Storage and Archiving

[grouchyturtle]

I'm just getting into the whole UW video thing now. Actually I'm just getting into video in general.

I've done a fair amount of video editing in work, and some of my raw capture files are too big to even fit on a DVD. Problem is hard drives eventually crash.

I was thinking maybe just saving the tapes with the raw footage, but if I ever wanted to re-edit something, it would be a huge PITA to get the video to line up, when I recapture it.

So, where do you save all you old video files?

 

[Groundhog246]

You're options are limited. You could use another hard drive, either an external or a removeable drive bay. You could use a tape drive (myself I don't trust them). You could re-record the edited video back onto your camcorder (probably the cheapest method), but that doesn't save parts you edited out.
Myself, I've only done a limited amount and once I've done the DVD, I make two copies, make sure they play ok and delete the files.

 

[ChrisA]

Short answer: Remove the "trash", organize the non-trash then only archive the result..

Long answer....

I'm new also and am perfecting my workflow. Here is what I'm currently thinking:

1) I pull the tape from the camera, flip the "lock" switch to prevent overwrite and then write a note on the tape. This tape is never written to again.

2) The above tape gets loaded on to my computer's hard drive. I'm _seriously_ concidering seting up a mirrored disk. I'l use a pair of high-end 250GB drives rigged so that if one dies the data is still on it's twin. Costs double but "so what".
Current setup is no mirror.

3) I do a rough cut to remove the trash. Stuff like when I don't turn off the camera between shots, out of focus and poorly exposed shots. I lot of the stuff on the tape is truely un-usable. Next I'll chop up what reemains into managable lenghts and copy al this to between four and 12 files. These files are in DV format so no qualityis lost. Files are all 2GB or less each and each file contains stuff that is somehow related. I call these the "masters" and this is what gets archived.

I need to review the raw tape anyways and mmaking this kind of "gross edit"
is easy and fast and save work downstream.

4) Now I do the "real" editing (the above is more like culling and organizing.)
I use the "master files" and maybe some still images taken with my Canon A80 still manera and and some WAV files riped from a CD and edit this into a "show" that
is maybe 5 or 15 minutes long.

The end result of an editing session is just an "EDL" or Edit Decison List that has pointers to the "master files", stills and audio files. If you are ever going to re-edit you will need the EDL and the source material. Different editing software calls the EDL different names but still it's an EDL.

There are two methodds of archivng this set of files. 1) Copy the "master" DV files back to the camera. and 2) Write the files to a data format DVD. Either is a royal PITA.

The trick if you copy back to tape is NOT messing up the time code. Just makesure that every master file starts with 00:00:00.00 and you will be fine. You can't copy the audio files and any still's to tape so you need to use the CDROM or DVD drive for that. Make a README file that explains how you copied the master files to DV tape and on which tape.

Having a mirrored hard drive will make it so that I will not have to save stuff so often.

My worst case backup is the source tape that was shot in the camera but I never expect to have to ever read that tape again. The master files are easier to archive and easier to use for editing too.

There is a rule of thumb in the computer bussines that data is not safe unless it exists in three places. that way you can loose one copy and still have a redundent copy. Think about what a roll of tape shot underware costs you. All your camera, housing and scuba gear plus any travel divided over the number of tapes shoot. A few $100 per tape I assume.

I'm just getting into the whole UW video thing now. Actually I'm just getting into video in general.

I've done a fair amount of video editing in work, and some of my raw capture files are too big to even fit on a DVD. Problem is hard drives eventually crash.

I was thinking maybe just saving the tapes with the raw footage, but if I ever wanted to re-edit something, it would be a huge PITA to get the video to line up, when I recapture it.

So, where do you save all you old video files?

 

[cjames]

I'm using a couple of 200 Gig extenal drives. They're fast enough to edit with Premiere and big enough to hold a lot of video.

 

[fpoole]

Just an FYI...
I had a lot of photos and of course the usual crash and attempt to retrieve them... this was on an Maxtor 250 external. Not sure what happened, but only recovered apx 80% at a cost of apx $400 and 45 days..

