How are you guys archiving your EX-1 master edits. at DVinfo.net

L.J. Morelli · December 20th, 2008, 11:50 AM

With SD, I just made a firewire copy back onto DV tape. What's the solution now?
BluRay? Hard drives? Thanks.

Perrone Ford · December 20th, 2008, 12:11 PM

BluRay for me. Working nicely. I bought a portable BluRay drive so I could take it in the field with me when necessary.

Bill Ravens · December 20th, 2008, 12:43 PM

Hard drive for me. I save the Avid intermediates and non-destructive edit files. Each of my customers own their own hard drive storage media.

Jason Davenport · December 20th, 2008, 12:51 PM

Each of my customers own their own hard drive storage media. Dump in field.

Erik Phairas · December 20th, 2008, 12:57 PM

I'm just a guy who likes to make videos, not doing this for money or anything.. I keep it all on my computer. Will be buying a backup drive a little later as I have more than half filled this 650gb drive already..LOL It's all hooked to my TV so I just watch them from my computer, although I will be going Blu Ray probably by the end of 09.

L.J. Morelli · December 20th, 2008, 03:49 PM

I do weddings, and thinking about archiving, not so much archiving in the field. Maybe I'll check out the wedding threads, unless anyone else has other suggestions. I may do the bluray path.

Craig Seeman · December 20th, 2008, 04:07 PM

Backing up masters to DL-DVD but I don't doubt Blu-ray is on my horizon.

Tom Vaughan · December 20th, 2008, 05:40 PM

I use a Windows Home Server, connected through Gigabit Ethernet. With the WHS I specify that the folder that contains these video files should be stored redundantly. The WHS makes sure that all of the files are then stored on at least 2 hard drives. If a drive fails, I haven't lost any files.

So, I put all my eggs in one basket, but I make sure it's a really reliable basket.

The WHS can be expanded to many terabytes. It also backs up all of your Windows PCs very nicely, and it makes shared files available to all of your PCs. I totally recommend it.

I have a Blu-ray burner also, and I can back up to BD-Rs, at about $7 each for 25 GB disc (when you buy a 25 pack). Note that Blu-ray includes a great feature - defect management. When you burn a BD disc the drive will read after writing, and it will relocate any bad sectors to a "spare area". So when you are done writing you will know that you have a good disc.

L.J. Morelli · December 20th, 2008, 06:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Craig Seeman

Backing up masters to DL-DVD but I don't doubt Blu-ray is on my horizon.

How would you break up a 2hr 30min program on DL-DVD? Break up my FCP timeline into 8gb segments, export a few QT movies, spread across a few discs?

Thomas Smet · December 20th, 2008, 07:38 PM

Along with a hard drive backup I also record a HDV tape. I know people think I am nuts right now but I hope to never have to use it. It is still HD however even if it does get reduced to 25 mbits and 1440x1080. At the end of the day it is still HD and if I am in a major crunch I still have some form of a HD master to go back to if I really need to. Eventually I will use Blu-ray once the discs get cheap enough. If you shoot in the 25 mbit mode anyway then there is no reason not to backup to HDV tape. It can be much cheaper then blu-ray and you know for sure it will last for many years.

Perrone Ford · December 20th, 2008, 07:51 PM

Writing out a full sized mp4 file and saving onto DVD-DL would be cheaper and higher quality. And you can avoid the pain of having to do real-time data transfers...

In fact, you can easily fit two hours of high quality mpt4 onto an 8gb SDHC card for $20. Or an hour of nearly BluRay spec footage. I'd take that option over tape any time. I don't EVER want to go back to tape. EVER.

-P

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thomas Smet

Along with a hard drive backup I also record a HDV tape. I know people think I am nuts right now but I hope to never have to use it. It is still HD however even if it does get reduced to 25 mbits and 1440x1080. At the end of the day it is still HD and if I am in a major crunch I still have some form of a HD master to go back to if I really need to. Eventually I will use Blu-ray once the discs get cheap enough. If you shoot in the 25 mbit mode anyway then there is no reason not to backup to HDV tape. It can be much cheaper then blu-ray and you know for sure it will last for many years.

Mitchell Lewis · December 20th, 2008, 09:44 PM

1) We capture all our footage onto a Ciprico 5-drive RAID striped as RAID 5. With this setup, if one of the drives was to go bad, we can replace it without loosing data. In fact the RAID will run with only 4 drives in it (no loss of data) but will temporarily be operating in RAID 0.

