Archive Wisdom

[Stuart English]

4K at 24fps REDCODE RAW is a bit less than 2 GB / minute.

28MB/s x 60 / 1024 = 1.6 GB/min (plus audio & metadata etc)

So 1 TB ~ 500 minutes

[Mark Thorpe]

I am yet undecided, wait and see what is available closer to the time of camera acquisition. However I can't understand when a lot of people here are on the verge of getting their hands on what will be a very expensive camera, with all the whistles and bells attached, even more so. People wanna shoot at the max rez and capability of the unit but want to archive out to the cheapest denominator. I, for one, will have to bite the bullet and opt for what may not be the cheapest archiving option but the option which at least guarantees the best security for my commodity, the stock footage. After all we are purchasing a means to obtaining great footage. To me it is more than obvious that I should be taking more care of the footage thasn I do of the camera in real terms.

Cameras can be replaced!!

My 2c worth.
Mark.

[Ignas K]

I´m planing opposite - start low end, as cheap as possible and build slowly from there. [my budget is deciding everything and I don´t think that if I can´t afford xraid or arri accessories I can´t shoot 4k..]

[Jaime Vallés]

Yeah, for archiving the raw footage, tape drive is really the best way to go until large capacity optical disks become a reality (read: inexpensive). 50GB per blu-ray disk is small for tons of footage, but think of it as a reel of film. 20-25 minutes of footage per disk.

I'm not quite sure why people feel safer with a film negative as an archival medium. You can't clone the negative and still keep the quality intact. And you still have to keep it in a climate-controlled sealed and secured vault somewhere, and then another copy someplace else.

With a blu-ray disk, I'll just burn 3 at a time, and they'll sit there, in separate geographic locations. If 2 of them mysteriously combust into flames at the same time, then I put the 3rd one in my computer's blu-ray drive, copy the contents to my HDD, and spit out another 3 perfect digital clones.

When bigger, better holographic storage solutions become available, thenn just transfer it to those. No biggie.

[Jared VanLeuven]

Here's to the price of Blu-Ray disks coming down *clink*.

I'll be using HDD's for the time being. I remember reading others' opinions on the former forum that a shelved hard disk in controlled conditions is pretty stable. RAID would always be better, of course. The power company's going to just love us!

[Evin Grant]

LTO 2 is still the best value/security balance option out there. Yes a drive and SCSI card will cost you $2K but $40 for 200GB uncompressed tapes that write as fast as a normal Harddrive is hard to beat. Plus I think all LTOs are backwards compatible, so most of the higher end post facilities used to working with Viper/F950 footage will be able to easily handle it.

[Akcelik]

would it be safe to make 2:1 compression on LTO for Redcode?

[Chris Kenny]

would it be safe to make 2:1 compression on LTO for Redcode?

Redcode is already compressed. You're not going to get any significant benefit from trying to compress it again.

[David Limpus]

other option is S-AIT1 until holographic storage solutions become available.

Storage 500 GB (native), 1.3 TB (compressed ) MAX. SUSTAINED TRANSFER RATE 30 MB/s (native), 78 MB/s (compressed1)

has anyone used a SAITe1300-F/S?

[Nicholas Shields]

We only use hard drives for archiving (shelved). We have had several tape backups fail, costing us thousands in losses. We keep duplicate drives off-site for insurance purposes. Everything is databased via Disktracker - a great tool for now (Apple has just bought out Proximity - a great media management solution). Speed is also a benefit of hard drives over tape. Hope this helps.