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Best way to Archive 300+ hours of mini DV to HD

D

DonJMa

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 31, 2009
10
0
I am needing to archive 100's of hours of mini DV to external HD that must be cross platform. I have a mac and FCP 6, but it must also be compatible for PC's
I have tried just batch capturing through FCP, but the PC's do not recognize the saved movie files.
I am not editing these now, this is just for archiving, but as I said needs to be contained movies to be read by any computer?
Would running through IMovie make a compatible quicktime movie file?
Thank you
Explain simply, I do not have a lot of background in this :)
 
One hour of DV encoded video takes up 12GB of HDD space, so that would be almost 4TB with 300 hours.

FCP and iMovie both use the Apple DV codec as far as I remember, which might result in a file suffix of .dv.

You could try to install the latest version of QuickTime Player (7.x.y) onto a PC and see if that works, otherwise you will have to convert the video to an .avi file with whatever codec you choose (DV, MPEG-4, ....), because as far as I know, there is no Mac OS X software that captures DV (Digital Video) tapes and saves them as an .avi file.
 
archiving mini DV to Hard drive that can be opened in Macs and PC's?

Wanting to archive hundreds of hours of mini dv to hard drive that can be opened and used in macs or PC's. anybody know how to do this?
I currently have a powerbook GV 17" that I will be using for downloading. Will be getting a new Macbook pro in the next couple of months. So I need the files to be read by old and new macs as well as PC's
Thank you
 
DonJMa said:
Wanting to archive hundreds of hours of mini dv to hard drive that can be opened and used in macs or PC's. anybody know how to do this?
I currently have a powerbook GV 17" that I will be using for downloading. Will be getting a new Macbook pro in the next couple of months. So I need the files to be read by old and new macs as well as PC's
Thank you
Click to expand...

So you have not even tried the QT Player route, have you?

A .mov file can be played by Mac OS X and Windows (installed on PCs, not PC's, or is it Mac's instead of Macs?), if the right QT version is installed (QT 7.6.x something is the latest compatible with Windows (from Windows 5 upwards) and Mac OS X (from 10.4 upwards).
 
If the PCs have any remotely recent version of QuickTime installed they should be able to properly read the .MOVs that FCP is making as Apple's DV codec is one of the standard QT codecs.


Lethal
 
Honestly, it'll take quite some time if you do it yourself. I'm planning on doing my family's hours and hours of family movies and am going the imemories.com route. Pretty cheap and they give it to you on an external drives in h264 MOVs.
 
QuarterSwede said:
Honestly, it'll take quite some time if you do it yourself.
Click to expand...

Right...I'm estimating 300+ hours. ;)

Aside from the format, just how much would a company change for 300+ hours of material? Sounds way too cost-prohibitive for anyone with this much material to consider.

From their site: 1TB drive $350 x 4 (as someone quoted above 4TB would be needed) is $1400....then $10 per tape to transfer to digital format...is $2000 for 300 hours (being cautious and saying that each tape has 90 minutes on it)

A lowball total is $3400 for 300 hours of video transferred to HDs.

Or, one can spend about $300 for 4TB of HD storage and start importing yourself.

Of course, if your time is precious...the cost may be worth it I suppose.

What I have done is just import through iMovie onto a fresh FW external on which I will be hosting all my video. I will always be using Mac...I can't imagine shifting to a PC platform, but if I did I am sure that the PC would be able to read the files. I also plan on keeping the tapes as a secondary backup too. I probably only have around 150 hours...so I am in better shape that the OP.
 
follow up

Yes I did try QT on the PC, it would not read the .mov file from FCP 6
I do not want to compress the movies at all. I know it will take around 4tb's and yes I will be doing it.

I have a mac, but this is not a personal project, it is part of a non-profit, where the data/movie files need to be accessed from pcs and macs

I did experiment with just running it through imovie 5.02. The QT file from this could be opened on a pc, but the quality looked bad - it still showed the file size was the same, so not sure about that.

But so far running through FCP even though I just did a batch capture thinking it would be an uncompressed self contained QT file - could not be opened in the pc by a new version of QT player

Any others with knowledge of this?
 
how old is the PC you're trying it on?
it seems odd that you can't play the DV files (this is standard definition I take it?)

do they just need to be played back on a PC or editted on a PC?
If it's just playing, what about VLC video player? it seems to play everything.
 
DonJMa said:
Yes I did try QT on the PC, it would not read the .mov file from FCP 6
I do not want to compress the movies at all. I know it will take around 4tb's and yes I will be doing it.

I have a mac, but this is not a personal project, it is part of a non-profit, where the data/movie files need to be accessed from pcs and macs

I did experiment with just running it through imovie 5.02. The QT file from this could be opened on a pc, but the quality looked bad - it still showed the file size was the same, so not sure about that.

But so far running through FCP even though I just did a batch capture thinking it would be an uncompressed self contained QT file - could not be opened in the pc by a new version of QT playe

Any others with knowledge of this?
Click to expand...

Hi,
I am surprised that PCs could not open the files on the Mac. I've never had a problem with my clients - as long as they had the latest version of qt.

This is my business as I transfer home videos etc like imemories except I don't have a nice retail store. Nice to see because I think it's important for ppl to revisit the family memories.
 
Do you have a budget for this?

What are the actual requirements of the project, e.g. do people want immediate access to all material in full quality? How about searching the archive? Will meta-data be needed/desired?

I recently went to an info session on video archiving (OMG it was boring - I just went for the free stuff ... which was crap.:mad:) and the general push was that tape is king for archiving. It is more reliable than hard drives, and BluRay discs are too expensive.

If you use hard drives, you'll need multiple copies of each one.

No matter which way you go, this is going to cost in the thousands to do reliably so let the people who want this done know that.
 
The pc is only about a year old

The files that come from FCP are .mov files
from imovie is .dv
 
DonJMa said:
The files that come from FCP are .mov files
from imovie is .dv
Click to expand...

the dv files should be more compatible than the .mov files. dv seems to be a universal format whereas .wmv and .mov are more proprietary (although not completely of course).

btw, Martinx is right - you should let the nonprofits know about the potential costs b/c it won't be cheap.
 
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