Archiving MiniDV Tapes

[johnnycrystal]

Hello.

Since I begin shooting video in 2004, I have over 75 MiniDV tapes of my grandchildren and important family events. From these tapes, I have made over 100 DVDs using various Premiere Elements versions. These tapes have been used only once.

I would like to archive each tape (over 75 hours) to my hard drive. I have the space and power to do it.

I am concerned that the tapes will degrade by just sitting around. They are well cared for, but I feel I should archive them to a digital format.

Has anyone done this? How can I do it without using PE? I want to some day access these files for video editing puirposes.

Thanks.

[rfjg]

Yes, over time tapes will degrade, so its very good to have them saved to disc.

At just under 14gb per hour, your going to need 1.1tb of free disc space. Hard disks do fail as well, so you want have the files backed up to another dive as well.

I'd recommed caputring the tapes with winDV (http://windv.mourek.cz/), a freeware utility. Works very well, I don't use premeire elements for capturing at all. I also like that you can configure it so that the file names are based on the time code from the tape (ie. "2007-12-11_18-06-51_Tue.0.avi" )

[Steve Grisetti]

On the other hand, home-burned discs will also degrade over time. So I'm not sure of any way to permanently store any data. And nobody knows how long any media will last.

I've got a drawer full of 25 year old videos, and I'm not seeing any loss of quality. (I've also got audio tapes from 50 years ago that still sound very good!) So however you store your media, keep it in a cool, dry place and it may well outlast you.

[Bobby]

I do both, sort of. When a tape is finished being recorded I capture it to hard drive and I keep it all. Yes, lots of data, but even if I finish a specific video project I may want to come back and re-use the files later in a different project. I keep recent stuff on an internal drive, but most is on two mirrored external drives. Well, actually multiple pairs of external drives. So I archive if you will on-the-fly rather than later. And I keep all the tapes and don't reuse them.

But I agree with Steve that tapes last a long time. I have tapes from the early 80s and they are fine.

[sidd finch]

I would also suggest that you also cross reference your DV tapes with the Hard drive files and vice versa. Althought 75 tapes is not alot, as you continue to generate Dv tapes at that rate you will have a lot of tapes and tring to go back and find a specific tape is difficult.

Also finding a few identical storage containers so that as your collection grows you can keep it organized while you store it.

I also record the begining and ending date of each DV Tape so that I store mine in order to make it easier to go back and find something. I am at over 400 DV tapes and it is always a mini project finding something. But like Steve says I have not noticed any issues with my old tapes that are 11 plus years.

Sidd

[Steve Grisetti]

A good idea, Sidd, if you've got the storage space.

Remember, most of those 25 year old tapes of mine are analog. If they break down at all, I'll just see reduced quality.

But DV video is different. There's no such thing as erodedquality in DV, since it's all just computer data. But, if DV breaks down, you get nothing. It's either there or it isn't.

So while the risk of your tapes eroded over time appears to be minimal -- any erosion could me complete loss of your video!

[johnnycrystal]

A very special Thank You to everyone for the great advice. The 75 tapes will probably stay at 75 as I have graduated into HD with a new camcorder and will be using flash media, no longer going the tape route to any great extent.

Is there a consensus that I should use WinDV to import the tapes into my hard drive(s)?

[Steve Grisetti]

It's as good as any. The beauty of tape-based DV is that it's computer data -- so every program captures the video unchanged from the camcorder. All DV capture programs produce exactly the same quality of capture.

[Bobby]

I am not "up" on miniDV digital encoding, but usually there is a lot of redundancy and recovery built into these kind of systems so they may be more tolerant than you might think. Bob?

[Bob]

Bobby is absolutely right. Tape is inherently subject to read/write errors and the DV spec includes error correction for material written to tape. The firewire link also has error correction to guard against errors in transmission. It's probably more robust than you think. However, that doesn't mean that the data stream can always be recovered.

Ages ago, when I was a mainframe systems programmer, we set up an automated system at our shop for digital tapes that required long term retention. Those tapes were scheduled to be completely rewound once a year to reduce print-through and rewritten to a new tape every five years. We found that substantially improved our ability to read the tapes later. Our tapes were also stored in a temperature and humidity controlled room.

Heat can cause the tape magnetization to change. Try to store your tapes where they will not get too hot or humid.

[johnnycrystal]

I Googled WinDV and am concerned about the detail associated with its operation.

Would it be better/ easier / more productive that I use PreE7 to import my tapes? AVI files are created in a project folder, and I am already set up in PreE7 should I want to create projects down the road.

[Chuck Engels]

I was never fond of the DV Capture in Premiere Elements, it never would name the clips properly for one thing.
WinDV has been a very useful tool for me when capturing DV Tape and also use HDVSplit for capturing HDV tape.
WinDV has a very small footprint, does not use a lot of resources (like Premiere Elements does), and it was made to do one thing very well - capture and export to/from DV tape and a computer via Firewire. It is highly recommended that you give it a try. I have had capture issues with Premiere Elements, I have never had a single capture issue with WinDV

[johnnycrystal]

Do you have a link to the instructions for using WinDV? One link I read had about 10 steps in it. I'm not sure if it was correct or not.

[Chuck Engels]

There really isn't much to it Johnny, easier than the capture utility in Premiere Elements.
There is an interactive screen shot here that should be of help;
http://windv.mourek.cz/

There is a nice little instruction page here
http://www.windowsmoviemakers.net/PapaJ ... WinDV.aspx

I am planning on creating a tutorial about using WinDV and HDVSplit, should be available later this month.

[johnnycrystal]

Thanks, Chuck. I will give it a shot.

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