Your next Camcorder?

stingman · Post by **stingman** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 3:21 pm

Mike Shaw wrote: the lift going up the Eifel tower in a hurry? (Well, not quite in a hurry ....)

I have all the material of the Eifel Tower you can get! I took alot while on holiday. I have lost of the journey all the way up! It takes quite along time to get to the top.....

Michael Slowe · Post by **Michael Slowe** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 8:42 pm

Since we got very much off topic I have opened a new one but merely to say that I never mentioned archiving to DVD, heaven forbid. I archive finished productions firstly to HDCAM (or DVCPRO) in uncompressed HD Tape. I also make DVCAM copies and Mini DV for showing apart from the DVD's that I use if I have to. Surely that's enough preservation, even for our friend in Thurso. How Stingman keeps all his stuff on hard drives I'll never understand. I have about 5 tbs in total but I need them all for current productions. I could keep all camera originals on the tapes it was shot on but I still say that's ridiculous.

stingman · Post by **stingman** » Sun Sep 16, 2007 12:05 pm

Michael Slowe wrote: How Stingman keeps all his stuff on hard drives I'll never understand.

Well they are pritty full! I bought a new USB 500gig external one the other month to edit my daughters wedding.

Most of my films are for my club competitions. These range from 5 minutes to 12 minutes max. Not blockbusters like yours MIchael

!
Also I really have only about 3 years of these films on harddrive as thats when I started to get serious and have some sort of direction on where I wanted to go in film-makeing.
Not like you Michael who has about 40 years worth of film!!

So to keep all my films on harddrive may be a bit OTT, I don`t really have that many hours worth on them.

Post by **Dave Watterson** » Sun Sep 16, 2007 12:59 pm

I've said it before but ...

The one thing you can guarantee about hard drives is that eventually they fail. They are mechanical devices and have an average life of between 5 and 7 years.

[Carnegie Mellon University released a report on this in March 2007.]

The life of home-cut CDs and DVDs is between 2 and 6 years.

[according to Herr Kurt Gerecke, IBM expert on data storage. Mr Gerecke told the magazine PC World that two years is about the average life expectancy of a burned disc, and if you keep it in a dark, cool place it might last for five.]

Magnetic tape is frequently quoted as having a 10 year life.

So ... if you really want permanence maybe you need to transfer your video to cine film !?!?! That has an established life of over 100 years so far.

Or of course you could schedule time to make annual copies of your tapes / DVDs and backup your hard drives every couple of years ... a good idea but who actually does it?

Dave

FILM THURSO · Post by **FILM THURSO** » Sun Sep 16, 2007 1:00 pm

There's never enough preservation. My personal preference is that 35mm should be preserved on 35mm but for cost reasons it is often dropped to 16mm internegs. Whilst it saves the image it doesn't save the full detail of the original. We are also in that position of having to save material on lower grades.
Our nitrate negs are going to get digital scanning frame for frame at 1800dpi which is not the 3200dpi we'd prefer but it is higher than a straight 3ccd miniDV master. Our nitrate features are going to be preserved on miniDV but with key images scanned. Some key scenes may be scanned frame for frame. We have done super 8mm transfers on some films but where ever possible we will always keep the original. The hardest thing we'll ever do is to put a match to the nitrate films especially the one that we know is the LAST REMAINING PRINT of "The Adventures Of Maya" which happens to be about 20 minutes short of it's full length.
Whilst you don't see the point of keeping camera originals ponder this... how many of the movies that inspired might you never have seen if originals were never kept?
It astounds me that Michael can see no worth in his original film. Sometimes a shot might get cut from a film because something happens in the background that isn't intended. The background is a key area of value in archive material because sometimes the foreground is a ten-a-penny image but the background might show something that hasn't been recorded elsewhere leaving it as the only record of whatever it may be. We have identified locations of photographs simply by even the tinyest detail way behind the subject. In the quite flat land of Caithness the background is hugely important. One of my family photos is of my great grandfather and family picnicing in front of his caravan in flat grassy area. The area is so flat that there is no rise of land in the background and no geographical landmarks of any kind. However there was one feature, a small but distinct shape of a concrete tower at Thurdistoft farm which identified the picture as having been taken at the Castletown end of Dunnet Beach! Every image is a record of our time even if the actors fluff there lines.

tom hardwick · Post by **tom hardwick** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 2:04 pm

I'm with Michael Slowe - I too never keep my original tapes - they get recycled again and again. When you're only paying £1.20 for a new Sony Premium, a recycled tape at least has proved it's a perfect example.

tom.

