Click to Enlarge

In Box: Best Media Storage Methods • DIY Chroma Key

Re the Video Media Archiving by Dr. Robert Nulph, February 2009 issue. I have been investigating the best method for archiving the video I have done over the last 30 years. Your article was very timely for me and invaluable in the information provided. Until I read your article, no one I spoke with could say for sure what the best method was. I have saved all of my video in the original format, which is on tape of various formats. I just need to make copies and am now researching to find the best mini DV recorder to accomplish this.

Over the years your magazine has provided a wealth of information for me and I thank you.
Byron Hodges

Thanks, Byron. In this and upcoming issues of Videomaker, you will find more stories about keeping track of all that data out there from tapeless workflows and backing up files to archiving and media management.
-The Editors

I appreciated your article regarding archiving it was useful. Perhaps in a future edition, you could add to Hard Drive storage the RAID 5 and 6 (Redundant Array of Independent Disks level 5 and 6) which several hard drives are combined with hardware and make it so if one or in some cases two hard drives fail no data will be lost. I have a Netgear ReadyNAS which is configured as a RAID 5 with four one terabyte drives which will store about 3TB of storage, the cost was less than $1,000.00.

Also perhaps you might look into storing the media off site to prevent concerns that a fire could occur destroying all of your backups.

Thanks,
Joe Seckelman

I've read Dr. Nuph's article about Archiving, (Video Media Archiving, article #14289, February 2009). He makes a number of good points. However, I feel that he has a strong bias against any medium of video archiving with the possible exception of the Beta format tapes. My suspicion is that his recent experience of losing a terabyte of archived data has adversely affected his objectivity. He seems like a pessimist and says in effect that no medium that currently exists is any good for long term archiving. Maybe there will be some medium in the future but there is no good format at present. It seems like a rather discouraging article for a magazine that is promoting the making and use of video productions.
Ed Heiss
Cincinnati

Recently, John Burkhart, our Editor-in-Chief, fired up a projector and transferred some of his grandmother's old 8mm film from the 1940s to DVD for the family. While there was some degradation, the film had held up remarkably well This made John think about the digital assets he was collecting, and how to make sure that his own grandchildren would be able to access them. So we commissioned this article on archiving (as opposed to back up and storage).

We would agree with Dr. Nulph's analysis, and qualify it a bit by saying no medium that currently exists is any good for long term consumer archiving YET. If current pricing trends continue, we believe within a few years, flash memory (whether as SD cards, CF Cards, Memory Sticks, or SSD hard drives), will fill that role nicely, as long term rugged storage that can last years in a closet and still protect the integrity of the data. So don't be discouraged, just be very careful until that day arrives.
-The Editors