Anyway, It hit me that I need something a little better..
I now use a RAID 10 (apparently there is a difference between a 10 and a 1 and 0... haven't a clue but I used the RAID 10) mirroring and fast stripping (spell?). on 4 250 gig SATA 7200 drives.
It works great. 4 250 drives gives me 500gig back and speed. It's expensive apx $1200, but the drives are dropping so it might be realistically do-able?
Anyway, just wanted to share that as I had never heard of doing a system like this until I needed it... Drives are hot swappable - but haven't a clue as to how to do it...

Hope that helps... I still have (after a replacement from Maxtor) 2 external 250 gigs I use for backing up the back ups.. errrr.. when I get around to setting it up... BEFORE the next crash.. LOL.. it's alway something eh??
)

 

[grouchyturtle]

Some great ideas in here. Thanks!

It never even occured to me to trim the garbage out before editing and saving that as a raw DV file. That alone will save a lot of space on my drives. (you know...out of focus, badly framed shots-really need to ad that lcd to my housing, etc.)

I don't know about buying 4 drives, but I do plan on buying a second one so I can mirror them.

Also just ordered a double layer DVD burner (8.5GB discs). And capturing in smaller pieces that will fit on a DVD (duh, I can't believe I didn't think of that)

 

[jcclink]

Another approach to maybe consider. After a trip I make a master tape log of all my tapes from start to end. Timecode & very brief description of each scene. In doing this I get a feel for what's good & what isn't. Then I download only the scenes that I think I want to keep. Some of these will get edited out & alot will be shortened in the final edit. As I download I write the file name on a copy of the master tape log. If I need to recapture a clip I then know tape # & timecode, so the clip is easy to relocate. Edit, add audio track, make master DV tape of final edit, encode for DVD, make DVD. One final thing I do is to make a project edit log which contains timecode at the start of every clip, transition, audio track, etc. I can recreate the project for scratch if I ever had to. (Hopefully this won't happen.) I keep all the original tapes, master DV edit tape & all files needed to create DVD (these files remain on hd with DVD backup copy). Maybe a little more work but I'm covered if I every have to redo or recreate anything. The dedicated hd for video clips (80gb) usually gets reformated before I start a new project, depending on space requirements. I don't see a need to retain original clips on the computer after the project is completed.

 

[ChrisA]

Ithink you have describbed my process also. Except that in my case some of the work is automated. I don't need to keep notes

A lot depends on the software you use. My software will automatically detect a scene change and put each scene in it's own file. I can merge or split files if the software got it wrong I can review the video on the computer _much_ faster than I can by watching the tape. The computer has a "scrub" control that will move thevide forward and back at any speed. I'll delete the files that you simply don't capture So far we do the same.

Next I make notes but again my software allows me to make notes and attach them to the clips and of course the timecode is attached

As for the project log. The editor does this. Most (all?) editors don't actually move video data around. Your edits are stored in a text file. The file contains instructions on how to build the final show. When you edit all you are really doing is editing this text file. The display and the final show are built from this file. Keep the file and the source media and you can just keep going. There is a lot in there Audio fade on typically many tracks, video transitions and special effects, crops and color balances ... I'd hate to have to take notes on al that.

Reformatting the disk seems extreme. It might depend on what kind of computer and operating system you are working with

Another approach to maybe consider. After a trip I make a master tape log of all my tapes from start to end. Timecode & very brief description of each scene. In doing this I get a feel for what's good & what isn't. Then I download only the scenes that I think I want to keep. Some of these will get edited out & alot will be shortened in the final edit. As I download I write the file name on a copy of the master tape log. If I need to recapture a clip I then know tape # & timecode, so the clip is easy to relocate. Edit, add audio track, make master DV tape of final edit, encode for DVD, make DVD. One final thing I do is to make a project edit log which contains timecode at the start of every clip, transition, audio track, etc. I can recreate the project for scratch if I ever had to. (Hopefully this won't happen.) I keep all the original tapes, master DV edit tape & all files needed to create DVD (these files remain on hd with DVD backup copy). Maybe a little more work but I'm covered if I every have to redo or recreate anything. The dedicated hd for video clips (80gb) usually gets reformated before I start a new project, depending on space requirements. I don't see a need to retain original clips on the computer after the project is completed.