Storage recommendations

I have about 1000 mini dv tapes!!
Trying to figure out what would be the best set up in terms of hard drives, for editing purposes?

What I would like to do is capture all of this tapes, (there's no hurry and I know it will be real time but if I don't start I will never end) what type of array will be Ideal for this amount of hours?

running macbook pro 2.33 3gb of ram


thanks

J.García
casualthinking.com

A thousand hour-long DV tapes is about 10 TB of storage, and obviously an absolute bare minimum of 1,000 separate Quicktime movies. I'd be less concerned about the physical storage system and more concerned about how in the name of holy hell you plan to keep track of all that data.

Well...you're not telling us much here. What kind of footage is on these tapes? DV25? HDV? How many minutes is on each tape? Can't even guess what you are talking about without more information.

OK...TOTALLY GUESSING NOW:

If it is DV25, multiply each minute by 217 MB (12.7 GB per hour). If the tapes are 1 hour and you have 1000 hours, that's 12.7 terabytes and that will cost you mega-$$$ because you are editing on this array as well so you must have room to render, etc. You will need an array that is 3 times your media (that's MY rule of thumb) which will be approx 38 terabytes. I don't know of any systems that large without mortgaging the farm to purchase.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

I can recommend a solution that I use on my MacBook Pro 2.33. I have a Firmtek Express34 SATA card and two SATA drives that attatch to my MBP. Firmtek has a handy 2 SATA drive enclosure that attaches to their card nicely. I can swap SATA drives around, at will and even create a 2 drive RAID 0 when necessary.

Sonnet also has a similar Express 34 SATA card that I believe has port multiplication which could host several drives.

We're talking about approximately 38 TB of data that the OP wants in an array to edit with (or so I gather). Your method, John, won't keep all the media at hand for editing. You will be swapping drives all day and media will be offline when disconnected.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Geez... that's a lotta footage.

This may be some kinda solution, but it's not gonna be cheap.

[www.sonnettech.com]



www.strypesinpost.com

Now it is time to use the offline/online method of editing:

[www.kenstone.net]

Takes up about 1/5th the space.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

I wonder how big the project file will be after logging and capturing. You may have to split the project up into segments and edit in separate projects to keep the file size workable.



www.strypesinpost.com

> Now it is time to use the offline/online method of editing

Yeah...though I don't envy when he has to online the damn thing. I've never had to go beyond a three-digit reel name ("001", "999"; he's going to have to. I think he should start a tape inventory with brief descriptions of each tape's content, format information, approximate length. That can also help ensure he doesn't have duplicate reel names.

This is definitely a case of not capturing every tape as one big clip. Split them up into five-minute or 10-minute chunks. That way if you have 10 minutes of garbage, you can just select the logged entry and press SHIFT-D. Running Media Manager on a project with that many tapes shivers my skin.


www.derekmok.com

But are you creating an archive or actually cutting a show from the 1000 tapes? If you're cutting a show, do you really need all of the tapes, from head to tail online? How long is your final? Could someone make some basic decisions about what is *really* needed?

If you're doing an archive, you could use the multiple disks method, as I've done recently with about 300 tapes. Any clip you need you can copy to a current project just by adding the right drive and treating it like a capture session when required.

Of course you do need an extensive and well organised database, as the guys have been suggesting.

Sorry for the delay have not read all the answer but just adding some stuff that was ask,

I know it will be hard to keep track of the content, but i guess ill come up with a process, also I am not cutting a single show or a documentary, is more of an project/experiment but I do plan to start cutting vignettes together and start trying to make sense of what i have.

and the exact count is 645 mini dv tapes shot on vx2000 & dvx 100a

now I will start reading!

thanks in advance for the help!!!

now after reading

I don't need, everything from every tape but need to go thru them, there is a few good things recommended like Derek's capture in clips of 10 minutes or so, also splitting the projects up like strypes recommended

I need to capture everything and then start trowing away stuff, there is so much stuff..

i just want to get as much storage I can get. I have been looking at caldigit, sonnet and g-tech, thinking on starting with a 4 to 6tb set up with an express sata card, any experiences with this systems?


thanks again!!

