archiving at DVinfo.net

Gary Chavez · October 9th, 2003, 08:54 AM

How can i archive my fpc3 finshed projects and still return to them in a editable form?

presently i am archiving on Beta SP 90 min tapes.
this seems silly to me as it is a backward technology from the original.

i have a 120gb external drive as well as a 5x Media raid.
i also have a server , no idea how big, conneted to the huge system here. (400) computrers in the co.)

I just exported a fpc3 movie of a 23min project to the Iomega.
it was 20.7 gb!

I am also dumping it to the server right now to see how that works.

what other hard copy options do i have?
I have DVD sp 1. i put this project on a DVD and it played great but I want to be able to jump in and work inside a project i have archived with out having to redidgtize everything.

What do you guys hard copy archive on?

Bud Kuenzli · October 9th, 2003, 01:06 PM

there is no easy answer to archiving a 27gig project in a manner that will allow you to continue working at some later point other than to store a backup copy on a separate external hard drive. Granite digital sells an enclosure that can be used to swap drives. There may be other solutions but a separate hard drive for long term storage is probably the easiest.

Gary Chavez · October 9th, 2003, 01:19 PM

well, thats what i had hoped i was doing sending it to the Iomega.

the server i've discovered, will only hold 19.6 gb in any one folder so thats out for this project.

also, what i had hoped for did not happen.

the Iomega did indeed stor the project as a fpc3 movie but did not carry over the raw video and audio .

i was hoping to see all of fpc3 windows and digitized files avaliable to work on at any time in the future.

is that even a possibility? I mean aside from buying one of those mega holding box devices?

Gary Chavez · October 9th, 2003, 01:20 PM

oh yeah, are all fpc3 movies that huge?

and since i did not get my desired effect, what is if any, the advantage of saving as a fpc3 movie vs any quicktime format that can be much smaller?

Ken Tanaka · October 9th, 2003, 01:23 PM

You really do not have to archive all of the footage as long as you have the source tapes. Just store the FCP project file. It contains all of the information required to restore the entire project. Yes, you would have to recapture the footage from tape. But it's just not practical to store oodles of gigabytes of footage on hard disks, particularly if you work on many projects.

Gary Chavez · October 9th, 2003, 01:49 PM

10-4

thats the whole situation i was trying to work around.

yes, i have lots of projects and tons of source tapes.

this project had 200+ clips. It would be nice to not have to recapture everything next time I may have to work with it.

thank god my boss has no problem with me using one pass tapes.

however, my news training see that process as completely wasteful. still trying to adapt.

Glenn Chan · October 9th, 2003, 03:54 PM

Ken is probably right. Keeping your source tapes around for recapture is for most people the best solution. The disadvantage of it is that tapes will degrade over time and that it takes a long time to recapture. I would also print off your final video onto DV tape so you don't have to recapture as much if you need to make simple changes.

DV tape is pretty cheap ($3-4) if you get it off places like taperesources.com and tapestockonline.com and B&H (tapestockonline being the cheapest I believe).

All other options are more expensive and may sacrifice quality or editability. One option worth looking into is temporarily storing projects on firewire drives. As a long term solution it isn't as cheap as DV tape but for the short term it could be useful. Buy an enclosure which lets you swap ATA/IDE drives using drive bays to save on the cost of multiple enclosures. Internal drives are cheaper and pretty equivalent.

Gary Chavez · October 10th, 2003, 06:50 AM

Thanks Glenn

Glenn Chan · October 10th, 2003, 01:19 PM

mpeg2 (DVD) is lossy and harder to edit (takes a lot more CPU). However, it may become a better technology in the future. If you keep your DV tapes, you can re-build your project 10 years from now and take advantage of whatever technology they have then (cheaper hard drives, 500GB DVDs or whatever). At no loss of quality!

October 14th, 2003, 07:42 AM

With Toast you can save your "Project" and "Clips" as data. Not MPEG2 that's the cool thing about it, and as this is a higher grade than tape it will last longer.

Mark Newhouse · October 14th, 2003, 09:11 AM

With long projects you'll end up burning a lot of DVDs (the whole point of MPEG2 is to compress the files so that they'll fit on a single DVD). I'd still recommend keeping your tapes, even if you backup the project and clips this way.

Speaking of which, any recommendations on how best to store these tapes. I do this stuff as a hobby (moving into some freelance) and I've already shot nearly 40 hours of tape (in about 8 months). I can only imagine how much tape the pros go through...

Glenn Chan · October 14th, 2003, 01:53 PM

you should store tapes upright like you would store a book. keep them away from magnetic fields, sunlight, humidity, and probably high temperatures. Remember to label them well. I can't think of anything else.