2) We use Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) to automatically backup all the data from our RAID to a Western Digital My Book drive. That way if something was go wrong with the Ciprico RAID, we'd have a backup.

3) When the Ciprico fills up and we need to move data off of it and "archive" it, we use Retrospect (now owned by Dantz) Backup to library it. This is a slick system that I'm surprised more people don't use. For example, if 5 years later you need to find a logo or something associated with a project, you can perform a Search for the file and Retrospect Backup will search through all the archives you've performed over the years and tell you which drive or disc you have saved it to. It's a HUGE time saver when you want to restore data from the archives.

I've always thought one of the video magazines should do an article on redundant backups AND archiving. They always seem to leave out the archiving part, and it's important.

I guess the other alternative for our step #3 is to just keep buying more hard drives. But in our case, they are expensive and we can't afford to keep adding $3500 RAIDs when ever they fill up. :)

L.J. Morelli · December 20th, 2008, 11:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Perrone Ford

Writing out a full sized mp4 file and saving onto DVD-DL would be cheaper and higher quality. And you can avoid the pain of having to do real-time data transfers...

In fact, you can easily fit two hours of high quality mpt4 onto an 8gb SDHC card for $20. Or an hour of nearly BluRay spec footage. I'd take that option over tape any time. I don't EVER want to go back to tape. EVER.

-P

Why would an mp4 file (I really don't know what that is) be better than an uncompressed QT file right out of the timeline? I have to save 2.5 hrs of footage. I don't know how big that is, but too big for DVD-DL. I'm sure we're talking 50 gigs, I think.

Perrone Ford · December 21st, 2008, 12:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by L.J. Morelli

Why would an mp4 file (I really don't know what that is) be better than an uncompressed QT file right out of the timeline? I have to save 2.5 hrs of footage. I don't know how big that is, but too big for DVD-DL. I'm sure we're talking 50 gigs, I think.

It's not. I was speaking directly to Mr. Smet which is why I quoted him.

My situation is like yours which is why I write to DL bluray.

Oh, and an mp4 file is mpeg4. aka Mpeg4 par t10, aka h.264, aka AVCHD.

Brooks Graham · December 21st, 2008, 12:44 AM

Okay, you've piqued my curiosity: I've been keeping an eye out for dual-layer BD-R discs, where do you buy yours? And how much do they cost?

For me, BD-Rs are still too expensive for the amount of material I go through:

DVD5: USD$0.09 / GB
LTO3: USD$0.12 / GB
DVD9: USD$0.28 / GB (IMHO not suitable for long-term archival)
BD-R: USD$0.43 / GB

FWIW, I'm still archiving to Taiyo Yuden DVD5 discs using Toast's disc spanning. Also, few if any of my clients have a bluray drive yet.

December 20th, 2008, 11:50 AM	#1
L.J. Morelli Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Hicksville, NY Posts: 122	How are you guys archiving your EX-1 master edits. With SD, I just made a firewire copy back onto DV tape. What's the solution now? BluRay? Hard drives? Thanks.

December 20th, 2008, 12:11 PM	#2
Perrone Ford Inner Circle Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Tallahassee, FL Posts: 4,100	BluRay for me. Working nicely. I bought a portable BluRay drive so I could take it in the field with me when necessary. __________________ DVX100, PMW-EX1, Canon 550D, FigRig, Dell Octocore, Avid MC4/5, MB Looks, RedCineX, Matrox MX02 mini, GTech RAID, Edirol R-4, Senn. G2 Evo, Countryman, Moles and Lowels.

