Making backups and masters on VCD or CD for high quility

nobody
Member

I am new, self taught and working w/ FCP4. I want to make daily 1) backups of projects I am working on and also 2) make clean masters of all footage. I will in some cases pass my daily stuff to others who intern will use them also in FCP. Is there a way to be assured that my backups & masters can be reproduced at the highest quility if necessary? Is there a process I should go thru before I export them out of FCP4 to a CD or Mini DV? Should I use a different format to transfer other then VCD or Mini dv? I prefir VCD via Toast 6.

Posted 7 years ago #
nobody
Member

Craig,

First off, understand that if you choose to backup your work on VCD or (shudder) CD, you'll almost surely put your footage through pretty heavy compression in order to fit your content on the small storage of those kind of discs.

Backing up your raw footage to DV tape is a MUCH better option if you want to keep your quality up.

Remember, even raw DV (or DVCAM) tape uses almost 5:1 compression. Re-compressing a video signal (like when you go from tape to VCD) always involves a pretty substantial quality hit - so be careful!

Finally, remember that most of the actual editing choices you make and may wish to preserve on your timeline are just pointers to the original clips digitized to your hard drive. Even if you erase those clips, getting them back is typically no more difficult than "re-batch capturing" the clips from the original tapes.

For me, backup means copying the small "project file" that holds all the editing info, making copies of graphics or audio that I can't easily re-capture. Then just putting my original field tapes in a safe place. With those elements, re-capturing the clips and re-rendering the files puts the timeline right back where I was before I threw assets away to regain drive space.

Finally, if you do decide to make "clones" of your original field tapes, take care to keep the timecode on the clone as consistant as possible with the original tape. Nothing worse than re-batch capturing from a clone, only to find that the timecode has shifted and all your scenes are missing the first few seconds!

Good luck!

Posted 7 years ago #
nobody
Member

I want to make Backups (some timecode & some rendered sequences) and clones of clips and sequences totaling 55 minutes using FCP 4 . It would be best to use the broadest format that is why I am considering VCD or CD. Of course I want them to see this information w/in the quality I will eventually finish the Documentary. Dose anyone have suggestion how best to approach this?

1) Is there that much of a difference between a VCD and CD?

2) Is there a better way before of transfering clips/secquences to a VCD in order to get less compression or distrotion?
Thanks

Posted 7 years ago #
nobody
Member

I want to make Backups ,clones of clips and sequences totaling 55 minutes using FCP 4 . It would be best to use the broadest format that is why I am considering VCD or CD. Of course I want them to see this information w/in the quality I will eventually finish the Documentary. Dose anyone have suggestion how best to approach this?

Posted 7 years ago #
Kingkool682
Member

VCD is not a broadcastable format. VCD is a scaled down, heavily compressed mpeg1 file. What you will be essentially doing is taking a regular 720x480 video clip and making it a 352x240 video clip. Ouch! Look at the loss of quality. THe best thing for back up, is what Bill said, saving the FCP project file and then keeping the original mini-DV tapes in tack for re-capturing. If this is not an option, you can output all of your original footage back out to another mini-DV tape makeing sure the timecode matches like bill said earlier. Yet another option is to buy an external harddrive and back up all your capture footage on there and then just storing the drive away until your ready to use it. You'll never be able to get 55 minutes of Broadcast video onto a CD, or mutliple Cd's.

Let's get a few terms straight.
CD - An optical storage medium for storing data. Usually 700mb
VCD - A cd that has been formated to play the video information stored on it. Similiar to a DVD you would find in stores, only much less space... DVD's hold 4.7gb (4,700,00 megabytes while cd's hold a measly 700megabytes)
DVD- An optical storage medium for storing data, Usually 4.7gb.

You cannot drop a video clip onto a CD or DVD and expect it to play. It must be authored properlly so the DVD player can understand how to play the video information. Getting more technical, A VOB stream file needs to be created inorder for the DVD player to understand it. This is what happens when you make a DVD from any authoring program.

Posted 7 years ago #