I checked last night. Imation Blu-Rays are down to $3.22 at one vendor, yielding $0.13 per gig. That is cheaper tha DVD-DL and cheaper than mini-DV for me. And approaching HD costs.

Perrone,

Courts still out on 10yr reliability on burn-it-yourself media, much less BRay. I've had a few of my 6 yr DVD's fail to read recently, so have a back-up plan!

Nothing wrong with a backup plan. And I am not saying that Blu-Ray is the end-all be-all for archiving. What I am saying is that it allows us to move forward to tapeless media if desired for a fair cost.

What does the prevailing data say on archival longevity of SDHC cards?

No one knows for sure, but what I've heard they are nearly indestructible, surviving washings, drops, and are believed to be multi-decade-proof (TBD in experience). One fault is they can only be recorded a finite number of times, but I believe that they are in the thousands of cycles, which is ample for capture and storage purposes. Perhaps not for main processing of data (e.g. HDD substitute for ongoing computations).

Quick question on the blu-ray format.
 

When I archive physical DVDs I also create a global disc image file and archive with my offsite HDD backups. Does blu-ray have a version of the Global disc image file? This would be a gen1 digital "picture" of the disc for creating lossless copies.

You mean like an .iso file?

These are .gdi files but that would be similar to a .iso file. Can you make a .iso file of a blu-ray disc that when burned to another BD-r would play in a player like the original? Seems like a dumb question but just wondering if it is possible...

Yes you can. I typically burn .iso files from my authoring programs. Then burn discs from Roxio.

That seems logical. I found it much easier to archive the image files than to archive the raw vid and project files past one year...and I was hoping I could continue that practice as we transition to full tapeless over the next couple years...

I tended to archive the finished vid at a good bitrate. That way, I could create dvds, web streaming files, etc. with ease. Having ONLY a low bitrate mpeg2 would be limiting to me.

Currently i archive everything on HDD for 1 yr, I isolate things I may want to use for marketing in the future then after 1 yr I dump the projects and raw vid to clear HDD space and archive clips for my use and a finished copy of the disc and global disc image in case the client needs a re-order. If I had more space i might keep more but in general that's my tapeless archive strategy. I reuse my tapes too, for now, but only after dual archiving of digital captures and after delivery is approved. I look forward to BD-r archiving but we recently took a big hit in our prospectus for this year so all major capital expenditures are being delayed to next year...

For SDHC? Kingston goes for about $36, "no-name" goes for about $25. Of course that "no-name" is A-data which is a brand that I've used in the past a bit and not had any troubles with.

Theoretically they shouldn't. When removed from a device, the cells are isolated and there's not a lot of opportunity for the charge (representing a one or a zero) to leak from the cell. I figure there's probably *some* leak, but that this would be on the order of a small amount over years--kinda like magnetic tapes are influenced by magnetic fields that exist around them (including the earth's magnetic field.)

I can't speak for certain, so I'd consider this to be educated speculation.

But when I talked about them as being "Archival" I think I was meaning you could just keep them during the shoot, and dump them to hard drive nightly, so that you'd have two copies immediately. Over time, I'd be worried about losing them (due to small size) etc, and wouldn't want to use them to archive data for periods on the order of 10 years-- but I wouldn't trust hard drives or tape for that period either.


These rewrite cycles are such now that they are HDD substitutes, and generally are sufficient enough, given the rate at which flash prices are coming down, that long before you'd hit the rewrite limit, you'd probably have replaced the device with something with much higher capacity and lower cost and better performance.

Going tapeless is meant to enhance productivity for me. But what when a client wants tapes after signing off an edit? Progressive ones may accept a HDD of probably limited lifespan but some will be fazed and may not return. So do I need to buy a deck to transfer the material to - if so what is the point of initial tapeless if I have to nurse a deck and navigate my HDD's for a day (without charging for it...)?

Also is it REALLY going to save time given the transfers and backups and mirroring and media management needed? And that's assuming you have enough VERY pricy cards to record all your stuff in a day. It's a scary thought not having a 'box of ten' in the back of the car...

Is putting tapes on a shelf and then nipping down the pub going to be replaced by nightime laptops, ext HDD's and mission critical managing of it all?

Actually as a cameraman/editor I could make it work for me for most projects, but the above are real concerns. It needs to make it Easier, Quicker and Safer and I'm really not sure that it does for anything other than cutting your own in-house, final edit delivery only stuff?

What do you think?

BD

Stick with tape Ben, yesterdays technology has stood the test of time.

The tapeless workflow can be a real pain, once downloaded you still have to watch it so you might as well spend the hour it takes to download your DV tape by watching it as it transfers.

Yes, tape is a cheap storage medium, and if one gets snarled up then it's no real loss because it is so cheap.

BTW, have you actually worked with a tapeless workflow

I just finished a 2 camera project with 4 tapes on a 90 minute program. I came home, watched a movie with the family. Captured a 60 minute tape, then the two 1/2 filled tapes, and lastly loaded the final 60 minute tape before going to bed. In the scenario above I turned the project in under 36 hours from the time I turned the camera off till I handed over the 2 DVD's with 30 chapters with scene selections with icons. Total hands on time was about 8 hours. But for a single-man-shop, you have to sleep and eat sometime! Loading tape during these periods is only a minor inconvenience.


I look forward to tapeless, but it's not a big enough deal for me to drop another $8K on equipment. I'd like to see someone do a thoughtful analysis of the real time benefits of a one person shop going tapeless with responsible back-ups, the realities of having a life with decent sleep and a little down time.