HD File Backup

Thanks for your very helpful reply. You're right, my camcorder is tapeless. What do think about the strategy of burning DVDs from the original AVCHD format in standard definition using a regular burner and then relying on a Blu-ray player to upconvert them to 1080i? Will that even work?

Also, in terms of burning DVDs that can play in a standard DVD player, can you recommend software?

Thanks again.

from high definition to standard definition, then the data is discarded. It will be really clear standard definition, but nowhere near high definition... and misses your original requirement, "the best way to save/backup the old files without losing the HD format".

Standard definition is about 1/4 the data that high definition carries. "Upconvert" just cannot replace the discarded data.

For DVD authoring applications, I use iDVD and DVD StudioPro. Both take the high definition video direct from the video editors I use and can render to standard definition video files (VOB) onto regular single layer and double layer DVDs. The also provide the ability to either "auto play" the video that was rendered when you insert the DVD to the regular DVD player or can let you create scene selections menus and the background of these menus can be customized with stills or video and audio. Others use Roxio Creator, Nero or DVD Architect among many other titles.

If you are worried about hard disks failing then consider setting up your hard drives as RAID. RAID 1 provides you protection from the failure of a single drive. If you're really concerned, you can investigate other forms of RAID for more protection. Hard drive storage is nearly as cheap as tape storage, but it's a lot more accessible, and it doesn't force you to re-encode your video in another lossy format.

With DVD's you are going to end up with so many DVDs. Just think that one flash card is going to get backed up to 2-4 DVDs. That's really time consuming to burn. Blu-ray is a better option for optical. Still, I can't tell you how many scratched CD's I have that don't play anymore, I have a feeling the same thing would happen to my video backup, so I avoid optical as the master source for anything.

If you're looking for portable backup, there are portable video storage hard drives. http://bit.ly/jw7Pt

What is RAID? Do you have a link to something that explains?

back-up is acceptable... but that is for backup - not archive. Digital tape is still the preferred archive media. At least, that is how I see it in the data centers I've been in.

And while becoming more mainstream, most folks do not have the appropriate RAID arrays, back up power and all the stuff that goes with proper RAID implementation - I like some of the Network Attached Storage (NAS) capabilities that are now becoming popular in the consumer environments.

Here is a definition of RAID (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID), but basically the RAID I'm mentioning is mirroring which writes your data to 2 hard disks instead of one, so that if one fails, you still have the other disk. Your computer treats the 2 hard drives as if they are one disk. You can get RAID drives in various form factors: internal drives, a usb connected drive, or the NAS (network attached storage) options that boya84 mentioned. As for the quality of hard disks for archival, 2.5" drives seem to be better than 3.5" drives as indicated by this research paper. (http://www.lockss.org/locksswiki/files/ISandT2008.pdf) They claim that 2.5" drives at rest will last for about 30 years.

Tape is preferred in data centers because of cost. Most data center backup data is not kept long enough to make tape's archival lifespan relevant. Data centers use very high performance, and very expensive SCSI or Fiber Channel drive arrays which are many times more expensive than the consumer drives we would use for RAID at home. The consumer drives are much closer to the price of tape. Data centers also use LTO-4 backup tape drives which cost over $4,000. They backup data fast, and the tape is very high quality for archival, but reallistically out of the price range of most non-professionals or even individual professionals.

Also if you are going to backup to tape, then Mini DV over firewire is not the right tape. If you are backing up to mini dv, then you are recompressing (throwing away detail) again. If your camcorder recorded onto mini dv in the first place then that's one thing, but to take AVCHD (mpeg4) and transcode it into dv (mpeg2) is throwing away details. There is no industry standard for using mini dv as a data backup solution, but there are a few software programs which implement proprietary backups. If your software vendor goes out of business, then you might just be screwed when it's time to retrieve that archived data 5 years from now. You should theoretically get 18GB per tape, but realistically it's closer to 12GB.

Another thing to consider is how safe you want your archives to be. Having the data on 2 hard drives or tape backup does you no good when the drives/tapes are in your closet and your house burns down. If you are concerned about this type of loss, store an extra copy of your tape/disk somewhere other than your house. Another option is to upload your data to Amazon S3 (or another cloud data storage service), and let them worry about doing professional backups.