FILM THURSO · Post by **FILM THURSO** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 4:09 pm

Oh well looks like some folk will have something to regret in years to come!

tom hardwick · Post by **tom hardwick** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 7:20 pm

I don't regret throwing away my reject Super-8 footage either, and I've had years to wait for the regret to appear.

FILM THURSO · Post by **FILM THURSO** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 8:00 pm

What we say at this point on behalf of the sensible majority is........... whatever!

Stephen · Post by **Stephen** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 10:28 pm

Maybe a point to consider is that most formats we use to record on will be obsolete in 5- 10 years time.

just as a starter

4.7 gigs for a single sided DVD disk, 8.4 gigs on a Double ?

"you "ain't seen nothing yet".

InPhase Technologies, (related to Lucent Technologies), are playing with "Tapestry" a 3D holographic video storage system... Just one of these disks can hold 100 gigabytes of video.You would need more than 20 of todays DVDs to equal the storage capacity of just one of these disks...

Future disks will be able to store 1.3 terabytes and more. 1TB = approx 200 compressed dvd movies.

A postage sized chip at present design holds 2Gb and transfers data at 20 mbs—about 10 times faster than the top video storage devices.

We are talking digits here.... NO loss in transfer its just 0000'ss and 111111's

Don't worry about storing your images in the short term... as technology progresses just whack it onto the next media !!

enjoy the now !

Just a thought

stingman · Post by **stingman** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 9:00 am

Stephen wrote:
InPhase Technologies, (related to Lucent Technologies), are playing with "Tapestry" a 3D holographic video storage system... Just one of these disks can hold 100 gigabytes of video.You would need more than 20 of todays DVDs to equal the storage capacity of just one of these disks...

`Little tommy has just put all his films onto that jiggaterrabyte disc`. He gets it out one evening, a year later to find that it doesn`t work properly. We`ve been there!
I think we need a new type of disc or at least a player/burner that prints just like the `Proper` Prerecorded dics. They may be a bit more reliable then ink.

People have there wedding filmed, and then ask for a dvd of it. In a few years time, it won`t work all because everyone is putting there faith in the Ink that the discs use.

tom hardwick · Post by **tom hardwick** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 9:29 am

Ian's right. Good old fashioned tape still has a lot going for it. Dropouts and stretch and crinkles are the dangers, but even so, tape is far less vulnerable and 'exposed' than any sort of home-burnt optical disc in my view.

tom.

stingman · Post by **stingman** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 3:47 pm

Tape may stretch and dropout. My number one choise for backup etc.
My friend does all his weddings in Longplay. This is another downer. Because there is less information per inch of tape etc then it is even more prone to dropout in the longrun.
I would ALWAYS recomend tape as a form of archive etc. I`ve had the odd disaster with tape but nothing major and then it only lasts for a few seconds, Never a whole film.

tom hardwick · Post by **tom hardwick** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 5:05 pm

In long play mode there's actually *more* information per inch of tape, not less.

stingman · Post by **stingman** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 6:44 pm

tom hardwick wrote:In long play mode there's actually *more* information per inch of tape, not less.

Tom, my friend. I think your wrong

!!

In LP, the tape goes slowly so there is less bandwidth or information per second.

In SP, the tape goes faster so there is more information stored per second!

Think about it.

IAC DISCUSSION FORUMS

Your next Camcorder?

Camera Original Media

Re: Camera Original Media