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Suggestions for best way to archive old Canon GL1 DV tapes
I apologize if this is not the best forum for this question, but this is the most positive and useful forum of the numerous FCP forums here and elsewhere and the only forum I now check on a daily basis. (I’m still astounded by the great Motion plug-ins that are continually added.)
I’m done with my Canon GL-1. It works fine still (it likely has less than a 100 hours on it), but I need to literally start cleaning house and get rid of stuff I no longer have a need for. Once I’m sure I’ve gotten everything off every DV tape, I can sell or donate the camera.
I have a new MBP i7 17″, 8 megs RAM, 10.6.7. The main drive has FCP-X on it and one of the partitions has a bare bones install of 10.6.7 with FCS 3 on it. I also have an eSata 2-drive RAID 1 external that I used with FCP 7.
What would you suggest for the best way to archive my final DV tapes? Clearly, I can use FCP-X or FCP 7. I can also save it to standard DV format or ProRes 422.
1. Any thoughts on archive format and version of FCP to do it in?
2. Any thoughts on what to do with the GL-1 when I’m done?
Thanks,
Dave -
6 Replies
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Honestly, tape is way more secure an archive than a hard drive.
A drive can go bad just sitting on a shelf. I think DV tape will still be around in 5 years, so playback should not be an issue.
When solid state drives get larger and cheaper, I would think about getting all your stuff off tape.
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I’m actually in the process of doing very much the same thing with some older Mini-DV tapes. John is correct that the Mini-DV tapes are great for archive but Dave, I’m sure you’re like me and want to have easy access to the files in the future since you might not always have a tape deck laying around to load stuff in. I think your best bet is what you seem to be doing: dump the footage on a drive then throw the tapes in a safe (off-site preferably) and call it a day.
And I’m sure someone will tell you, the best way to archive data right now is with LTO tape with a system like a Cache-A. But they’re expensive and out of reach of many smaller companies. If you can talk a friend or two into it, split the cost of one and share it. It will be one of the best investments you’ll ever make. Hard drives will get you by for now as long as you keep multiple backups and switch out hard drives every few years.
To answer your questions:
1) I’m using FCP 7 and the ProRes 422 codec. FCP 7 is rock solid in tape transfer and it just works. FCP X has too many bugs to be reliable with this task right now and has way less features for tape ingest like reel names, timecode, audio channel selection, in and out points, etc. I chose ProRes because it’s a standard now that works great and plays well with so much of my ProRes footage from the past couple of years. And it saves me some render time in a ProRes sequence since it’s already ProRes. It’s also a much better codec for color correction then DV. DV50 is pretty close to ProRes but not nearly as widely used as it once was b/c of ProRes adoption.
2) Put it in your museum for clients to admire the old days.
tony
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John,
I do plan to keep the tapes, just not the camera, which would make it difficult to access the tapes down the road if I wanted to. Fortunately, there is no work related material on the tapes, I believe it’s all just family stuff as I was just starting out with video.
As I said in the original post, there aren’t too many tapes to worry about. I guess the main question is to archive as DV or ProRes.
Thanks,
Dave -
Tony,
“…but Dave, I’m sure you’re like me and want to have easy access to the files in the future since you might not always have a tape deck laying around to load stuff in.”
You got it.
“Hard drives will get you by for now as long as you keep multiple backups and switch out hard drives every few years.”
Yep, and hopefully, I’ll pick up a Blu-ray burner this year. I really don’t have that much stuff from this camera, so with the hard drives, it should suffice.
I was thinking the same thing about the ProRes over the DV50. I guess I just wanted to hear someone else say it too.
“2) Put it in your museum for clients to admire the old days.”
Oh, said but true. I’ll check eBay, but I don’t imagine there is much use for a camera like this any more. I’d save it for my kids, but they are 6 and 8, so it would be a bit of a wait.
Thanks,
Dave -
Dave, I will chime in with a little different take…
DV tape is very fragile, and magnetic tape, in general, is not a long term stable medium; at some point, information on magnetic tape dissipates, and the emulsion can start flaking off. Hard drives are also not necessarily stable, but the are getting cheap enough to be able to store information in duplicate. It is still probably a good idea to start the drives every few years to keep the bearings lubed.
Another option is to use archival DVDs (specially designed DVDs that will have a long shelf life. Ordinary DVDs also are a short lived medium. I don’t know if they make archival blue ray media).
The best format (codec) for storage if your original codec is DV is the native DV format. ProRes is not going to “improve” your quality and ProRes takes up much more disk space than the native DV format. When you import DV into FCP (and I agree that FCP 7 is the better choice), DV is literally and faithfully copied from your tape to your disk (staying in the same codec/format) and there is NO degradation because there is no transcoding when you bring DV into FCP.
Good luck.
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Eli,
Good points, thanks for the response.
Dave
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