Boyd Ostroff · October 14th, 2003, 04:52 PM

Currently I'm using a bunch of firewire drives for backup and storage. I have 4 external 160GB maxtor drives and a variety of smaller ones. You can actually edit the video directly on these external drives as well. When doing this be sure to set the drive as your scratch disk in the FCP preferences. Otherwise your render files will end up somewhere else. After a period of time I have to decide exactly how much of my source I want to save. My most recent project has a total of 95 GB of source files - am going to have to make some tough decisions about archiving this soon....

I don't understand the part about exporting a 23 minute FCP movie that was 20 GB. FCP movies are just Quicktime files and if compressed as DV should only amount to around 200MB/minute. I assume that you mean all the source files that make up your project came to 20 GB, not the FCP movie itself? To save space you could delete all the render files using the render manager. This would free up disk space, although you would need to render again to use the project.

Gary Chavez · October 16th, 2003, 09:49 AM

ok, first of all,

thanks...

I did archive the 20GB project to my Iomega 120gb firewire drive.

Setting it up as a scratch disk is the missing piece of the puzzel that i was looking for, i cant wait to try that! thanks again.

now, I have a Kona SDI card and so the project is saved in 8bit (what ever that means) so that might explain the size.

Boyd Ostroff · October 16th, 2003, 11:48 AM

<<<-- Originally posted by Gary Chavez : Setting it up as a scratch disk is the missing piece of the puzzel that i was looking for -->>>

This can be a little annoying in FCP3. I sometimes need to put a project on an external drive and use on different computers. Each time I move the disk I need to remember to choose it as a scratch disk. Invariably I forget, and then anything which I render ends up someplace else. Nothing is really lost, but you will get a dialog box complaining of missing files the next time you open the project and you will need to re-render. Even after doing that I believe the same missing file complaints will persist.

If you are using the firewire drive as your scratch disk and then open FCP without it connected, the program will default to your startup drive as a scratch disk without warning. Not only does this create the problems described above, but it causes render files to accumulate on your startup drive. You will find them inside the FCP folder inside your Documents folder.

October 9th, 2003, 08:54 AM	#1
Gary Chavez Major Player Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: San Antonio Posts: 355	archiving How can i archive my fpc3 finshed projects and still return to them in a editable form? presently i am archiving on Beta SP 90 min tapes. this seems silly to me as it is a backward technology from the original. i have a 120gb external drive as well as a 5x Media raid. i also have a server , no idea how big, conneted to the huge system here. (400) computrers in the co.) I just exported a fpc3 movie of a 23min project to the Iomega. it was 20.7 gb! I am also dumping it to the server right now to see how that works. what other hard copy options do i have? I have DVD sp 1. i put this project on a DVD and it played great but I want to be able to jump in and work inside a project i have archived with out having to redidgtize everything. What do you guys hard copy archive on?

October 9th, 2003, 01:06 PM	#2
Bud Kuenzli Regular Crew Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: North Pole, Alaska Posts: 197	hard drive there is no easy answer to archiving a 27gig project in a manner that will allow you to continue working at some later point other than to store a backup copy on a separate external hard drive. Granite digital sells an enclosure that can be used to swap drives. There may be other solutions but a separate hard drive for long term storage is probably the easiest. __________________ on the Internet, when you get where you're going you still don't know where you are

October 9th, 2003, 01:23 PM	#5
Ken Tanaka Retired DV Info Net Almunus Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Chicago, IL Posts: 6,943	You really do not have to archive all of the footage as long as you have the source tapes. Just store the FCP project file. It contains all of the information required to restore the entire project. Yes, you would have to recapture the footage from tape. But it's just not practical to store oodles of gigabytes of footage on hard disks, particularly if you work on many projects. __________________ Lady X Films: A lady with a boring wardrobe...and a global mission. Hey, you don't have enough stuff! Buy with confidence from our sponsors. Hand-picked as the best in the business...Really! See some of my work one frame at a time: www.KenTanaka.com

October 14th, 2003, 09:11 AM	#11
Mark Newhouse Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Tucson, AZ Posts: 63	"Toasting" your projects and clips With long projects you'll end up burning a lot of DVDs (the whole point of MPEG2 is to compress the files so that they'll fit on a single DVD). I'd still recommend keeping your tapes, even if you backup the project and clips this way. Speaking of which, any recommendations on how best to store these tapes. I do this stuff as a hobby (moving into some freelance) and I've already shot nearly 40 hours of tape (in about 8 months). I can only imagine how much tape the pros go through... __________________ --Mark

October 9th, 2003, 01:19 PM	#3
Gary Chavez Major Player Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: San Antonio Posts: 355	well, thats what i had hoped i was doing sending it to the Iomega. the server i've discovered, will only hold 19.6 gb in any one folder so thats out for this project. also, what i had hoped for did not happen. the Iomega did indeed stor the project as a fpc3 movie but did not carry over the raw video and audio . i was hoping to see all of fpc3 windows and digitized files avaliable to work on at any time in the future. is that even a possibility? I mean aside from buying one of those mega holding box devices?

