Storing video files

[Hill1]

I have just transfered a video from my camcorder to the PC and have burnt it to a DVD. I have many more of these to do so if I store all of these on the PC as a back up, I will soon run out of HD space. What is the best way of storing them until I need them again Thanks

[Jules]

Keep the original camcorder tape.
Its a more reliable storage medium than optical discs which apparently can fail completely over time.

Also unless you are archiving uncompressed AVI files to DVD (eating up huge amounts of storage space), then you'll be archiving at a lower quality (mpeg2) which doesn't make sense to me unless you just want to archive an edited version to play on any DVD player.

If you still decide to back it all on DVD, and its material that you absolutely don't want to lose (wedding video, kids growing up etc) then make multiple copies of each film on different brands of DVD-R to be sure you don't lose it.

[Hill1]

Thanke Jules

Keep the original camcorder tape.

That would seem the best action to take, but the tape is analogue, and when my analogue camcorder gives up I have no way of viewing them again.
1. What happens when analogue camcorders are defunct i.e there must be thousands of people with these casettes?

I do now use a Sony mini DV Digital Handycam.

2. Could I transfer these analogue tapes to the mini DV, if so I would imagine I would lose picture quality?

If you have an S-video output then the quality may even be better once transferred to DV because of an electronic wizardy thing called time base correction.

Composite would be ok, but the big thing is that subsequent copies wont degrade once on digital, and whats better, a slightly compromised viewable tape or a non-viewable tape?

[melliott1963]

I do the following,

1. Keep all my original tapes.

2. Make 2 copies of my DVD's - one for playing, the other stored safely in case I need to make another copy.

3. Save the edited footage back onto tape.

I'm currently going through all my old analogue Hi8 tapes, putting them onto DVD, but am saving the final edited footage back onto MiniDV tapes. The only lose of quality I would expect from this is that which would have occured when I originally captured the footage from analogue onto my PC. This transfer back to MiniDV (from my editing program) is only possible because my camcorder has the DV-in enabled (a lot don't).

Hope this helps.

[Hill1]

Thanks Guys. I'll go ahead and transfer onto mini DV and keep the original as well