archiving

[Shane Ross]

Keep the master tapes. The #1 best way.

Or…some have suggested buying firewire drives and storing the footage on them and putting them on a shelf. I myself think this is a waste of money, since I already have the footage on tape, and the clips logged in projects.

Since DV files are huge, using DVDs is an odd solution. It may take dozens, if not hundreds of DVDs to perform this task, and if you have huge captures (say 20-30 minute clips) they won’t even fit on a DVD.
And burning them on to a DVD as one that will playback on a DVD player is out. That HIGHLY compresses your footage.

DVD’s are not the solution.

Some people use DLT drives, or some form of software/hardware solution that backs up the footage as data on a miniDV tape.

Just keep the masters.

[Kevin Reiner]

I agree with Mr. Ross,
backing up actual footage is not important – it’s the projects and graphics and audio and effect elements that need backing up. As long as you have those original tapes and take advantage of timecode, all you need are the project files.

I’m very anal about this. I keep everything from a project in one folder (graphics, AE projets, FCP projects, audio..everything but the actual media) It usually doesn’t get that big in file size. When the projects done, I copy it to a CD with a text file identifying all important facts of the project. I also put another copy of that folder on our company’s server and then periodically make another copy of all of my projects onto a DVD. So thats 3 backup copies in 3 different places. Might sound like overkill, but its saved by behind a couple of times.

Think of it as saving the recipe, not the leftovers.

[Dan Mastroluca]

We are looking at going tapeless in the next 6 months (P2), and we already archive masters to DVCPRO25. We have a room full of shows on DVCPRO tapes that only have one pass on them, and some have never been out of their case since the day they were mastered, what a waste. Face it, tapeless acquisition is the future. We are looking for an online/or near online system using LTO or SDLT data tapes. ADIC has some other options using disk based archiving that we are also looking at. If anyone has a success story with this type of workflow, please share it.

KCLV City of Las Vegas

[Steve Courtney]

Hey, thanks, you reminded me that I was overdue for just such a back-up. It’s burning as we speak. This may come in handy when I make the move from my dual-533 to a G-5 next week.

Steve
Foster City TV
http://www.fostercity.tv

[Terry]

I’m in a similar quandry… The show is 80 minutes and 99% are QT movies made from still images output from Moving Picture Producer. The only original footage are the still files without the ‘moves’. I’ve got some 250 GB of QT to archive! Perhaps I should just dump it to tape or maybe there is a cheap firewire drive that I buy and then just forget about using again… hmm.

[Malcolm Thorpe]

We keep the field tapes, and archive everything else on data DVD’s. It was video when you first edited it, and the video seems to stick to the tape for quite a while. We use hanging files which hold scripts, all media on DV tape or DVD and all additionals.