Best method to store video footage? What do you do?

[Alan Hunter]

Having produced a weekly syndicated show for nearly two years, we have stacks of hard drives…but about a year ago I decided to take advantage of Adobe’s EDL Manager and save our story segments to DVD-ROM. One it is cost-effective and two it is much easier to retrieve a story for re-airing. Stored and handled properly the information should last for years. If you do decide to go this direction, use quality media.

Regards

[Aanarav Sareen]

I store all my AVI files in 2GB chunks on data DVD-R discs. Cheap, effective and certainly easier to retrive.

[Mike Cohen]

I had the same problem until I read about the ease of using Project Trimmer on these boards.
Assuming a project is finished, and all you want is the ability to go back to it later, not to re-edit from the source materials, it’s a beautiful thing.
I took a project with about 30 gigs of original assets, and it trimmed down to under 4 gigs. All resulting files are under a gig, so a couple DVD-R discs can get it off the hard drives completely.

That being said, our other Premiere system has been used for 2 years to digitize finished programs off tape – and we have 30+ hard drives on a shelf. Luckily storage is pretty cheap.

[Greg Mckay]

[Mav777] “What do you do to overcome these issues?”

250gig harddrives are getting real cheap. Also, using PPRo1.5’s Project Manager feature can greatly reduce the size of the files to “keep”. That and keep the original DV tapes stored in a fireproof safe.

[Matthew Polack]

Thanks for the feedback and tips.

I’ve got Premiere Pro and I believe the Project Trimmer wasn’t a feature of this (unlike the earlier versions and now 1.5) so will wait for Premiere Pro 2 which will hopefully be imminent.

Does anyone use external HD bays? I’m thinking this might be a nice easy way to slot HD’s in and out.

Thanks,

Matt

[Alan Hunter]

Matt,

Yes, we use HD trays. They woek OK, but their little plastic arms are not very strong.