October 9th, 2003, 01:20 PM	#4
Gary Chavez Major Player Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: San Antonio Posts: 355	oh yeah, are all fpc3 movies that huge? and since i did not get my desired effect, what is if any, the advantage of saving as a fpc3 movie vs any quicktime format that can be much smaller?

October 9th, 2003, 01:49 PM	#6
Gary Chavez Major Player Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: San Antonio Posts: 355	10-4 thats the whole situation i was trying to work around. yes, i have lots of projects and tons of source tapes. this project had 200+ clips. It would be nice to not have to recapture everything next time I may have to work with it. thank god my boss has no problem with me using one pass tapes. however, my news training see that process as completely wasteful. still trying to adapt.

October 9th, 2003, 03:54 PM	#7
Glenn Chan Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 4,750	Ken is probably right. Keeping your source tapes around for recapture is for most people the best solution. The disadvantage of it is that tapes will degrade over time and that it takes a long time to recapture. I would also print off your final video onto DV tape so you don't have to recapture as much if you need to make simple changes. DV tape is pretty cheap ($3-4) if you get it off places like taperesources.com and tapestockonline.com and B&H (tapestockonline being the cheapest I believe). All other options are more expensive and may sacrifice quality or editability. One option worth looking into is temporarily storing projects on firewire drives. As a long term solution it isn't as cheap as DV tape but for the short term it could be useful. Buy an enclosure which lets you swap ATA/IDE drives using drive bays to save on the cost of multiple enclosures. Internal drives are cheaper and pretty equivalent.

October 10th, 2003, 06:50 AM	#8
Gary Chavez Major Player Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: San Antonio Posts: 355	Thanks Glenn

October 10th, 2003, 01:19 PM	#9
Glenn Chan Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 4,750	mpeg2 (DVD) is lossy and harder to edit (takes a lot more CPU). However, it may become a better technology in the future. If you keep your DV tapes, you can re-build your project 10 years from now and take advantage of whatever technology they have then (cheaper hard drives, 500GB DVDs or whatever). At no loss of quality!

October 14th, 2003, 07:42 AM	#10
Guest Posts: n/a	With Toast you can save your "Project" and "Clips" as data. Not MPEG2 that's the cool thing about it, and as this is a higher grade than tape it will last longer.

October 14th, 2003, 01:53 PM	#12
Glenn Chan Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 4,750	you should store tapes upright like you would store a book. keep them away from magnetic fields, sunlight, humidity, and probably high temperatures. Remember to label them well. I can't think of anything else.

October 14th, 2003, 04:52 PM	#13
Boyd Ostroff Wrangler Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Mays Landing, NJ Posts: 11,802	Currently I'm using a bunch of firewire drives for backup and storage. I have 4 external 160GB maxtor drives and a variety of smaller ones. You can actually edit the video directly on these external drives as well. When doing this be sure to set the drive as your scratch disk in the FCP preferences. Otherwise your render files will end up somewhere else. After a period of time I have to decide exactly how much of my source I want to save. My most recent project has a total of 95 GB of source files - am going to have to make some tough decisions about archiving this soon.... I don't understand the part about exporting a 23 minute FCP movie that was 20 GB. FCP movies are just Quicktime files and if compressed as DV should only amount to around 200MB/minute. I assume that you mean all the source files that make up your project came to 20 GB, not the FCP movie itself? To save space you could delete all the render files using the render manager. This would free up disk space, although you would need to render again to use the project.

October 16th, 2003, 09:49 AM	#14
Gary Chavez Major Player Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: San Antonio Posts: 355	ok, first of all, thanks... I did archive the 20GB project to my Iomega 120gb firewire drive. Setting it up as a scratch disk is the missing piece of the puzzel that i was looking for, i cant wait to try that! thanks again. now, I have a Kona SDI card and so the project is saved in 8bit (what ever that means) so that might explain the size.

October 16th, 2003, 11:48 AM	#15
Boyd Ostroff Wrangler Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Mays Landing, NJ Posts: 11,802	<<<-- Originally posted by Gary Chavez : Setting it up as a scratch disk is the missing piece of the puzzel that i was looking for -->>> This can be a little annoying in FCP3. I sometimes need to put a project on an external drive and use on different computers. Each time I move the disk I need to remember to choose it as a scratch disk. Invariably I forget, and then anything which I render ends up someplace else. Nothing is really lost, but you will get a dialog box complaining of missing files the next time you open the project and you will need to re-render. Even after doing that I believe the same missing file complaints will persist. If you are using the firewire drive as your scratch disk and then open FCP without it connected, the program will default to your startup drive as a scratch disk without warning. Not only does this create the problems described above, but it causes render files to accumulate on your startup drive. You will find them inside the FCP folder inside your Documents folder.