I just wanted to let those people wondering how to back up all that P2 footage building up on your hard drives that my new Exabyte tape drive works great!
I was tired of backing up to DVD-R and spending hours swapping out discs waiting for Blue-Ray thinking that would be better.
In October http://www.exabyte.com released the VXA-320 fire Wire tape drive. I can back up 160 gigs in a single session. If and when you need to recover a file you just open up Retrospect and select the file you want to recover and it transfers back to your computer at 700 megs per second. You don't have to load the whole tape back to your hard drive!
The drive was $974 on Monday when I ordered it. I just checked now to post this link and they raised the price to $1100 but still worth it. http://www.nextwarehouse.com/item/?568696
Re: Exabyte Tape Backup by matthew Romanis on Dec 22, 2007 at 5:58:35 am
Hi Lars,
It looks like a nice alternative, similar concept to DLT and LTO.
But where do you get 700megs per second transfer rate from? The tech specs claim a sustained rate of 24MB/s compressed, and 12MB/s native, with a "burst" of 160MB/s.
Hope to see a lot of these devices hitting the market soon.
Re: Exabyte Tape Backup by Lars Wikstrom on Dec 22, 2007 at 8:06:56 am
I'm sorry, that was a typo it is not 700 megs per second, it is 700 megs per minute. I am so use to everythign beign 'Per Second' these days.
The real surprise when I got it was findigng out that I could bring separate files back into the computer. Everyone was saying that I had to bring the whole tape back onto the hard drive to access the files again.
I did find out that you can not take advantage of the Data Compression. Video is already compressed so tapes that say 160/320gigs you can only use the 160 gigs. But you know how long it would take to back up 160 gigs on DVD-R media, haha!
Re: Exabyte Tape Backup by matthew Romanis on Dec 22, 2007 at 2:37:48 pm
Hi Lars,
I'm still waiting for our LTO 3a drive to arrive. Seeing how close we are to Christmas I won't be expecting it till sometime in the new year now (This is our big Holiday in Australia, nothing happens now for about 2 weeks!!!)
I have heard the same thing abut our expected drive, that it is MXF aware across the LAN.
Looking forward to trying it out.
Merry Christams to all who are, Happy Holidays to the rest.
Re: Exabyte Tape Backup by matthew Romanis on Dec 23, 2007 at 12:23:16 am
Hi Lars,
It means that the drive has the ability to store information on ram about what is on LTO and where. Partial recapture and prompt locating of file segments is possible, and information that may have been used to identify clips in MXF fields can read and located without looking at the entire file.
Supposed to save time, and make re-capture easier. We rely upon a large archive library for some clients, about 3000 tapes in size for one client. All jobs now will get archived in this manner, plus we will start to retroactively archive the most used tapes from the library.
Re: Exabyte Tape Backup by Lars Wikstrom on Dec 23, 2007 at 5:47:59 am
That sounds almost exactly what the Exabyte drive can do except for reading meta data. I saw Jan at the DV Expo in LA and mentioned the Exabyte drive to her. She was the one that warned me that I might have to load the whole tape back on to the drive to use it. I am glad that is not the case but was good to know.
That is a huge library of 3000 tapes for 1 client! Dam...
Re: Exabyte Tape Backup by Matthew Romanis on Dec 23, 2007 at 9:17:40 am
"That is a huge library of 3000 tapes for 1 client! Dam..."
Yeah, there is a lot of historical reference. We have tried out a few library programs but have found that File Maker Pro with the media reference files to be the best for us. A lot of cross reference with heaps of B roll and Sub master tapes from the good ol' days before non linear.
We have to be careful with the P2 approach, especially with this client. The methodology that Panasonic push is to archive only what you use, but all footage is important to keep, we are after all the historical documenters of these times, and self censorship has served no one terribly well in the past. Something that we may think is pointless may eventually give a great insight at a later time, case in point, the old shots of Bill Clinton hugging Monica Lewinsky. They apparently came from some one still shooting film who was able to go through some old proof sheets, the other clickers at that event had apparently deleted the shots because they thought she was not important.
Now this may be an urban myth of a story, but I have heard it a few times now, and there may be a grain of truth. The point is though that not all of us have the luxury of dropping shots we did not use in the 1st cut. A good, reliable back up system for all footage shot is important, and it is great to see more of these systems becoming more and more useful to our side of the I.T world.
The current Panasonic push is to keep only that which is viable, not just what you use. Good Heavens that would be ridiculous. For example, if shooting an actor and it takes hime 23 takes to get it and you use take 22 and 23, do you need to save takes 1-21? No. But if you are shooting something like a presidential campaign and anytime you have the candidate in the shot, those would be viable. The point in your archive is that you only keep the stuff that you will use and not the bad unusable stuff.
Good to know about the Exabyte being able to load in just the clips you want, as I am not as familiar with this as I am the Quantum.
Best to all,
Jan
Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, HPX500, HVX200, DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems
Re: Exabyte Tape Backup by Lars Wikstrom on Dec 23, 2007 at 8:13:14 pm
Ya Jan that was a very nice surprise. After you mentioned that I still went forward and bought it but changed my tapes out to 40 gigs, that way I dod not have to recover the whole tape. But using Retrospect as the backup software allowed me to take Snap Shots which allows for individual file recovery. If those Snap Shots are ever lost then you do have to recover the whole tape to your computer.
Re: Exabyte Tape Backup by Matthew Romanis on Dec 23, 2007 at 9:54:23 pm
Hi Jan,
I was quoting the Panasonic P2 promo DVD that is handed out at P2 instructional events, the VO clearly states that "at the end of the edit, just archive what you have used".
Of course this is a ridiculous approach, especially when you consider that more documenting (corporate and commercial) footage will be shot than any performance based material.
And what if the actor you refer to in the example becomes a Star down the track, then all those clumsy out takes will get lost to all those FOX and E network style shows that love to humiliate actors (not really a loss mind you, but you get the point).
With an IT approach to aquisition, it is now more important than ever to consider the way in wich we archive projects.
In Australia Panasonic have been very helpful and knowledgable about the P2 cameras and support devices, but little information about archive solutions.
We had to resource this ourselves. The LTO 3a solution seems to be the best way for us to go forwards at the moment, but we will always be reviewing this.
Re: Exabyte Tape Backup by Chris Baldwin on Dec 27, 2007 at 8:38:47 pm
Small question here.
So the Exabyte, using Retrospect, can write the data and retrieve it in a way that means you don't have to re-import the entire contents of the tape?
So are you archiving the original P2 disk images or are you archiving the mxf stripped versions of the files?(ie QT in FCP)
How does the tape interface with NLE programs like FCP? Do you need to transfer the tape contents to a hard drive and then import the clips into FCP or can FCP's log and transfer tool read the data directly from the tape?
Last little question...
Isn't there a model that can connect via a sata cable? You have hard drive enclosures out there with 4 interfaces, it sure would be nice to have that near 3fold jump in transfer speeds.
Re: Exabyte Tape Backup by Lars Wikstrom on Dec 28, 2007 at 12:02:13 am
You can transfer anything to the tape. It is just a data back up like making a DVD-R disc. What I do is set up part of my hard drive, 80 megs, and I just drop all the P2 footage to that drive when I import it. When it fills up I just write all the footage to a tape. I also add what ever finished products to that same drive to back up as well.
Using Retrospect to back up you can then later just pull 1 small part of of the tape like a Quicktime movie or one of your P2 import folders.
