Archiving Footage for Safekeeping

[darkpixie08]

Silly question for the experts:

I'm amassing quite a bit of home movie footage, and I'd like to take it all and put it on a DVD to keep it all in a safe deposit box. Is there a "best format" to store these files in, to keep over the years? Anything I should know about long term wear and tear? Any best practices for archiving footage? Thanks.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

How do you bring the home videos to your Mac?

And I would store them as uncompressed as it gets, for instance if you use iMovie to capture the footage and iMovie uses the Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC) to compress the files in, I would store the footage in that format, but I would use an external 2.5" HDD to do so, 500 GB in a 2.5" USB enclosure can be had for less than 50 €, and I would store it on two HDDs, thus I have a copy of a copy.

What I actually did was capturing my DV and Digi Beta tapes via Avid Media Composer and storing the footage on three HDDs, two for backup, one for working with it.

 

[WestSt]

Is the camera tape or file based (with a HDD or Flash drive - AVCHD, MP4, mpeg.. Etc)?

If it's file based, I would store the file archive excactly as it's structured on the camera, because then there is no compressing involved, and iMovie/Final Cut can import with some work arounds, if you want to re-import later... (With tape I'm clueless)

 

[cgbier]

(With tape I'm clueless)

Tape has the archive built in

For file based video, create Archives with iMovie/FCP X on external drives (let them spin some now and then). That'll keep your originals with a small file size.

I'm not too impressed with the longevity of DVD for archiving (got burned there)

 

[WestSt]

Tape has the archive built in

Haha, of course... Goes without saying! Just goes to show excactly how TOTALLY CLUELESS I am with tape