Archiving AVCHD structure on Mac to optical discs?

[Craig Seeman]

Canon HF200
Mac OS 10.6.2
Toast 10 Pro 10.0.6
External Hard Drive
External Blu-ray Burner

I'm trying to find a viable solution to archiving 32GB SDHC cards from aforementioned system. I have not yet found a way to split the PRIVATE folder for backup to optical discs (BD-R, DVD+DL, DVD-R)

Current Workflow:

1) Create Folders on hard drive: Clips1, Clips2, Clips3, etc

2) Copy 32GB SDHC to Clips2, the next 32GB SDCH to Clips2, etc

3) In Toast 10 Pro, select Video, AVCHD Archive but navigation pulldown only shows
HardDrive:Clips1:PRIVATE

PROBLEM:It does not offer a way to navigate to the other folders.
As far as I know, Toast is the only utility that can properly span discs so that it preserves proper folder structure. Canon has no such Mac software for example.

QUESTION 1
Is it possible to archive AVCHD from hard drive with Toast?
I'm thinking if I archive Clips1 safely and then delete, Clips2 would then show up . . . that Toast is limited to only showing the first folder in alphabetical order since it assumes SDHC card as source.

QUESTION 2
With Toast, has anybody spanned across different media types such that an SDHC card with more than 25GB is spanned to a 25GB BD-R followed by 8GB DVD+DL or 4GB DVD-R?
Toast manual and forums don't give any indication that this is possible but it certainly would be a waste to break a 32GB SDHC card to two 25GB BD-R discs.

QUESTION 3
Are there other Mac software solutions that properly allow archive of original AVCHD folder structure spanned across optical discs?

(This is so much easier with Sony EX-1 and ClipBrowser which has a Split folder feature).

[Craig Seeman]

No one is backing up their files to DVD or Blu-ray?

[Tom Majeski]

Originally Posted by Craig Seeman

No one is backing up their files to DVD or Blu-ray?

Well since you asked...no.


$79 1TB external USB hard drive. 7.9 cents/gb of storage vs 6 cents/gb for bluray. Just faster and easier for me to drag and drop.

[Craig Seeman]

I've been using hard drives as well for this. I don't trust them at all though. When using Sony EX1 I always back up to optical disc in addition to leaving a copy on hard drive.

Toast will supposedly split the BDMV folder across hard drives but apparently it messes with the metadata so that neither Final Cut Pro nor iMovie will see it as a valid folder.

Others suggest keeping all the folder structure on one optical disc and putting the "excess" .mts on other discs. Then when it's time to reuse, copy it all back to hard drive and put the .mts back in the folder. That seems like an accident waiting to happen.

I guess I'm one of the few concerned enough (paranoid) not to trust hard drives.

[Tom Majeski]

I hear ya. My history of losing, misplacing, scratching, and unlabeling disks basically outweighs the hard drive lifespan issue-lol. I suppose if I had clips important enough I would save them to two external hard drives in parallel. All my work in progress clips are deleted from the internal drive once done.

[Craig Seeman]

I have a little filing cabinet for DVDs. I get ink jet printable discs. I print the date and subject of the shoot on the disc, put it in a little protective sleeve and into the the filling cabinet it goes.

[Michael Wisniewski]

Originally Posted by Tom Majeski

My history of losing, misplacing, scratching, and unlabeling disks basically outweighs the hard drive lifespan issue.

That's trade off for me as well. And if the footage is that important, a 2nd drive is very reasonable, especially when you factor in that you can spread the cost of several projects onto a couple of mirrored drives.

If you're using off-the-shelf external hard drives, it's pretty competitive, but when you start using hot swappable enclosures and bare drives, they certainly give optical disks a run for their money.