[chrisneal]

Hi all.


I've got a Sony HDR-HC1 camcorder that as I'm sure you know, records to mini-dv tapes. I've been on mini-dv for years now, and love having the tapes as a "permanent" storage for the original footage I take. Barring any natural disasters, I know I'll have a copy I can always go back to.


So it seems that the new, cool, thing to do is use internal HDD or memory cards to record your 1080p footage. Ok, that's cool and all. Now I can record ~15 hours of 1080p video as opposed to the 1hr that each mini-dv tape gave me. Sweet.


My question to everyone who has one of these cameras is: How do you archive your footage now? What are the options here?


I can think of a couple, but they are either not permanent, or cost prohibitive.


1. Dump it to another hard disk. Huge disks are getting cheaper every day, so this has some merit to it, but disks will always fail at some point. I would not want to lose 1TB of family memories one day because of a drive failure.


2. I use Amazon S3 to backup important things to "the cloud". It's not the cheapest thing around, but is (basically) guaranteed to always be there. There's a cost to upload, download, and store data per month. Again, not the best option.


I suppose I could get a couple of hard disks and Raid 1 them (mirrored disks) for redundancy.


Anyway, just looking for other options that I might not be thinking of.


Thanks for your time

 

[Francois Caron]

To avoid losing precious family memories, use two hard drives instead of one.


Even then, it's still no guarantee the backups will still be accessible in a few years. For example, how long do you think IDE hard drives will continue to be supported when they're all being replaced with SATA drives?


That's the major shortcoming with modern technology: it doesn't last as long as the memories.

 

[flintyplus]

well i have gone back to tape from avcd but i have to say there is no reason why any format can not be stored on what you like, even my avchd was put on tape as well as blu ray disc and hard drive,my tapes are also put on BD and hard drive.There is also the avchd disc option but only 35 minutes per single sided recordable dvds,

 

[chrisneal]

Interesting. How did you get the avcd format to tape? Did it preserve the 1080p and 5.1 audio? That would be cool if it would. My guess is though that it did not.

 

[ericjut]

BTW, tapes have never been a permanent mean of storage. Yes, they have longer life without error than HDDs or DVDRs... but they will start failing in 10-20 years time frame. If you reuse tapes, I've personally experienced some getting corrupted in less time than that. And don't forget that while losing a frame in DV because a bit switched isn't too catastrophic, HDV with its MPEG2 GOP encoding means that you'll potentially lose up to a whole 0.5 seconds of both video and audio for every corrupted bit. Trust me on this, I worked with corrupted HDV tapes in the last few years and it's not a pretty sight.


So, as far as I'm concerned, the only real protection that one has against data loss is redundancy, independently of the medium used. I would definitely advise against relying on only one copy of anything, whether it's tape, HDD, shiny disk or flash based.


FWIW, due to the amount of data I have to archive, I personally use multiple HDDs (Home server with redundancy turned on as my main copy + couple of copies on external HDDs I keep safe). Some may think I'm overdoing it, but I loss unrecoverable data back in College and I swore on that day that it would never happen to me again. I'm not saying it's a great solution... but it's a workable solution for my needs right now. YMMV

 

[chrisneal]

Yeah, I agree. Like I said, disks are cheap. When i go this route, it sounds like the Raid 1 solution is probably the cheapest, most reliable method. Heaven forbid i should ever lose 2 drives in the same Raid at the same time. Yikes.


Thanks for all the posts and suggestions.


I thought of another one.


Encode it all to mp4 and post it all in hidef to Vimeo

60$ a year for the Plus membership is cheaper than hard disks. I guess they would need to not go out of business tho.

 

[flintyplus]

Tapes last longer than discs i have dv ones 13 years old they are perfect, i think vhs would last a life time if looked after some of mine are 30 years old,regarding puting avchd on tape you need a hdv and avchd cam then the files cnan be converted to mpeg2 and rendered to to tape, pinnacle wil do this fine, my files lost a very small amount of resolution after converting strange in a way as my FX7 and HV30 are as sharp picture wise as my SR12was and any avchd cam i have used,i hope blu ray lasts like tape only time will tell as its the most convenient and easily usable storage, home made dvd is not a good storage a few of mine lost their data this was not cheap discs either

 

[flintyplus]

Tapes last longer than discs i have dv ones 13 years old they are perfect, i think vhs would last forever if looked after some of mine are 30 years old,regarding puting avchd on tape you need a hdv and avchd cam then the files cnan be converted to mpeg2 and rendered to to tape, pinnacle wil do this fine, my files lost a very small amount of resolution after converting strange in a way as my FX7 and HV30 are as sharp picture wise as my SR12was and any avchd cam i have used,i hope blu ray lasts like tape only time will tell as its the most convenient and easily usable storage, home made dvd is not a good storage some of mine lost their data this was not cheap discs either.But never as said keep all your film on one format.

