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Archival Roll Call
So you’ve edited, gone through several variations, listened to your clients complain, made changes, and edited some more. At the end of the day, you’ve produced an awesome product (at least as far as your client is concerned) and you want to archive the project with all its assets and what not. What do you use?
External (removable) hard drive?
Tapes?
Network drives (SAN/NAS)?
Data DVD (CD? Ugh)?
A pretty purple 1″ cube on your desk with wireless and infinite storage in some yet to be discovered liquid?At some point I would want to archive my projects and store them off of the computer for an undetermined period of time.
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7 Replies
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I vote for the purple cube. But until then, I use USB drives to store old projects. A SAN would be a great way to handle it as well.
Steven
https://www.stevengotz.com -
Where can I get a purple cube? Oh, you did say yet to be discovered….
I only archive what I have to- ie: anything that can’t be recaptured or
isn’t already on a disc or delivery medium that I might have received from
a client. Anything I create or that the client takes back that isn’t from
a tape and able to be recaptured, I archive. That’s just me. Of course if
I captured without machine control or timecode, or there were lots of TC
breaks then I will archive that media too. Of course we usually trim the
project first as well to cut down on storage. The BU media depends on the project-
DVDs, bare EIDE drives, CDR, whatever it’ll fit on I guess. But here’s
how we control it: we tell our clients that their PROJECT file is always backed-up
safely, but ANY assets used in the project are held only for a short period
of time, usually 2 weeks after completion. After that there are no guarantees
UNLESS you want to pay us to archive the material to enable a complete restore
of the project at a later date. On some jobs we also have been known
to build in some time and expenses to archive, but that usually gets cut out
of estimates. Many clients that go for it though end up buying drive(s) for us to
do archive to. Then they own the drives, if they come back later for a different job
they will sometimes blow-over older archives if they don’t foresee needing them or
they’ll add on to a large drive until it’s full, but then deleted the oldest, etc.I guess my point is- build whatever method you use into your project $ if you
always want backups or charge the client for the additional service to cover
your costs at least and hopefully to make a little more $ too.-Troy Murison
Seattle, WA -
Where can I get a purple cube? Oh, you did say yet to be discovered….
I only archive what I have to- ie: anything that can’t be recaptured or
isn’t already on a disc or delivery medium that I might have received from
a client. Anything I create or that the client takes back that isn’t from
a tape and able to be recaptured, I archive. That’s just me. Of course if
I captured without machine control or timecode, or there were lots of TC
breaks then I will archive that media too. Of course we usually trim the
project first as well to cut down on storage. The BU media depends on the project-
DVDs, bare EIDE drives, CDR, whatever it’ll fit on I guess. But here’s
how we control it: we tell our clients that their PROJECT file is always backed-up
safely, but ANY assets used in the project are held only for a short period
of time, usually 2 weeks after completion. After that there are no guarantees
UNLESS you want to pay us to archive the material to enable a complete restore
of the project at a later date. On some jobs we also have been known
to build in some time and expenses to archive, but that usually gets cut out
of estimates. Many clients that go for it though end up buying drive(s) for us to
do archive to. Then they own the drives, if they come back later for a different job
they will sometimes blow-over older archives if they don’t foresee needing them or
they’ll add on to a large drive until it’s full, but then deleted the oldest, etc.I guess my point is- build whatever method you use into your project $ if you
always want backups or charge the client for the additional service to cover
your costs at least and hopefully to make a little more $ too.-Troy Murison
Seattle, WA -
This is my archival technique:
a) Purchase 160gb drives for each project (costs about $40)
b) I have an external hot-swappable enclosure, so I insert the drive into the closure.
c) Everytime a project is finished, I export the EDITED AVI file, all the related assets, project file and batch-capture logs. All of this goes to the hard-drive.
d) I also backup the edited content (in MPEG2, MOV, FLV and WMV) onto DVDs. This is just for easy re-compression.
e) Once everything is put in order, I write up a document about all the assets and save it onto the hard-drive.
f) Remove the hard-drive from the enclosure and save the hard-drive along with the tapes.– Aanarav
Aanarav Sareen
premiere@asvideoproductions.com
https://www.asvideoproductions.com/techtalk -
Hey Aanarav, are those IDE or SATA drives?
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[KirAsh4] “Hey Aanarav, are those IDE or SATA drives?”
IDE for now. However, I will be using eSATA drives/connections in the near future.
– Aanarav
Aanarav Sareen
premiere@asvideoproductions.com
https://www.asvideoproductions.com/techtalk -
[Steven L. Gotz] “A SAN would be a great way to handle it as well.”
With the complicated setup and cost involved, I think you’ll find many users using NAS instead of SAN. Specially those small volume or hobbyists. I think…
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