>I hope I never have to recompress these files but I want to be ready if
needed.
>What are people doing for back-up/archiving? I'm almost convinced that it is
more
>efficient and cost effective to transfer these laser disks to dvcam (or other
dv
>tape) and use those as the digitizing source so that at least I can batch
redigitize
>the footage.
Laserdisks have an abvsolute fram number for everything on the disk. This
is how you can skip to specific chapters in a movie. In addition, optical
media, including Magneto optical, scores many times higher in durability and
longevity compared to traditional hard drives, and especially tape.
Why not use a professional LD player or LD player with Control-L and
digitize direct to a 4:2:2 non linear system. This provides the cleanest path
and you maintain all the available information in the LD as opposed to
reducing it in a 4:1:1 compressor like DV.
As for compressing, it is true that a G3 computer will significantly
accelerate the comrpession process. While I doubt you can wait for the
Motorola G4 with AltiVec, that chip would not only trump the G3, but it is
designed for multiprocessing so multiple G4s would really smoke. But that's
about a year down the road.
So a fast G3 is about all you can do unless there is a Sorenson
compression system that runs on the Alpha chip or runs on an SGI. After that,
the G3 is the speed champ.
> We have 84 hours worth of historic film and video footage
But no matter how you look at it, 84 hours is a _lot_ of video. You'll
still need significant HD space to store it. Taking a web data rate of 50k/s
yields 3MB/min. 84 hours is 5040 minutes, which yields 15.120 gigs.
Given that you wrote that most of these video clips are less than 5
minutes, that would be more than 1008 individual clips. Not only a significant
amount of data to keep track of during compression, but to manage via an
online system.
Perhaps if a database were developed from the outset, it could keep track
of the clips through their various journey through compression, and perhaps
even assist in the compression process letting you set up one machine that
compresses each clip in turn- as managed by the database.
If you have any other qustions just ask.
Anthony
________
Anthony Burokas, Media Technician, IEBA Productions, Inc., Phila. PA
+ Digital Video Consulting and Integration + DV/ DVCAM Sales +
V: (215) 632-3283 + Fax: (215) 612-0663
Go to: <A HREF="http://ieba.com">IEBA.com</A> to find out more.
"Ok, so what's the speed of dark?"