Best archiving format for the long term?

[eclipse]

Hi all,
I'm just a home iMovie user: nothing professional.

I'm just wondering about the best format to save / archive my movies in as I'm stuck on a G5 for now. This means I can't upgrade to the latest system. In a few years I'll inherit my wife's Quad Core intel, which is compatible with the latest software. Should I just leave my 16 hours of family movies in iMovie itself as projects I can tinker with?

Lastly: What do you do if you feel you've never 'finished' editing important moments? EG: I worry about getting sick of a certain song choices over important family moments, such as the birth of my daughter. Saving that in iMovie is flexible enough, and I can make changes as the mood takes me. Maybe the hard drives of the future will just keep growing exponentially and I won't need to bother with 'archiving' movies at all, but just keep them all in iMovie?

What are your thoughts?

 

[arnop]

Hi all,
I'm just a home iMovie user: nothing professional.

I'm just wondering about the best format to save / archive my movies in as I'm stuck on a G5 for now. This means I can't upgrade to the latest system. In a few years I'll inherit my wife's Quad Core intel, which is compatible with the latest software. Should I just leave my 16 hours of family movies in iMovie itself as projects I can tinker with?

Lastly: What do you do if you feel you've never 'finished' editing important moments? EG: I worry about getting sick of a certain song choices over important family moments, such as the birth of my daughter. Saving that in iMovie is flexible enough, and I can make changes as the mood takes me. Maybe the hard drives of the future will just keep growing exponentially and I won't need to bother with 'archiving' movies at all, but just keep them all in iMovie?

What are your thoughts?

If I'm not mistaken, you won't have any issues with the next Imovie's versions. You'll be able to open your projects with ease. I always export my movies in different quicktime videos as I don't have to re-edit them but if you feel like you might edit them once again in the future. Juste keep them in iMovie format if it doesn't eat up all your HD !

 

[C. Alan]

Supposedly, DVD media is fairly stable, and will last up to 50 years (however, they used to tell us this about CD's as well, so take it with a grain of salt). If it were me, I would burn at least 5 copies, and store at least 3 of them off site. I would not burn them as DVD's but instead do the best quality Quicktime movie type that Imovie can manage. Quicktime is popular enough that in 15 or 20 years, someone should be able to convert it to a format that is usable.

 

[eclipse]

Thanks both of you.

I might do both! I currently have 2 external 1TB hard drives that I use as my Time Machine backup. (How rockin is Time Machine! )

Every time I visit dad, I swap my off-site Time Machine over and bring back the older one.

That way, my off-site Time Machine is never more than 2 or 3 weeks out of date.

One day, if the world ever gets serious about bandwidth, we might all just be Time-Machining to multiple cyberspace locations! But right now I'll follow both recommendations, cheers!

Oh, one last thing: what IS the best Quicktime setting to export the iMovie file? What codec etc? Cheers.

 

[MisterMe]

Supposedly, DVD media is fairly stable, and will last up to 50 years (however, they used to tell us this about CD's as well, so take it with a grain of salt). ....

Where did you get those numbers? I think that you are thinking about commercial DVDs. Commercial DVDs and user-burned DVDs have as much in common as a CD and has in common with printed sheet music. Commercial DVDs store data by stamping micro-pits into an aluminum film. The DVDs that you burn in the home or office store data by using a laser to change the phase of selected micro regions of an optically-sensitive film.

Left exposed to light, a home-burned DVD may quickly become a coaster. Although home-burned CDs are substantially more reliable than their DVD counterparts, there are some issues even with CDs. Heck there are even issues with commercial recorded CDs. We have been told that CDs will last forever. However, doubts have been raised in recent years. It may very well be that commercial recorded CDs will last no more than 20 years. Quite frankly, the notion that those discs are nearly indestructible seems to have been pulled out of someone's butt. CDs [and DVDs] are primarily plastic. Certain formulations of plastic may be extremely durable in the short to medium term. However, I have never seen anything constructed of plastic that looked like new after 50 years. That is what would be required for a CD or DVD to be useful as long-term storage.

 

[eclipse]

Plus, will we even be using DVD's in 10 years? Syquest disk anyone?

 

[martinX]

Plus, will we even be using DVD's in 10 years? Syquest disk anyone?

I'll see your Syquest and raise you a Zip disk!

 

[eclipse]

Dude, I've still got an external floppy disc drive I can plug into my USB port in case...

 

[martinX]

Dude, I've still got an external floppy disc drive I can plug into my USB port in case...

Still got mine too. "Ice blue" IIRC.
As for archiving, it depends on what you want. If you want to be able to edit these things in the future right down to the frame, you'll have to keep all of the original iMovie projects. (You won't edit them though. You have a family, lawn to mow, kid to play with...)

If not, create a high res H.264 file (I use QT X to make an AppleTV version) and let iTunes do the managing.

Lastly: What do you do if you feel you've never 'finished' editing important moments?

Just do it. Sit down and do it. Make it 3 - 5 minutes long, soft wipes, b&w stills, Ken Burns effect, with a cute song (Little Ray Of Sunshine, for example) or you'll never finish them. This happens to me all the time and so every now and then I just do it. Doesn't matter if it's not quite the right length, or the music isn't 'quite right', for family vids people are looking for emotional content and connection, not the perfect cut. That's just us.