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Capturing MiniDV Footage for Backup?
I am starting a project to backup all my MiniDV footage (close to a hundred and seventy 60 min tapes!) and I want to do it right the first time. I have been using the Canopus DV codec for all my work but I am not sure that it is the best idea for my backup project because of its limitations (having to use with Canopus hardware, which I may or may not have in the future, or you get a watermark).
I understand that MiniDV footage is already (in a sense) compressed to the DV format by the camera so I don’t want to add any further compression. My plan is to store the raw footage on drives for use in future projects.
Should I capture the DV footage using no compression, use the Canopus codec (that I know is good), or is there a better method? I know this is a general question but I was just interested in how others might handle this project. Thanks in advance!
Darin
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4 Replies
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I capture all my footage via ScLive in 2gb chunks and use the default Microsoft DV AVI codec. Unfortunately, no one really knows what codecs will be supported in the future, but this codec does not have any hardware limitations and it has been working file on XP and Vista for me.
– Aanarav
Aanarav Sareen
premiere@asvideoproductions.com
https://www.asvideoproductions.com/techtalk -
Why would you want a backup of the tapes? Can’t you store them in a safe place or even copy the tapes to tape? This ‘backup’ would require more than 2.2 TB of storage and disks fail with more frequency than tapes.
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This is my personal tape collection that I’ve been shooting since 1997. Since there has been debate over the longevity of MiniDV tapes I thought it prudent to make backups.
I have considered just copying the tapes to tape & still may do so.
The other reason for the drive backup plan is so that I can readily use my footage in projects.
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As Harm said, make a tape to tape backup. Use batch capture in Premiere to capture all your tapes.
When you are ready to archive the project:
-Make all the MiniDV footage “Offline” in the project panel, and select delete originals.(important! You have to make sure the tape timecode is the same as the footage in Premiere. This means it has to be the original files captured using Premiere batch capture)
– Then use Premiere’s “Project Manager” feature. tell it to delete unused and to copy all in a new location.
That should give you a rather small sized folder, probably only under 1 Gig, given you don’t have a lot of other footage besides MiniDV.
If you need to work on that project again, tell Premiere to make the footage online again, and it will ask you to insert the original tapes in order to recapture the files.
Vince
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