Video backup on DVD ???

[scrimski]

DV itself is compressed in a 5:1 ratio. By using another codec compressing the current amount of around 13 GB per hour to 4 GB per hour on it would cause more loss on the not so superior quality of DVCam or miniDV content.
What you can do is RAR or ZIP the files that they fit on a DVD, but I never tried that and can't say anything about how much space you can save by that, but I'm pretty sure that this won't cause a loss in picture quality.

[bism]

Yeah, that is what we are running into. We have been using rar files and it seems to work fine. Rar-ing a couple gig files though is a major time investment (not that re-compressing wouldnt be) and we would have to uncompress to use. I suppose we will stick to burning straight to disk. Have yet to use a dual layer burner, are these more finicky than single layer? I imagine there is more chance for an upset but I really have no idea.

Thanks for the reply.

[Yossarian!]

I don't think one hour per dvd is doable - unless its destined for online distribution only. RARing will probably only save you about 5-15% at most, unless there's lots of pure black in the vision. You can try higher RAR compression settings but as you know you pay for it in hours, and for minimal rewards.

Huffy and Microcosm are good lossless codecs, but you won't gain much space on them. You *could* risk using QT Sorensen3. I made 60 minutes at about 3.5 gigs by turning keyframes off and landing the quality slider somewhere between medium and best. Artifacts on rapid movement are REALLY nasty though.

My experience with dual layers has been that they aren't worth the bother. They take waaaay longer to burn and validate than a single layer, and in that time you could have burnt two or three 4.7g discs.

If the budget stretches that far just dump onto removable disc. They're approaching $1 per gig and you could even offline off them down the road.

[bism]

Yossarian,

We are actually trying to do the reverse. We have external drives as backup, we probly have a dozen or so. We wanted to switch to DVDs as it seems they are more "archival" and have less chance of getting screwed up. Always hearing stories about ppl hds crapping out. We would like to prevent that. Not that we have ever had any problems so far. Also, since we are going to be lugging all this equipment all over the planet it would be nice not to have to carry hard drives.

What do most studios do? Do they still backup on tape?

[dprgb]

Yes most studios still backup on tapes - it's highly reliable and the shelf life is good (usu. at least 15 years). It's also low-cost per gigabyte, once you're archiving terabytes worth of data.

There's always the Iomega REV drive, I've been looking into getting one of those for archiving.

[bism]

dapeter2:
Just looked into the Iomega. That sounds like a pretty good solution and the price isnt that bad either. Aways been skeptical of tape though, dont know why. I hear about weather changes and data loss and that doesnt make me to keen on trying it out. But, we need to do something....

You have any links to source materials? You answered my other question as well in a very informed way. How do you stay current.

Thanks again.

[dprgb]

Well, every day I spend about an hour reading through 10-12 CG and video websites just trying to keep up on the technology. I know I saw somewhere an independent test (maybe it was tomshardware.com) of the Rev drives and documentation of the shelf life. The only drawback they saw was backing up using the compression was software-based, so it used up something like 40% of the CPU during backup. Most tape systems have hardware compression so it's not as much of a problem. I figured if I got one I wouldn't compress anything anyway, for now the 35 gb discs is more than enough for me.

Interestingly enough, Grass Valley is using a REV drive (called REV PRO - increased throughput) in their new shoulder-mounted HD camera.

http://www.grassvalley.com/products/infinity/rev_pro/

http://www.grassvalley.com/products/infinity/camcorder/

That camera looks absolutely awesome - 4:2:2 10-bit JPEG2000 compression and only $20k (without lens)...

[bism]

Thanks for the reply. You have certainly shed some light on the situation. Any of those 10-12 links recommended for what we are trying to do?

The Kong American Cinematographer has a blurb in one of the articles about the SPX800, a little off topic but it does use memory cards which I thought was interesting. Had no idea they were using those in productions yet. There is also a review in the same mag of the FS-4 hd, they say its a bit clunky to use but seems to work ok. Those fancy cams Lucas had built for SW, were those straight to disk?

I took the laptop out one time and recorded straight to that and it worked great, was just a bit of a hassle is all.

Again, thanks for the reply. Great to have ppl who know what they are talking about get back to you.

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