What's the best output format for archiving my projects?
by Justin Geoghegan
on
Jul 29, 2009 at 11:27:36 pm
I am using dpsVelocity 8.2 (no HD and no 3D card) for editing videos at my church. I output as MPEG2 with some standard compression to reduce the file size for display through our projectors. But for long term storage I would prefer a file that isn't any further compressed than the 5 MB/S that it drops down to during capturing.
Is there a native file format that I could output to, delete the captured footage from the media drive, and then years later drop that file back into dpsVelocity and it would be editable and high quality just like the original project? I understand that I would not have any of the extra captured footage ... I'm talking just the stuff that made it into the final video.
Re: What's the best output format for archiving my projects? by Chris Blair on Jul 30, 2009 at 2:09:21 am
You can unify your timeline into one .dva/.dps file. All you do is export your movie as a .dva/.dps and check the unify option. Velocity will render whatever needs to be rendered in the timeline (if anything), then make one long file of the entire timeline. You specify the data rate in your preferences general settings. You'll want to check it prior to rendering because it has a bug that causes it to change to uncompressed. So just set it at what you want your final file to be, and export away.
It should be real-time or near real-time too. So if your timeline plays back in real-time, exporting to this usually is also real-time (unless you render it uncompressed). But since you're talking about 5MB/sec, it'll go really fast. It uses the hardware on the Velocity board so that's why it's faster than outputting to MPG2 or other software based formats.
It doesn't affect your current timeline either (other than possibly rendering a few transitions and layered segments), and it will put the resulting .dva/.dps file into your gallery. It will render those files to the drives you've specified in your project mananagement settings when you set your project up (usually the :P drive and your audio drive).
Hope that helps.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
www.videomi.com
Re: What's the best output format for archiving my projects? by Justin Geoghegan on Sep 2, 2009 at 5:51:25 pm
Do these DVA/DPS files require anything on the media drive to function? My media drive (P:) is only 48GB so I am basically looking for an archival method that lets me completely remove the project from that drive while maintaining the 5 MB/sec quality.
Re: What's the best output format for archiving my projects? by Justin Geoghegan on Sep 2, 2009 at 6:05:57 pm
Ohh I see .. it created a single DPS file on the Media drive (MLT00021.dps) that is the appropriate size for a nearly 5 minute video at 1.3GB. So if I pull that from the media drive to an archive drive and include the DVA file that was made in the AV folder I should be good to go right?
About to test with a project that doesn't really matter if I lose it.
Re: What's the best output format for archiving my projects? by Chris Blair on Sep 2, 2009 at 11:33:28 pm
Yup..you got it. You should also be backing up your individual project files, video and audio so if you have to restore the project and edit, you can do that too. There's also a function in Velocity that deletes all unused media and just keeps the media used in the timeline. That way, you only back up the raw files that are actually used in the project.
We skip that and just have a 4TB backup that runs nightly that backs up all .dva and all .dps file. When it gets full, we offload those to either external hard drives or dual-layer DVD. But 4TB takes a pretty long time to fill up, so we don't have to do it very often.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
www.videomi.com
Re: What's the best output format for archiving my projects? by Chris Blair on Sep 2, 2009 at 11:31:02 pm
Nope. If you download the DPS avi codec and avi player utilities, you can even play .dps and .dva files in Windows Media Player. So once you archive, just move them to a backup drive (make sure to move audio and video files).
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
www.videomi.com