 

[ericjut]

Flinty,


I'm glad that your experience with tapes has been "perfect", but I have personal experience of both DV and HDV tapes that got partly corrupted in less than 5 years. In one particular case, the HDV tape couldn't be captured without minutes of footage lost. And no, the tapes were not misused.


Just curious: how are you verifying that your tapes are still in prestine condition and are not starting to degrade? Do you capture them every year? Spot check them once in a while? Or are you relying on one tape to assess the overall health of your collection? DV/HDV tapes are magnetic digital data, prone to degradation just like any other magnetic medium. I sincerely hope for your memories' sake that you're not relying on only tapes as your sole storage solution. And I would highly suggest you take action if you have 10+ yo tapes with unique data on them.


To me, there's another problem that many seem to forget: to be able to verify that the data is still in good condition, as well as to extract the data out of the tapes, one has to keep a camcorder of that format in good order. That's not really a concern for the present, but what about in 5 years? 10? 20? Will HDV camcorders still be available at that time if the one you kept around fails after all those years? Will firewire still be on computers in 20 years?Think of all the media and data storage formats that went away in the last 20 years: 5.25 floppies, Zip drives, tape backups, Beta/Max, Hi-8, MiniDisc, IOmega and I'm probably forgetting dozens more. Do you really want to be stuck in 20 years with a decaying media format with no means to extract it? To me, redundant HDDs containing my media which I can easily access, use, share, verify and effortlessly move to the next best medium seems a lot less trouble than tapes, and definitely not tied to a specific medium technology like both DV and HDV are. My opinion anyways....

 

[flintyplus]

You realy hate tape Eric i know,but if you had Read what i said i said i keep my material on 3 different ways tape ,BLU RAY ,and hdv on external drives as well as BD,regarding tape no i have not played my whole collection right through recently but i did check every dv tape earlier in the year to make sure they played [around 5 minutes on some more on others ]my mini dv stuff is only on dvd as well as tape which is a concern and i may well put it all on hard drive,i know hdv cams will not always be made but i suspect it will be many years before no playback option is available more years than i have in the video game.There is hdmi connection so for playback firewire would not be needed for play back, anyway clearly your experiences with tape are much different than mine

 

[guy80]

HD's are what I use for 'backup'. If I wasn't cheap I'd also burn images onto a bluray. RAID is nice but I sure would not rely on it as my only backup.

 

[sierramike]

I do not have AVCHD camcorder now, but still have Gigabytes of stuff to keep secure ... I went 1,5 years ago to the RAID route. I've setup a PCHC Linux based, with 3 HDD 750GB each, put in software RAID5, which give me 1,5 TB of space available.


Hard drives are a good way of keeping the data, assuming that when they will be full of data, you will buy for half the price, newer drives that will give you four times the space ! Then, you'll just have to move the files to the new drives and you're done : all your stuff still accessible and you can continue adding stuff.


With that, no wonder if IDE or SATA disks will still be useable in 10 years, even if 10 new technologies last in that time, your files will everytime be moved from one drive to another ...



BUT : it you go the RAID way, please please please don't buy 2 or 3 identical drives !!! They will be most likely produced one behind the other, so if there is a production problem, they will most likely fail all together at the same time !!! Just choose 2 different manufacturers and it's ok

By the way, when I see VHS-C stuff from my father that are 25-30 years old, not only has the picture quality fallen down because of the time lasted, but the original VHS-C recorder doesn't work any more, and the last VHS personal recorder I had is now out of order too ... Glad I did DVD backups as soon as I got a DVD recorder

Now I will back them up on hard drives ... hope the DVDr's are still playable

 

[ericjut]



Quote:
Originally Posted by flintyplus /forum/post/16839596


You realy hate tape Eric i know,but if you had Read what i said i said i keep my material on 3 different ways tape ,BLU RAY ,and hdv on external drives as well as BD,regarding tape no i have not played my whole collection right through recently but i did check every dv tape earlier in the year to make sure they played [around 5 minutes on some more on others ]my mini dv stuff is only on dvd as well as tape which is a concern and i may well put it all on hard drive,i know hdv cams will not always be made but i suspect it will be many years before no playback option is available more years than i have in the video game.There is hdmi connection so for playback firewire would not be needed for play back, anyway clearly your experiences with tape are much different than mine

Sorry... I missed that part of your post. Glad to read that you have multiple backups.