December 20th, 2008, 09:44 PM	#12
Mitchell Lewis Trustee Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Kennewick, WA Posts: 1,124	1) We capture all our footage onto a Ciprico 5-drive RAID striped as RAID 5. With this setup, if one of the drives was to go bad, we can replace it without loosing data. In fact the RAID will run with only 4 drives in it (no loss of data) but will temporarily be operating in RAID 0. 2) We use Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) to automatically backup all the data from our RAID to a Western Digital My Book drive. That way if something was go wrong with the Ciprico RAID, we'd have a backup. 3) When the Ciprico fills up and we need to move data off of it and "archive" it, we use Retrospect (now owned by Dantz) Backup to library it. This is a slick system that I'm surprised more people don't use. For example, if 5 years later you need to find a logo or something associated with a project, you can perform a Search for the file and Retrospect Backup will search through all the archives you've performed over the years and tell you which drive or disc you have saved it to. It's a HUGE time saver when you want to restore data from the archives. I've always thought one of the video magazines should do an article on redundant backups AND archiving. They always seem to leave out the archiving part, and it's important. I guess the other alternative for our step #3 is to just keep buying more hard drives. But in our case, they are expensive and we can't afford to keep adding $3500 RAIDs when ever they fill up. :) __________________ Sony EX3, Canon 5D MkII, Chrosziel Matte Box, Sachtler tripod, Steadicam Flyer, Mac Pro, Apple/Adobe software - 20 years as a local videographer/editor

December 20th, 2008, 12:43 PM	#3
Bill Ravens Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: santa fe, nm Posts: 3,264 Images: 10	Hard drive for me. I save the Avid intermediates and non-destructive edit files. Each of my customers own their own hard drive storage media.

December 20th, 2008, 12:51 PM	#4
Jason Davenport Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Dallas, TX Posts: 131	Each of my customers own their own hard drive storage media. Dump in field.

December 20th, 2008, 12:57 PM	#5
Erik Phairas Major Player Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Las Vegas, NV Posts: 628	I'm just a guy who likes to make videos, not doing this for money or anything.. I keep it all on my computer. Will be buying a backup drive a little later as I have more than half filled this 650gb drive already..LOL It's all hooked to my TV so I just watch them from my computer, although I will be going Blu Ray probably by the end of 09.

December 20th, 2008, 03:49 PM	#6
L.J. Morelli Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Hicksville, NY Posts: 122	I do weddings, and thinking about archiving, not so much archiving in the field. Maybe I'll check out the wedding threads, unless anyone else has other suggestions. I may do the bluray path.

December 20th, 2008, 04:07 PM	#7
Craig Seeman Inner Circle Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Brooklyn, NY, USA Posts: 3,841	Backing up masters to DL-DVD but I don't doubt Blu-ray is on my horizon.

December 20th, 2008, 05:40 PM	#8
Tom Vaughan Regular Crew Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Los Gatos, CA Posts: 70	I use a Windows Home Server, connected through Gigabit Ethernet. With the WHS I specify that the folder that contains these video files should be stored redundantly. The WHS makes sure that all of the files are then stored on at least 2 hard drives. If a drive fails, I haven't lost any files. So, I put all my eggs in one basket, but I make sure it's a really reliable basket. The WHS can be expanded to many terabytes. It also backs up all of your Windows PCs very nicely, and it makes shared files available to all of your PCs. I totally recommend it. I have a Blu-ray burner also, and I can back up to BD-Rs, at about $7 each for 25 GB disc (when you buy a 25 pack). Note that Blu-ray includes a great feature - defect management. When you burn a BD disc the drive will read after writing, and it will relocate any bad sectors to a "spare area". So when you are done writing you will know that you have a good disc.

December 20th, 2008, 07:38 PM	#10
Thomas Smet Trustee Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Milwaukee, WI Posts: 1,719	Along with a hard drive backup I also record a HDV tape. I know people think I am nuts right now but I hope to never have to use it. It is still HD however even if it does get reduced to 25 mbits and 1440x1080. At the end of the day it is still HD and if I am in a major crunch I still have some form of a HD master to go back to if I really need to. Eventually I will use Blu-ray once the discs get cheap enough. If you shoot in the 25 mbit mode anyway then there is no reason not to backup to HDV tape. It can be much cheaper then blu-ray and you know for sure it will last for many years.

December 21st, 2008, 12:44 AM	#15
Brooks Graham Regular Crew Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: San Francisco, CA Posts: 121	Okay, you've piqued my curiosity: I've been keeping an eye out for dual-layer BD-R discs, where do you buy yours? And how much do they cost? For me, BD-Rs are still too expensive for the amount of material I go through: DVD5: USD$0.09 / GB LTO3: USD$0.12 / GB DVD9: USD$0.28 / GB (IMHO not suitable for long-term archival) BD-R: USD$0.43 / GB FWIW, I'm still archiving to Taiyo Yuden DVD5 discs using Toast's disc spanning. Also, few if any of my clients have a bluray drive yet.