P2 Archival Solution – Quantum SDLT600A

[David Jahns]

I’m very interested in this P2 archive solution, yet our IT manager AND our video engineer consultant have nothing but horror stories about DLT tape archives. Whether it’s decks that won’t read a tape format from a 3 years ago, or simply mechanical breakdown – they cringed when I told them we wanted to get this deck for our P2 archive solution.

Supposedly, the LTO format is much more robust and stable – but not enough so that they would give it their blessing. The Video guy wants us to lay off P2 footage to HD-CAM SR tape, then digitize from that (for matching timecode), and the IT guy wants us to burn Blu-Ray discs at 25GB per disc – which would be 40 discs and take 40 hours for a project with a TB of raw footage. Obviously, that’s not what us editors would prefer to do…

Can anyone out there tell me they are wrong, and that you have consistently restored projects from years ago using DLT tape?

[Eric Hansen]

the horror stories you speak of, i remember well. but they are most likely referring to DLT tapes and drives that maxed out at 80GB compressed (DLT III and IV) and were used mostly for office data backup or DVD Replication (which we still use one for). SDLT is a much different and more robust system. like comparing DVCAM to HDCAM and saying they are the same since they are both video tape and are part of Sony’s CAM system.

laying off to HDCAM SR is a very expensive alternative especially since a $70 SDLT tape can hold 14 hours of 720p24 or 5 hours of 1080i60. i would suggest regular HDCAM if you want to go this route since the benefits of SR are lost, IMHO, on P2 originated footage (for example SR is 4:4:4 but DVCPRO HD is 4:2:2). i have colleagues who do this, but i feel that its unnecessary.

LTO is actually a great tape system and what our telecine company uses. but you have to decide what you’re using it for. if you have one workstation that will connect to the drive via SCSI or Fibre, both SDLT and LTO will work great and i would go with LTO since it has higher storage capacities. also the SCSI version of the 600 drive is much cheaper than the Ethernet 600A and can sustain much faster read/write speeds. but, the SCSI 600 doesnt have the MXF aware system and can only be locally attached and not available to multiple computers through the web browser-based FTP. i also want to say that it only works with Windows, but i can’t say that for sure. we’re all Mac over here. if you have a SAN based system, dedicating one workstation to a SCSI SDLT or LTO drive could work great. if you have multiple independent edit systems, the ethernet-based 600A will be a better option.

we have only been using this system for 5 months, but it has been completely error-free and we have brought many projects fully back online with no lost media. i just brought a feature film back online because we have to bleep out some cussing for TV broadcast, but the process was fool-proof. i couldnt imagine bringing that project back from DVD-R or Blu-Ray media. although things may change in the next few years, i like the fact that these tapes have a shelf-life of 30 years. i havent heard what the official shelf life of Blu-Ray media is. and of course hard drives are the fastest way to bring stuff back online, but i’ve talked to some photographers who recycle their hard drives every 2 years because of fear of failed drives. that gets very expensive over time, even with falling prices.

hope that helps. also, call Quantum and get some advice. they wont try to sell you something (they leave that to their resellers) and they will give you good honest advice about different tape systems and what will work best for you. you have to bend your mind a bit to get away from TC-based video tape for archive. P2 users have done that for the most part by switching to a tapeless recording system, and are the most accepting of this SDLT workflow.

one last thing i should add. we have also added the SDLT600A to our office computer backup system. so we are using the deck for both video project archiving and our regular office computer backup system. 2 birds with one stone.

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[Gary Adcock]

[Eric Hansen] “i would suggest regular HDCAM if you want to go this route since the benefits of SR are lost, IMHO, on P2 originated footage (for example SR is 4:4:4 but DVCPRO HD is 4:2:2)”

slight correction –HDCam SR does not only record 4:4:4, it handles 1080 at 4:2:2 and 720p 4:2:2 also. It would require something like a Kona card to transcode the DVCPROHD content out via DUAL LINK HDSDI and you would not gain anything by archiving in RGB other than a lot of hassle. Regular HDCAM recording is only 1080 @ 3:1:1 so the user actually looses data if they do not stay in the SR series deck.

I am glad that you are happy with the 600a also, I have been using one since NAB and have been very happy with the unit and the performance.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows

[Eric Hansen]

thanks gary, i’m glad i got corrected on the HDCAM SR point because my experience with that deck has been very limited and i dont know about all of its options. we were thinking about going that route with our 16mm archive, but we decided against it in the short term because of cost. but we will probably revisit it in the future. our in-house deck is the HDW-M2000/10. we wouldnt switch to SR unless a significant project came along that would justify the cost.

when you record 720p, what is the total capacity of the tape? i assume that it would increase, like HDCAM where a 40 min tape holds 50 min of 24psf. or does the deck not record like that?

david, i should also add that Quantum will let you demo the 600A.

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