Best way to archive video for future hi res formats.

[Shane Ross]

[Neal Fox] “If I upgrade the system I’ll have to upgrade FCP and will lose a lot of my old video files in the process (at least it’ll take a LOT of work to get them back to the way they were.)”

Then don’t upgrade. Keep a machine with that OS and FCP 6 on it for those older projects. That’s what I’m doing. Old MacPro tower with FCP 7 for any work needed on it, and revisiting old projects

[Neal Fox] “In the future I might want to go to Blu Ray or whatever else is current. What’s the best file type to save them out as?”

ProRes 422. If the footage is NTSC…ProRes NTSC. Or…the native format of the footage. If it’s DV, then exporting out a Quicktime self contained movie will be the best quality. True for any format. BUT…I suggest ProRes for FCP only formats like HDV, DVCPRO HD and some XDCAM. Those tend to no be readable on computers without FCP. So export those self contained…archive them. And make ProREs versions with Compressor…archive them.

And then, of course, archive all your camera masters.

[Neal Fox] “I know hard drives fail, so what would also be the best way to store them? Thumb drives? Data DVDs?”

If you can afford SSDs, that’s one way. LTO Tape is very secure, used by banks and lots of post houses. Personally I archive to a RAID 5 unit for immediate projects, and manually to two drives for others. If a drive fails, I have a backup.

Shane
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Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Fredy Schwerdtner]

Hi Shane.
I was walking around and touched your post. I’m back tô the industry after 14 months away. It is só interesting to realize that a lot can change in a so short time … lol
Well, I’m working with FCPX ( I love it) and I’m in a job that I will have tô digitalize 53 old tapes (VHS and VHS-C) and mix their material with some graphics and then burn DVDs and also prepare the final files tô be archived in an external HD. Since I am capturing the tapes with an old VCR via a kind of a “bridge”, the Canopus Device ADVC 300 with FCPX optimizing the files as PRORES. It makes easy for editing and when I export it, I do it as it is (PRORES / FULLRES) to compress the file with Apple Compressor as MPEG2 and AC3 to make the DVDs.
Now, I was thinking in save and archive the final projects as PRORES, as it come from FCPX, or make a H264 out of them to save in the external HD.
What do you think about it ?

Thanks in advance.

Fredy.

iMac 2.7 GHz Intel 4 Core i5
16 GB memory

MacBook Pro 17″
2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
6GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

OS X 10.7.5
FCPX 10.0.8

[Shane Ross]

I think you need to ask people who are experts in FCX. I am not…I don’t use that software.

Pose the question here:

https://forums.creativecow.net/fcpxtechnique

Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def