How should we archive?

A DVD or any optical format is definitely not the only place we should archive a project. DVD is a fickle medium, prone to scratches, data loss and something new which has surprised a lot of people which is being called 'rot'. There are two feasible options for archiving.

Tape

The easiest and most cost effective is to back up to tape, ideally at SP speed and in its entirety. If you have to use two tapes either fade to black at a convenient point when you're archiving or overlap the end of the first tape and the beginning of the second tape so that you can stitch them back together if you need to recapture them into the computer. There are cons to tape based archiving though. One is that you have to be concerned about dropping frames when you're outputting the program. If the playback out of the computer stutters or the audio drops out and you're not monitoring it thats the way it will be forever. Another con of tape based storage, for more than one reason, is that it is tape based. For starters we all know tapes are prone to dropouts and physical damage. Secondly, tapes are linear. Should you want to create a new demo or compilation you have to recapture in real time. Thirdly, every tape format will eventually become replaced. Its inevitable. The problem may be trying to obtain a playback device that allows you access your masters and access them correctly. As it stands right now the newer formats, HDV for example, are backwards compatible with SD Mini-DV, but that most likely will not be the case with the follow-up formats. Any legacy format will eventually be unsupported by its manufacturer.

Hard Disk

Archiving on hard disk has become more cost-effective as the price of hard drives drop. Hard disk recording is surprisingly similar to tape recording. The magnetic recording material on a cassette tape is coated onto a thin plastic strip. In a hard disk, the magnetic recording material is layered onto a high-precision aluminum or glass disk. They are essentially the same process being carried out on a different substrate.

The advantages of hard disk are nearly identical, but opposite, of the disadvantages of tape, including no dropped frames, a much lower chance of physical damage, all the information is instantly accessible, and because the format of the recording can much more easily be converted to newer formats the playback device is immaterial.

There are two disadvantages of hard disk recording, one small and one potentially large but with unknown frequency. The first is hardware compatibility. ATA, also known as PATA or EIDE, is the best bargain in terms of cost for gigabyte right now. But will ATA be supported for much longer? Absolutely not. It is being phased out already. But the number of conversion options will remain high for many, many years given the huge numbers of ATA drives in the marketplace. FireWire, also known as iLink and IEEE-1394A, as well as SATA to ATA convertors will be readily available well into the foreseeable future at a much lower cost than a Mini-DV deck or camera. The second disadvantage of archiving to hard disk is the potential for catastrophic data loss. Everyone has either experienced or known someone that has lost massive amounts of data with no warning or apparent cause. In many cases, with the right tools, the data is retrievable, but there will always be the chance that the programs you've archived could be irreparably lost. It should be taken into consideration that data loss needs to be instigated by use, so the chances of a drive's data simply disappearing while it sits on the shelf are virtually non-existent.

Personal Experience

In 2004 I sold my Sony DSR-30, which is a DVCAM deck that accepts a full-sized cassette. It was just after HDV was announced and the writing was on the wall: SD will be a legacy format within 5 years. So, as I did in 1999 with all of my analog decks and cameras, off it went to eBay, getting a very good price. I decided to back up to Mini-DV, using the overlap method for longer programs. That proved too cumbersome, so I started archiving to hard disk. Despite the possibility of data loss I'm hooked. Saving all the resources to a file fits neatly into my workflow, eliminates printing to tape, and makes retrieval a breeze. (I also am able to start using up that case of plastic VHS snap-shut cases I'll never need - a 3.5" ATA drive fits nicely into them.)

Archiving to Hard Disk

Into each clients file goes the finished program, a copy of the VIDEO_TS file, the Final Cut Pro project file, any associated graphics and a copy of the Photoshop documents for the DVD case insert and label. The total for each client is anywhere from 20 - 30 GB. For a while I was placing the archival ATA drives into a standard FireWire enclosure, but an experience with a faulty internal SATA drive taught me the importance of the critical S.M.A.R.T. monitoring. S.M.A.R.T. stands for Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology. It enables the computer to predict the future failure of hard disk drives before any data is lost or damaged. In the case of my SATA drive I was monitoring the S.M.A.R.T. status with Alsoft's DiskWarrior. A warning box suddenly appeared that stated that the drive would fail. I made a back-up of the data, removed the hard drive and was able to have it replaced under warranty. I immediately realized how vulnerable my FireWire hard drives were. Nearly all FireWire hard drive enclosures are blind to the S.M.A.R.T. information the hard disk can provide, except one. Granite Digital has a line of enclosures that include an LCD display which allows you to monitor not only the S.M.A.R.T. status but also other statistics like data rate. I now use a SMART enabled Granite Digital enclosure whenever I'm archiving. When a drive is full it goes into a VHS case. I also create two copies of the DVD, one for archival reasons and one for display to show potential clients at meetings.