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Future-proffing Old Tapes Archives

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Ethan Cooper

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A buddy of mine raised an interesting question the other day and I'm not sure I have a good solution for his problem, I was wondering if someone here might.

The company he works for has a long standing relationship with a particular client who likes the idea of keeping every bit of footage shot for them around for future use. Problem is that a large portion of the early footage they have for this company was shot on Panasonic M2 tapes and the last remaining decks they have around that can play that format back are getting very old and are eating up space in the dub room for no apparent reason. They'd like to get all the footage off the old M2's and transfer them to something else for archival purposes but are stuck with making a decision of transferring 100's of tapes worth of footage to another tape format or placing all that footage on redundant drives.

What is a good way to go about doing something like this? If they go with drives, what codec would you recommend?

If they go with tapes or some other type of recording medium what would you recommend using that will be with us for quite some time?

We've been debating it the last few days and haven't come up with a good solution. Anyone know of anything?

BluRay data discs?(pricey per GB) LTO?(kinda old technology) Something I've never considered?
 
Thanks for the reply. If they decide to go LTO, what codec do you recommend? What will be a good combination of decent quality and smallish file size that will be readable by NLE's for some time to come?
 
Ethan Cooper said:
Thanks for the reply. If they decide to go LTO, what codec do you recommend? What will be a good combination of decent quality and smallish file size that will be readable by NLE's for some time to come?
Click to expand...

No special codec required. The idea is to backup ALL of your valuable data. Read here: http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=26871

I used Retrospect for the last years. It's the buggiest app. I ever met. I wouldn't even recommend to my most hated enemy (if there was such a person).

If you need a high fidelity future-proof fileformat use DPX.



Hans
 
Yikes! I just realized that the title of this thread is full of errors. Maybe I was channeling Sanjin this morning when I wrote that.
 
Hans von Sonntag said:
No special codec required. The idea is to backup ALL of your valuable data. Read here: http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=26871
Click to expand...

Uhhh, actually you will have to put it in some codec/format since it's raw video and not files. I couldn't find out exactly what the specs were on the format, but capturing all the footage as Uncompressed 10 bit should be safe, and then you just write those files to LTO-3 or 4. It shouldn't be that much $$$ to convert the tapes and you can catalog them so you can go back and find the one clip you need. Plus, you should be able to fit multiple tapes on one LTO-3 tape!

Matthew
 
Matthew Rogers said:
Uhhh, actually you will have to put it in some codec/format since it's raw video and not files. I couldn't find out exactly what the specs were on the format, but capturing all the footage as Uncompressed 10 bit should be safe, and then you just write those files to LTO-3 or 4. It shouldn't be that much $$$ to convert the tapes and you can catalog them so you can go back and find the one clip you need. Plus, you should be able to fit multiple tapes on one LTO-3 tape!

Matthew
Click to expand...

I fully agree with you, Matthew.

I just realized that Ethan was not talking about backuping projects but only video tapes on LTO. QT uncompressed is fine, probably. Nevertheless it's a propriatarian container that belongs to Apple. DPX is open, AFAIK but not as convenient.

Hans
 
Thanks for the responses guys. 10bit might be a little large for backing up the 100's of tapes they have for this client. Have another codec suggestion or should they just bite the bullet and go with the large file sizes?

Also, does LTO suffer from the same problems that plague other metal oxide based tapes over time? I know one of their concerns with their old MII's was that the magnetic recording medium would eventually begin to break down (if not already) and pull away from the plastic backing when being run over the heads in the machine. Does LTO suffer the same fate over time?
 
I do like the idea of DPX being open and not belonging to one particular company. How do DPX file sizes compare to 10bit uncompressed SD?
 
LTO also supports lossless compression. But with some apps you can chunk and RAR the data before hitting the LTO. Bru Server would be a good back up app to use. So far as I recall M2 will involve going back to baseband video so whatever the codec it needs to be at least 10bit but not much point in going to great bit depth and also the signal path needs to be 10bit between the M2 and whatever captures it.
 
As I understand it they'll be pulling into a MacPro through a Kona LH card so 10bit shouldn't be a problem.

What are your thoughts on ProRes? Tied too closely to one particular company/NLE?
 
Prores has been fine for us. The only thing I've ever seen is a few strange artifacts that have cropped up using compressor down converting from Prores HD to Prores SD. Other than that its been fine. Uncompressed is likely to be safe for a good while yet while Im not sure what will be around or supported in 10 years or more. Its said LTO tape has a life of 25 years or more so may be aim for that time frame. Kona LHe's are good too we have a few of them.
 
you could use the new panasonic p2 gear, play your tapes into hd-sdi and record to 10 bit avc-intra, which is stored in an .mxf file format with full meta data capability and panasonic's software for free to search and build a database on either mac or pc or both. .mxf is smpte approved/preferred archive format for meta data and file management purposes......
 
Cinewalt said:
LTO, all the way. It's not old technology - just read up on it on the Wikipedia page. It's intentionally future-proof, as all the old LTO spec tapes are usable on the new machines, and all new machines are backwards compatible.
Click to expand...

Agree entirely. PLenty of excellent detailed posts on these forums about Ultrium LTO4 tape as an archive and the various configuration that work. wont post here again.

Above is very veyr fast and cheap.

Archive Software a plenty on mr softees os, some on Linux and very few on MACOSX (if so I use BRU-PE)... SOftware macs it work. (Note no tape TAR support on OSX 10.5).

Ultrium LTO4 archive content is usually (mostly) agnostic to the format/wrapper of the CMF that it houses. (R3D, P2, PRORES, DNXHD, etc etc) (exception would be any hybrid usages of tape drives that are sensitive to codecs or wrapper such that those that boast "mxf' aware.. those for not for me.

I mention my successful configuration on OSX in several threads in these forums. Uee HP ULTRIUM LTO4 1840 | 1760 tape SAS tape drives. BRU-PE_ATTO EXPRESSSAS on a MACPRO

This was demo'ed by TolisGroup at the NAB2009 LAFCPUG Supermeet.

HP will deploy their ULtrium LTO5 maybe at end of year (roadmap) so 200% of capacity and data rates of current Ultrium LTO4.

Archives easily and idependantly transferred form one tape format to another. DAta Tapes last for deaceds as well known when keep in reasonabel conditions (bedroom ok).

search the REd forums for excellent detail and experiences.

fwiw
 
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