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Archiving P2 footage
Hey Gang…
I’m working on a low low budget feature with a friend and we are going to use the HVX200 camera and a CitiDisk drive. Now, when I get back to the edit station each day to dump my footage to my drive array, how do I backup this media to a reliable safe backup? The only option I see is using a firewire drive and copying to it. BUT here’s my problem… Drives fail. It’s happened to me a time or two. If I make my backup and sit the drive on the shelf and decide to come back to it a year from now, the drive will more than likely die. I can’t have that isssue.
So….. what is it that you do to combat this issue?
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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com -
13 Replies
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Well, two independent drives for backup are not such a bad solution.
One alternative that comes to my mind is DVD-RAM
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Hi.
Get some DLT drive and some tapes.
They should also stay “fresh” longer than hdd tends to.Margus.
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Here’s what we’re planning to do on set for the upcoming feature, “Perestroika”: As each card fills up, it will be inserted into a Powerbook, the clips will be imported into FCP & saved on a FW drive, copied to a 2nd FW drive, then burned to a dual layer DVD. That gives up 1 live backup & an archival copy so that I can release the card back to the camera department.
Arnie
Now in preproduction: Peristroika (Cosmological Congress), a film by Slava Tsukerman
https://www.arniepix.com -
This is the wrong way to do it. Don’t archive the IMPORTED files…archive the CONTENTS folder and LASTCLIP.TXT file.
What if some day you moved to an Avid? Edius? Or if FCP read MXF files natively…then you’d be stuck with the quicktime files. What if 5 years down the road the version of FCP cannot work with those quicktime files very well? This was an issue with footage imported with 5.0.4. People upgraded to 5.1 and it had trouble reading the footage. Also, footage imported with 5.0.4 sometimes had issues that was resolved by importing them again with FCP 5.1.
No. Card to Hard drive, then feel free to burn a DVD from the hard drive. But the original files, not the imports. Would you shoot a tape, capture the footage, then toss the tape? No…
Shane
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net -
In my experience DL DVDs are even less reliable than single layer. I’d go for DVD-RAM or maybe blu-ray when there are some decently priced burners (and more experience from the field).
Regards,
Uli
Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.
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Thanks, Shane & Uli.
Shane, it looks like I may have to burn the contents folder & lastclip.txt to disk before I ‘re-wrap’ them as QT anyway, even if only for the sake of turning the card around back to the camera dept faster. For the sake of workflow, there’s certainly an argument to be made on both sides. Leaving the files in their MXF wrapper does, indeed, leave all of your options open. OTOH, if a drive (or 2) crashes, & we need to recover files from the backup, then it’s much quicker to simply copy Quicktimes & reconnect than it is to re-import & re-wrap the original MXF files. Wouldn’t it be nice if a future release of FCP could handle MXF files natively? And read all that lovely metadata with it? That would certainly be the most elegant situation.
Uli, I was surprised to find out that they still make DVD-RAM. Do they still make the drives? Unfortunately, it looks like they’re only 4.3GB per side, so they’re not the most practical or convenient to archive an 8GB card with.
Arnie
Now in preproduction: Peristroika (Cosmological Congress), a film by Slava Tsukerman
https://www.arniepix.com -
[Arniepix] “if a drive (or 2) crashes, & we need to recover files from the backup, then it’s much quicker to simply copy Quicktimes & reconnect than it is to re-import & re-wrap the original MXF files”
Actually, that isn’t the case. All importing does is copy the footage from one location to the other and wrap a QT wrapper onto it. No compression, just a file transfer. It copies over pretty quickly.
Shane
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net -
[Shane Ross] “All importing does is copy the footage from one location to the other and wrap a QT wrapper onto it. No compression, just a file transfer.”
I know. But it’s still extra steps (OK, mouse clicks) to convert & re-wrap as opposed to dragging a bunch of files from a disk to a hard drive. But that’s really what the 2nd set of hard drives is for, isn’t it?
Arnie
Now in preproduction: Peristroika (Cosmological Congress), a film by Slava Tsukerman
https://www.arniepix.com -
The few extra mouse click is WELL WORTH keeping the original MXF files. If you ever went to an Avid or Edius edit system, or FCP supported MXF in the future and all you had were quicktimes…what would you do?
Shane
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net -
All LG drives (and a few others) support DVD-RAM. But, you are right about space. I hope Blu-Ray will soon be a viable alternative.
Regards,
Uli
Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.
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