There have been many posts about DVD's and Bluray for long term storage, so what is the best way of storing your old tapes or rather the video contained within them?
As MiniDV and HDV camcorders will shortly become obsolute and as your current MiniDV/HDV camcorder is getting older and more well used what then for archiving and playing back your video tapes?
I started shooting video with on a Standard 8 camcorder before moving up to Hi8 and then onto MiniDV. The MiniDV camcorder I got was a small Sony DCR PC100 with firewire output and input, thus I could record onto MiniDV the movie I had edited via the "Print to tape" option. NOTE the firewire input in camcorders in the UK was not available in most models sold, only on certain top of the range models.
Whilst I still had both my Standard 8 and Hi8 camcorders I recorded all the tapes produced by these camcorders onto MiniDV tapes via the Sony PC100, now as this trusty Sony is 10 years old and my only means of playing MiniDV tape how am I to view my tapes in years to come? The answer for me is to capture them all onto a hard disc.
My editing PC has two hard disc caddies, one for the boot disc and one for a hard disc used for a general document storage disc, a new 2Tb hard disk cost me £66 and this is now in my hard disc caddy and is busy being used by Premiere's capture utility to store all my MiniDV tapes. 38 tapes captured so far and many more to go.
Each completely full 60 minute MiniDV tape is showing files totaling 13.673414Gb so if we say that 14Gb of storage is required per tape and as a 2Tb disc formats to 1.8Tb we can get over 125 tapes on one hard disk. This will cost me 53p per tape which is way less than the cost of archiving to Bluray or to DVD (Bluray at £1.25/25Gb disc and DVD at 20p/4.5Gb disc).
When completed all the files I am likely to use will then be copied to my RAID disc array that I use for editing and the video store disc will be removed from the caddy and placed in a protective box and stored in a safe place.
SNAP, as above but only until HD's become obsolete:D Then what?
Harry
Unless you intend editing them again I would store all you old tapes as a compressed format. like mpg 2 I`ve just started a marathon, archiving from sVHS onto some hard disks. I am recording them via a couple of storm 2 machines hand over hand , editing and then encode to M2p and archiving using a bay and drives I bought off a member of this board.
Hard drives are vulnerable to failure too. One of mine, used only for storage, has failed and I can no longer get to the footage.
Hard drives are vulnerable to failure too. One of mine, used only for storage, has failed and I can no longer get to the footage.
Indeed they are, even if they're just left sitting in storage. There are recommended methods of keeping them going, like spinning them up at regular intervals, storing them in the same plane in which they've been used.... all sorts of stuff. No idea what's real and what's witchcraft. I'd never entrust anything archival to a single hard disc. Mirrored drives at the least, raid 5 better, LTO tape even better if you can afford it.
Hard drives are vulnerable to failure too. One of mine, used only for storage, has failed and I can no longer get to the footage.
You probably know a specialist may be able to retieve/copy content.
I gather recovery success rates are high.
Also, if it's an external HD, it mat just be the interface that's gone and with guidance of others here (not me) you may be able to put it in internal bay or caddy to access the data.
My duff drive is an external Toshiba 232GB usb drive I used for storing "DV data" - my words for completed edits. I tried to start it up when planning to back up to BluRay discs. I still have the original DV tapes - possibly even a DV tape of my edits - in storage boxes as well as individual DVDs, so all is not lost.
Another problem is that much of this was done some years ago, so tracking documentation and identifying what is to be found where is another issue which requires regular housekeeping.
Professional Data recovery is very expensive. I have read that most HDD failures are caused by the electronics failing, and a frequent method of recovery is to swap the PC board for a known good one. The repalcement must be exactly the same build and firmware version.
Maybe if funds are tight, it may be worthwhile buying archive candidate drives in at least pairs. There would then be a chance of swapping the PB board if all legit attempts failed.
Steve
Ironically all your thinking is flawed
The best way of archiving video at the moment is TAPE
HDD no way, there was an article on this which proved it was the 2nd worst way to archive material due to failure rates...its just too unpredicatble. Even a corruption in the file table will render it useless, which happened to me only weeks ago..Drive was fine but the files (rushes) became corrupted...i got round this however as i still had the TAPES
DISC... This is the worst way to archive discs can fail especially after being in storage also they are limited by size.
Storing as an Mpeg file is a bit bonkers due to the compression involved which of course also depends upon bitrate and the quality of the encoder.
