Re: archiving P2 cards

Budget and time are a factor here. Here is my list of factors for archiving.

1. Reliability - How safe is this precious data? How long will it last?

2. Read/Write times - If I'm doing the archiving on set, what is the speed at which I can perform these archives? In a post environment, you may be able to setup stations for doing this that do not have time stringent limitations.

3. Cost - What's the price that I have to pay to get the reliability and speed I need.

4. Client expectations/willingness to pay for it

I have to weigh all of these things carefully, and determine the best price/performance for the given situation. For me, I'll be backing up P2 and Redcode Raw files so I am looking at robust tools. Losing even a single take is unacceptable. Tape backup is tried and true. Hard drives are not all equal, and same goes with optical media. Brand does matter, but even then how much trust do you put into it?

Somebody has to pay for the expenses involved with archiving because it takes time and materials and both cost money. Can we be expected to backup to several media formats indefinitely? In my opinion, the client has to help out with these costs and they have to determine how long they expect us to archive their projects.

Here is what I intend to do on future projects.

1. Once the aquisition format is determined (for this example let's use P2), we determine how many P2 cards will be needed on set, usually determined by how many the production can afford. Or if they are using a Firestore, how many will fit into the budget.

2. Determine how much footage on average will be aquired in a given day. For this example, let's say the client is shooting in 720P 24N and the camera package incudes two 8GB P2 cards for a total of about 40 minutes of footage. It is estimated that about 3 hours of footage will be aquired that day. So about nine P2 cards will be used during the course of the day. So at a minimum, you will need to be archiving seven P2 cards on set, with the other 2 potentially being backed up later.

3. How will we back up those P2 cards? In this case, the content is aquired on a P2, then at some point that P2 is brought over to the backup station and needs to get archived before it is needed again. Once it is properly archived, it needs to be formatted. There is the rub. Once that card is formatted and new material is shot, we can't get it back, so whatever we just archived has to in fact be a replica of what was on that card. So what do you put your faith in? Hard drive? DVD? Tape (DLT, LTO)?

That is why a bulletproof setup has to be in place. Even if we had ten P2 cards on set and we could bring them back into post and back them up in several places, eventually those P2 cards go back out the door and get formatted again. There will be no chance to compare the data later on if a question comes up about the integrity of the backup. This is the challenge to file based aquisition. With the Red cameras, there is talk of treating the compact flash media just like you would a film reel or a tape. It gets put on the shelf as a master. At $200 for an 8GB CF card, that's a pretty expensive master, but could be justified in some situations (feature film). But at $899 for a P2 card, it's just cost prohibitive.

So when it comes time to archive this project for the client, what are we keeping on the shelf? Let's assume we have decided to backup the P2 cards to a SDLT600a. The client shot 200GB of material and we archived that to a single SDLT tape which has a capacity of 300GB. That tape then get's put on the shelf as our production master. The material had been transferred over to Firewire800 drives for editing, and in this case FCP wrapped the files in a Quicktime blanket, creating new files. Through the course of the project, new files are imported such as audio, graphics, music, etc. Now we have a finished piece, and we output to a DVCProHD master for shelf and delivery. What now to do with the material sitting on the drives. Our 200GB of material has blossomed to 280gb of material with all the additional content. We could backup once again to the SDLT which could fit this onto a single tape. Not a bad solution. We could fit it onto a bare hard drive using the weibtech or other similar technologies. Also, a pretty good option. Perhaps we don't want to add the quicktimes to the backup because we already have the original MXF files backed up to tape. You still have 80gb left to backup. Maybe Blue Ray is the answer.

Okay, once that is all worked out, now who is paying for the backup? Who is paying to have it sit on a shelf taking up space? You already have the original files, and the final tape master. You're covered in that regard. Okay, the client is talking about coming back in a few months to revisit this edit and repurpose it. It will be much easier to just restore the project from hard drive or disc backup. But again, is there a price to be paid here?

There are a lot of things that need to be thought through with file based aquisition. As I mentioned earlier, you have to weigh price/performance. For those clients that want to pay fees for having everything archived and stored on a shelf, there is revenue potential there. But storing files on several formats indefinitely for no charge, seems like bad business. Not saying anyone is doing this, but I'm sure it's the type of thing that crosses our minds. We want to be absolutely certain that these files are safe, so we go above and beyond to do so in some situations. But as we can see, this is where the time we saved from having to digitize footage can be quickly lost if we are not smart. I am still researching all of the current archive solutions to see what will work best in my situation and I encourage everyone else to do the same. It's critical that we have the right kind of tools in place. Otherwise, we may be wishing we could go back to the old days. I see the future as bright, but sometimes it's like the wild, wild west and you just have to get all of your facts lined up so that you make smart purchasing decisions.

Steve