me how the HVX200 would be more expensive to run than an HDV can in this setup (other than the initial cost of the TrayDock)? Unless I'm missing something, it seems the same to me. |
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#2 |
Trustee
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: USA
Posts: 1,684
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My guess is you're right. You would probably want to double back-up so if one drive dies you are safe, but that is still pretty inexpensive. Its more of a hassle to hand off drives to a client like this, but if people get used to it, it makes sense to me.
I assume that this is the workflow for now at least. I think most people like the idea of getting off hard drives to something optical and smaller but until that comes around, the tray dock or any other hot swap device is a the cheapest solution. Not too hard really. |
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#3 | |
Inner Circle
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Sacramento, CA
Posts: 2,488
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Quote:
So for each hour of footage you shoot on the HVX200 at the lowest typical bandwidth setting, your archiving costs are at least 50% higher than shooting HDV, and that's assuming the HDV shooter keeps the hard drive copy of their footage. (Which most don't since the tape backup copy is sufficiently reliable.) If you shoot full-bandwidth DVCProHD, your archiving costs jump to $37.50/hour, or almost four times the cost per hour of HDV. (Or eight times as much as for HDV shooters who only keep the master tape after finishing a project.) That's a potentially significant cost difference if you shoot at least 100 or more hours of footge per year. |
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#4 |
Regular Crew
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Birmingham, AL
Posts: 85
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Well true, the cost of p2 cards etc is a whole another thing to consider. But, that's interesting, there's always different ways of playing with numbers. I actually thought most people were using the HDV tapes, but if not then that does make a difference. I was always told though that the 1st thing you should do when you shoot is make a backup of your tapes, so I thought this too might be a wash. But, I know very few people who actually do that, so that might be unfair and this may be another problem of the comparison.
Still, in my own observation, it's miles that kills hard drives rather than age, so I feel pretty comfortable on short projects using a drive for a few months to possibly a year then putting it in storage. Would I do this on long projects, like a feature? I don't know, probably not. An extra backup hard drive there would probably be a good idea. Anyway, this was kind of food for thought. |
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#5 |
Inner Circle
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Sacramento, CA
Posts: 2,488
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Or you could look at it this way: for many people the cost of HDV tapes isn't going to exceed the cost of P2 cards or Firestore hard drives for the HVX200, so take the initial recording cost out of the equation. Now the cost of archiving anything shot in HDV is inherently cheaper than archiving anything shot on the HVX200, since the storage requirements are smaller for a given amount of recording time. And since you can use DTE drives to eliminate the need for tapes with HDV, there's no advantage to the HVX200 there either.
I don't see much point in comparing costs for the HVX200 to HDV. If you really want what the HVX200 has to offer then you shouldn't be too concerned about the cost, except compared to other options for shooting and processing DVCProHD. If you care about cost, HDV is the way to go. |
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#6 |
Regular Crew
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Los Angeles
Posts: 42
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The Blue-ray route is very expensive although costs will obviously come down. One things that doesn't get mentioned frequently is that the blank disks are VERY expensive, around $90 each in small quantities. That's not any better than archiving via DLT. And at this point Blue-ray is notorious for the high failure rate of the finished DVDs. The large DVD duplicators are all concerned about the duplication costs for Blue-ray. On the other hand HD-DVD, an extension of the existing format, is easier. That is one of the reasons the computer industry is behind HD-DVD over Blue-ray: cheaper burners, cheaper media and sooner to be on the market at reasonable prices.
Personally, I plan for now to go with the hard drive option but expect to be able to go to HD-DVD later in the year. |
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#7 | |
Regular Crew
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Birmingham, AL
Posts: 85
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Quote:
But as far as comparing the costs, man that's standard operating proceedure for companies of any size. You weigh the pluses and minuses of the various options and the costs associated with each. Something might be out of your range or it might not, depending on different solutions. My only point posting this was that the cost difference might not be as much as had been previously believed when comparing the 2 formats. Depending on your workflow, it may or may not be, but I don't understand dismissing it out of hand like that. |
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#8 | |
Inner Circle
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Sacramento, CA
Posts: 2,488
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#9 |
Regular Crew
Join Date: Dec 2005
Posts: 54
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This is the bleeding edge.. when I got my digital rebel the first month it was out, I paid 550 bucks for a one gig slow poke CF card... and did one job with the digital camera and figured it was worth every cent because of the workflow and immediacy.
I will be shooting low volume high deadline stuff with this camera and hope to never shoot tape again. I don't even plan on recording to P2 initally. I'll be streaming to a laptop and then handing off master quality DVDs to the client as well as a FCP project file. Great shifts in thinking will be costly... |
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#10 |
Regular Crew
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Highlands Ranch, CO
Posts: 115
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More ideas, please.