I just posted that response in case you didn't and to make sure nobody here make the mistake of relying on tapes as sole copy of their memories. I have a co-worker that unfortunately learned the hard way... :/

 

[Chevypower]

Everything is stored on a 2TB WD hard drive, yes I do need to get a back up. I import using Final Cut Pro and iMovie and I use iMovie to organize all my home videos. My older home videos were on MiniDV, HDV, Video-8 and Hi-8. I love being able to play them without the need to sort through not knowing where everything is. Everything is in native quality - not necessarily without any transcoding. The 8mm formats were really stable compared to S/VHS/-C

 

[flintyplus]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Chevypower /forum/post/16845772


Everything is stored on a 2TB WD hard drive, yes I do need to get a back up. I import using Final Cut Pro and iMovie and I use iMovie to organize all my home videos. My older home videos were on MiniDV, HDV, Video-8 and Hi-8. I love being able to play them without the need to sort through not knowing where everything is. Everything is in native quality - not necessarily without any transcoding. The 8mm formats were really stable compared to S/VHS/-C

Of note Chev have you tried using a vhsc adaptor that lets you play vhsc tape in a vhs machine, for something to do i tried some of my vhsc tapes [early 80s] in my vhs machine that i still keep and they played fine, i dont have that many 20 i think as mostly i copied to vhs which looking at any copies gave poor pq but at the time keeping all the vhsc and svhsc would hve meant keeping loads.Or have i misread and you dont have vhsc, i also have some video 8 but no machine to play them.


PS i wonder how long a hard drive will last not as long as many think is my bet, yes transfer everything after a certain period i know.

 

[kalak]

I use multiple hard drives.

I am using a hard drive dock, and hard drives like big floppies

.

Insert, back up and remove. This eliminates any chance of damage by power surge (a risk in using RAID setup); and you can also put them in multiple locations.


I don't worry about obsolete technology at all. I would have moved all the files to newer and bigger hard disks (or SSD in the future?) well before that would happen.

 

[Chevypower]

Flinty, yes we have VHS-C adaptors because our business offers video transfers and DVD authoring. The whole VHS system was just never as stable as anything from the numerous Beta formats, 1" or even U-Matic. Despite the smaller 8mm tape size than half-inch VHS/C, it follows the Beta tape path around the drum, and I believe it tracks the same way. The end result is I never see bad unstable flickers or uncontrollable rolls on 8mm. You do get dropouts as with any tape format, and of course Video/Hi8 doesn't compare with any pro Betacam format, but it was the best home format. I have had customers bring in both formats for digital transfer, and I usually have to explain why their VHS or VHS-C looks so bad, and even a 6 head machine, with manual tracking couldn't make the picture nearly as stable as their 8mm video. And all I use for 8mm capture is a Sony Digital-8 camcorder, which will digitize analog video through FireWire which is nice.

 

[flintyplus]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Chevypower /forum/post/16846662


Flinty, yes we have VHS-C adaptors because our business offers video transfers and DVD authoring. The whole VHS system was just never as stable as anything from the numerous Beta formats, 1" or even U-Matic. Despite the smaller 8mm tape size than half-inch VHS/C, it follows the Beta tape path around the drum, and I believe it tracks the same way. The end result is I never see bad unstable flickers or uncontrollable rolls on 8mm. You do get dropouts as with any tape format, and of course Video/Hi8 doesn't compare with any pro Betacam format, but it was the best home format. I have had customers bring in both formats for digital transfer, and I usually have to explain why their VHS or VHS-C looks so bad, and even a 6 head machine, with manual tracking couldn't make the picture nearly as stable as their 8mm video. And all I use for 8mm capture is a Sony Digital-8 camcorder, which will digitize analog video through FireWire which is nice.

thats interesting, i dont know why mine play fine possibly different adaptor.Of note if a customer wants some vhsc or 8mm put on dvd do you simply connect to a dvd recorder[thats what i did ]so all my old stuff is not edited properly, or capture to pc and go that route.

 

[Chevypower]

I capture using Final Cut Pro usually on a MacPro. But none of that improves the quality of what is coming in. The adaptor shouldn't make a difference as the VHS-C tape is going straight to the heads of the VCR. If you haven't played your VHS-C tapes over and over they may be ok. But I would digitize them, sooner the better.

 

[flintyplus]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Chevypower /forum/post/16851428


I capture using Final Cut Pro usually on a MacPro. But none of that improves the quality of what is coming in. The adaptor shouldn't make a difference as the VHS-C tape is going straight to the heads of the VCR. If you haven't played your VHS-C tapes over and over they may be ok. But I would digitize them, sooner the better.

Oh i put them and any analogue material vhsc , svhsc ,some 8 mm ,beta ,vhs ,on mini dv and dvd ten years ago, i used a sony mini dv recorder GV-300E for the mini dv copies and a dvd recorder for dvd, as i said i only have hd stuff on hard drive storage and i dont know if i will ever get around to puting all my analogue analogue on drive there is so much.