[Norbert Wu]

Hi — In answer to Robb Harriss’ question — and thanks for asking — I am an underwater and wildlife shooter who shoots primarily for stock. I’ve built up a library of stock footage like sharks, penguins underwater, etc.

For the past 10 years, I’ve relied on a lab with a vault in the LA area to vault my tapes. It’s been a relatively pain-free process as my agents and my office simply request a tape with time code and the lab delivers to clients. However, the lab/vault recently lost at least one of my master tapes. Considering the blood, sweat, tears, and expenses involved in getting this footage (orcas breaching through the ice in Antarctica!), I have realized that I cannot trust the lab/vault and must back up my entire library.

I realize that codecs like ProRes are not futureproof, but this route seems the most cost-effective solution. It will give me a reasonably low number of hard drives and a quality of footage that my office can deliver ourselves to clients rather than the lab, for all other than the most exacting of jobs.

I am actually pretty amazed (and must be behind the curve) that technology has increased to the point where I can indeed store my entire library on less than ten hard drives! And my library is already digitized to DV format with time-code burn, which is what we deliver to clients initially for their intiial edits. I hope to use the ProRes library to deliver to clients for their final cut.

I do intend to continue shooting footage, but that will be captured in digital format rather than tape. If I never have to buy another tape deck after this project, and just Macs and hard drives, I certainly will be happy.

If anyone has recommendations for vaults in LA that they like, I’d appreciate hearing it. This vault is fine, anyone can make mistakes, but their response to the situation was astoundingly cheap and disrespectful. The good thing is that storage in their vault was free since my clients paid the lab fees. I may or may not change labs/vaults if I hear of others that folks have had good experiences with. I do not wish to name this lab for fear that they will retaliate litigiously.

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Norbert Wu Productions
Pacific Grove, CA 93950
USA

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[Norbert Wu]

Well, I did have some other, perhaps more difficult questions in my post other than the hard drive space required. I do appreciate any answers to those questions, and I thank the two experts for their answers about hard drive space.

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Norbert Wu Productions
Pacific Grove, CA 93950
USA

[Norbert Wu]

Thanks for the speedy replies regarding hard drive space. Hitachi 2Tb drives are $150 or so — so I am not concerned about buying up to ten hard drives, and I believe my library of about 170 hours should only fill up 6 to 8 Tb, or 3 to 4 drives. That is a tiny amount of money compared to the cost of buying or renting a deck.

Anyone see any glaring errors in this process otherwise?

Thanks.

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Norbert Wu Productions
Pacific Grove, CA 93950
USA