Caldigit HDOne is rock solid, as is the EVO HD from MaxxDigital. Abusing the crud out of an EVO HD right now...and the other system is running the HD One thru paces.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

i am a fan of caldigit but they have power suply problem.

ok, if it were me i would 1st label all the tapes with reel number/ content descriptor / angle and so forth. Then i would watch them with a very smooth writing pen and log the best parts of the footage ( creating a cut sheet).

All you need is reel number and TC in/outs and a descriptor for the clip within that reel.
Once you have logged the in/outs of all the tapes then get a calculator and add the TC up to see total footage time.

BTW, there is a widget that calculates footage time to storage size or use the graphixjoe calculus to determine the amount of storage. THEN BUY THE STORAGE U NEED ( based on total gb x 2 you can alway delete render file as you go).

then get your cut sheet and batch capture the clips you have logged. Break it up as shane mentioned into 4 - 8 projects or so.

IMHO, i would call the projects something like XXXXX chapter1, XXXXX chapter2.... and so on.

Be aware that the more projects open in fcp the more ram and such will be used so dont have more than 2 or 3 chapters open at the same time or you will be preparing a meal as u wait for a render or BG processes.

BY THE WAY, there a really strange guy who had a crazy notion that people needed a tutorial on "Getting Organized in FCP " its pretty good and you can find it over on creative cow. I just got mine yesterday.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

I'm a fan of a little utility called Bitrate Pro:

[www.pimley.net]

Not really sure what makes it "pro," exactly, but it gives you blanks for duration, bit rate and total storage, and lets you calculate any of those from the other two. This many hours of uncompressed requires so many terabytes; this much storage will give you so many hours of bit video format. Whatever. It's handy, and free.

But I'm just gonna be a little bit of a bore right now and reiterate my point from up yonder: The amount of storage required is trivial; it's just a money problem. Figuring out how to organize all that computer data is going to kick your ass. As you look at this challenge, remember that putting stuff on a computer doesn't make it easier to find and use; it makes it harder, and thus requires even more organization.

oh another thing is that fcp is gonna create a capture folder for the footage. However within that folder i would suggest that you have some sub-folders with 10 or so reels of captured clips in each. Even nicer if the folders could be titled XXXX chapter 1, XXXX chapter 2 and so on to match your projects.

this in the case that you capture all of your clips in one project > delete the project when done > go to the capture scratch and create the folders xxx chapt 1 thru X.
Then you can just open fcp > file> new project > save as XXX chapt 1> then pull your folder into the new project. and repeat for each chapter.

but remember that i am not the smartest editor here so i am simply using some common sense as an approach to your MONSTER.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

thanks for the feedback, I know that this is a daunting endeavor,

but if I dont start I wont finnish right! I have a bunch of log note books, like 10 big ones but is the same problem brought by Jeff, getting all those notebooks and making sense of them is crazy,

the footage is all handheld travels and music being made at different studios thru out the world.

There is no hurry on doing anything with this footage, but after having the tapes chilling for a few years I feel that just capturing them little by little and scrolling thru them will give me a sense of where to start.

I shot 95% of them and was 5 years of my life just following this musician around, just hanging out and shooting.

again thanks for all the great ideas and awesome feedback!

lafcpug is amazing and i tell everybody about it!!

I'm guessing you don't need all this footage all at the same time for a single edit? Rather it sounds like you want to build up a library of all the footage you've shot to date so that you can access it as and when necessary. If that really is the case rather than me just going off on a tangent ( ! ) then you might want to look into a cataloging solution such as Apple's Final Cut Server or perhaps CatDV Pro from [squarebox.co.uk] (which will allow you to capture and simultaneously catalog the footage at high and/or low res for future reference). Having a 1000 hours of footage online (or offline) is all well and good, but only if you actually know where the clip you need is amongst it all.

>I have a bunch of log note books

You can also create excel spreadsheets of the logs and import that into FCP for capturing.



www.strypesinpost.com

thanks for the recommendations, andy you are kind of right I just want to start capturing and logging, because I am quite familiar with the footage, by doing this I hope to start making sense of it all, it wont be a single edit.

Thanks again for all the info