[MacDV] archiving: mini-DV, DVD or hd? The Sequel

[Mark O'Brien]

On 1/10/03 12:38 PM, "Malcolm Hamilton" <malcolm_hamilton at cbc.ca> wrote:

> This sounds easy to use, but comes back to the question of compression.
> Will these DVD-recorders allow me to record the Hi-8 footage as a DV file???
> As much as I'd love to squeeze more on a DVD than a paltry half-hour, I
> think I now understand that if I want DV quality, a half-hour is all I can
> ask of a DVD-R.  If I go even for one hour's worth (let alone two), quality
> will suffer, right?
> Especially when you consider that when I do want to do, eventually, is
> editing, and that I'll want to edit the stuff as DV... if I've compressed it
> more than that, then maybe it's a big deal to de-compress it back to DV???
> Can anyone advise on this?
If these are standard DVDs that play your video on a DVD player, they are
compressing your video into an MPEG2 file. That's the DVD standard. I don't
know what kind of compression the recorders use or how good the quality is,
but it WILL be compressed.

If you want to convert your Hi8 to DV, each hour will use up 12-13GB of
storage - you'll actually be able to get less than a half hour of video on
each DVD as a DV file.

> 
> Phil goes on - -
> 
>>> Another option is hard drive archiving.  I figure the cost of a DV tape and
> DVD-R blank are about half the price of hard disk storage, but is much less
> convenient if you plan to edit some day... a HD takes up less space, and is
> arguably more robust than tape, and maybe a DVD-R.
> 
> This may be a good idea, but does anyone know if, in the same way we can be
> pretty sure that hard drives will get bigger and cheaper, there might be
> DVD-Rs, right around the corner, that will hold an hour's worth of DV
> footage, instead of a half-hour?
> 
> And if I wait for something bigger, faster and cheaper, will some of my Hi-8
> tapes, which date back eleven years, have suffered for my delay?

I recently recorded some 15-20 year old beta tapes onto Digital8 (DV on an
8mm tape) because I was worried about physical degradation of the beta
tapes. My thought is they are now on newer media that will last for another
15-20 years, and I won't suffer any generational loss when I find something
more stable at a reasonable cost down the road. I bought the Digital8
cassettes in bulk for ~$3/cassette.
-- 
Mark O'Brien
AIM: rmarkob