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Storing Library Footage
Hi guys,
We’ve had the EX cameras for around 2 years already and our library footage is piling up and is expected to pile up more as more projects come in. My concern is, how to manage a library of footage the safest way possible, and the easiest way to get to them when we need them. Right now, what we have is 2 drobopros that have 8TB storage. But there’s 2TB left and I know that that free space will be gone in no time. We also back them up on DVD discs and that’s the only backup we have. Do you use any sofware so you can easily find old footage? How do you do your’s? Thanks.Mario Biennarc Sioco
Videographer & Video Editor
Gulf Broadcast
Kingdom of Bahrain -
4 Replies
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Cat DV is a good piece of software for media cataloging:
Personally I think the Drobo is totally unsuited for editorial media- much better as a home entertainment system media server. You could build your own mega drive pretty easily- say with a QNAP server box for starters…
Noah
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For long term storage I’m currently using pairs of individual USB or eSata hard drives. Each drive contains a mirror of it’s partner and these two drives are stored in separate locations. If the office is flooded or burns down then I still have a backup at home. The drives are exercised every 3 months and every couple of years I make copies of the oldest drives on to new, larger drives.
I believe this to be a robust system, not perfect perhaps, but low cost, simple and reasonably secure.
I would never trust my footage to a single hardware device such as a Drobo or single raid array. What happens if the power supply fails and fries all the hard drives or the cooling fan breaks and the drives overheat and die. Unlikely perhaps, but not unheard of. This is one area where the XDCAM HD optical discs are very good, like a tape, the failure of the drive should not affect the disc (or tape). You could also use Blu-ray but this is quite slow to burn and read from.
Alister Chapman
http://www.xdcam-user.com -
If you had the budget, would you recommend tape drives? LTO?
Mario Biennarc Sioco
Videographer & Video Editor
Gulf Broadcast
Kingdom of Bahrain -
Hi,
Just thought I’d chime in here as we had a fairly prolonged debate about the best workflow for the ex-3 at my work. I don’t know if anyone would agree with this but the method we use regarding footage/rushes is to transcode in CB to HD422 onto Sony ProDisc (using the PDW-U1). We then use the U1 to create virtual volumes on local/media drives – this way the rushes are archived from the outset. ProDiscs at 23Gb are similarly priced to DigiBeta tapes and store a similar duration so that end works out quite neatly.
As for completed projects, we have had problems using Avid to export the timeline to ProDisc on the U1 but once we’ve ironed those out, that’s our plan.
My alternate suggestion would be to look at a scsi usb caddy and drives, just for cheapness and versatility (and a method of avoiding the occasionally dodgy builds of cheap usb drives).
Cheers
Richard
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