Mini dv for example will store with no additional compression (other than what was originally done in camera) and its failure rate is.... well its longer than any other at the moment...nothing is perfect.
in fact i deliberatly smashed a mini dv tape and then repaired it to see what kind of damage it would take...i lost one shot.
Now the problem comes when you are shooting tapeless how do you archive that? (which is why i don't shoot tapeless yet)
Speaking to a family memeber at New year who works for a longterm archivest company, he supplies kit to places like the BFI for their archiving and there sytems are backed up in multiple location and these systems are running at around £30000 each.
His suggestion to the problem was using a desktop LTR drive to store video (cost about £5000)
the tapes can be upto 100GB and only cost pounds.. and yes it IS TAPE.
so the official word seems to be is that unless you have £30000
then tape (either video or data) is best currently.
Also i have recently been visiting some Post prod houses to see how they are doing it
and would you beleive it they are backing up rushes shot on tapeless onto HDcam TAPE
the chances of Minidv and even HDV becomming so obsolete that you can't get the footage off is basically nill for most of our lifetime. i can still get vhs,svhs 8mm, hi8, betamax and even 1 and 2 inch stuff converted if i so wished
So there you are use it or loose it ;)
I've never heard of LRT. Perhaps you mean LTO, just like I said in my post on 12 January?
If so your family member is well behind the times.
A Desktop LTO drive is not £5000, but about £1700.
http://www.span.com/product_info.php?cPath=21_45_1559&products_id=32320
And the uncompressed capacity of the tapes is 1.5GB. They cost about £60.
the chances of Minidv and even HDV becomming so obsolete that you can't get the footage off is basically nill for most of our lifetime. i can still get vhs,svhs 8mm, hi8, betamax and even 1 and 2 inch stuff converted if i so wishedSo there you are use it or loose it ;)
I have archived everything(SVHS and Hi8) onto miniDV apart from original DV tapes.
I am still recording on HDV for the time being.
But I dont see tape camcorders being around for ever and I cant even see desktops being around forever with firewire inputs. I have hundreds of hours to commit to HD but my hope is that in uncompressed formats and passed around all the families computers the footage will stand a better chance of survival after I am gone.
As to longevity of tapes my Hi8 tapes were beginning to deteriorate before putting them on DV and I have just today found a section of DV tape that was alright a couple of years ago to be faulty.
Whenever HDs look like becoming obsolete we will all have them and have the choice to save our footage to the new thing whereas without my computer with the firewire input all my family stuff I am sure would be in grave danger.
We are all on the tread mill of wanting to save our film,video, material. One may ask what is worth saving?. Family material?. For who, future generation who have no interest as you and i have. Unless we can teach them.
All material has a value, as years go by and we are just a passing cloud. People would like to know how we lived.
But attention will be more drawn to what television has archived over the years than us humble people.
What format of entertainment will be around the corner for us to watch and save our work?
The work I am archiving is part of Motorsport history. There will always be a value. I for one is amazed that 2 hours of good quality video can be stored on a piece of plastic no bigger than my fingernail. In the future I believe It will be possible to have an implant done to your brain and the need for a TV will be gone. You heard it here first :)
I was recently contacted by a cousin in Scotland who sent me some 9.5 CineFilm which a friend who owed me a favour, transfered to MiniDV. On them there was some elderly motorsport, alledgely LeMans, so John if you want a copy, get in touch :-)
I've never heard of LRT. Perhaps you mean LTO, just like I said in my post on 12 January?
If so your family member is well behind the times.
A Desktop LTO drive is not £5000, but about £1700.
http://www.span.com/product_info.php?cPath=21_45_1559&products_id=32320
And the uncompressed capacity of the tapes is 1.5GB. They cost about £60.
yeah sorry that was a typo yes it is LTO drive.
in fairness to him he was just giving a ball park figure as he works mainly with the big stuff
he'd spent most of the preceeding months at the BFI and he did say his company does not deal with them (LTO) That is
think you got the prices and size mixed up on the tape though, about £25 for 800GB uncompressed/ 1.6TB compressed
http://www.span.com/product_info.php?cPath=21_45_194&products_id=16081
No, I got the price of the tape right: there is no such thing as a compressed capacity when you're dealing with video files. They're already compressed. So you have to take the native capacity of the tape. So you've linked to a 800GB tape, and I've quoted the price for a 1.5GB one:
http://www.span.com/product_info.php?cPath=21_45_194&products_id=31593.