I jumped into this thread hoping it would rattle out some ideas on long term storage for HVX footage ... no offense, but I didn't think the original intent was to explore HDV vs. HVX expenses.
So, any ideas out there from people who are currently using an HVX and are dealing with the reality of long-term storage? Or, if I'm off here, should I start a different thread? Thanks! |
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#11 |
Inner Circle
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Elk Grove CA
Posts: 6,838
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I can't help but get the feeling that somewhere in the storage plan will be.. <gulp> .... a large digital tape storage drive of some type.
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Chris J. Barcellos |
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#12 | ||
Major Player
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: Golden, CO
Posts: 681
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If you're only shooting 20GB or video each week or so, then take a look at simply backing up to DVD-R. A 4GB P2 card backs up perfectly to a single layer DVD-R disc. An 8GB P2 can span 2 discs with most decent disc burning/backup software. Good quality DVD-R media can be had in bulk for $0.35 per disc for 8X capable. There are 16X capable discs out there, but I have yet to find any that have a 100% burn rate and cost under $0.80 per disc. BluRay and HD-DVD seem like a good format of choice for backup. However, they won't be cost-effective for initial buyers and just like DVD-R and CD-R it will take a while for prices to settle down. Probably a year or two before the first major price drop. Drives will start off at $995 MSRP and media will be initially priced at < $20 for single layer HD-DVD ($65 for dual-layer). BluRay will be < $50 for single layer and about $90 for dual layer. Ouch. That pretty well sums it up. Personally, I would look into one of the new LTO-3 tape drives. They use the LTO-3 tapes which store 400GB uncompressed and have a transfer rate of 40~80MB/sec if your system can handle it. Drives are a bit pricey, but at about $75 to $95 per tape (the 400GB ones), that's roughly 1/4 the cost of HDD storage. If you will be doing a significant amount of archiving, that tape drive could pay for itself relatively quick compared to just buying hard drives to back up your stuff. Some of the newer SDLT tape units from Quantum are worth looking into as well.
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- Jeff Kilgroe - Applied Visual Technologies | DarkScience - www.darkscience.com |
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#13 |
Inner Circle
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Minnesota (USA)
Posts: 2,171
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I have a feeling this is going to be very much like a rerun of VHS vs Beta, with HD-DVD playing the part of VHS and BluRay playing Beta. I'd almost bet the HD-DVD format wins in the consumer marketplace, and Sony, with BluRay, once again winds up with the higher end video production industry market.
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#14 | |
Inner Circle
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Sacramento, CA
Posts: 2,488
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#15 | |
Major Player
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: Golden, CO
Posts: 681
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Quote:
But keeping this thread on topic... I don't think there is any way to squeeze HVX backup options into a DV (HDV) price model. This is also going to apply to any other new cameras coming out that use tapeless recording, be it solid state, HDD or optical disc for their primary media. Obviously the situation will improve with time, but how much time is anyones' guess. FWIW, I think one of the best HVX backup/archive solutions right now in terms of cost, and ease of use would be the Exabyte VXA-2 unit that attaches via FireWire. It can be purchased for about $1K and includes Dantz Retrospect software (good stuff) and a tape. Each tape holds a native 160GB and going rate for tapes is about $28 purchased individually, as low as $20 in reasonable bulk packs (like 25 count). Right now, the best price | capacity ratio for HDDs is at about the 250~300GB mark or about $0.38 per gigabyte (roughtly $96 for 250GB for a quality drive). This Exabyte firewire unit plus a box of 25 tapes at $22 per tape (plus the unit includes a free tape) figures out to $0.37 per gigabyte for those 26 tapes. Oh and if anyone is wondering, those 26 tapes hold 4160GB, or the equivalent of 520 8GB P2 cards (over 173 hours of 720pn24 footage). Top quality DV tape at $4 per tape will cost $696... Making the price difference about $854 between VXA-2 archiving DVCPROHD 720pn24 as compared to HDV or DV. Now here's the kicker... Another box of $25 VXA-2 tapes will cost about $550 and will provide storage for 166.6 hours of 720pn24. To shoot that same amount of time to miniDV tape will cost about $668 using $4 tapes. So VXA-2 is about $0.70 per hour cheaper than DV tape in terms of video storage costs. The break-even point for equipment costs with the VXA tape system vs. HDV would be somewhere around 1430 hours of video (yikes!). So, not as cheap as miniDV tape when considering the investment as a whole. But tape drives are probably the most logical and cost-effective solution for those of us who are traveling the HVX road. Besides, the tape system can be used for all other backups. And, if you do use it enough to reach tape #215, that's the magic number where this system should have repaid its investment (assuming it was a cash purchase to begin with) and from there on out will save money vs. DV tape. ...By that time it will probably be worn-out anyway and you'll need a new drive. Heh. :)
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- Jeff Kilgroe - Applied Visual Technologies | DarkScience - www.darkscience.com |
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