Archiving your video by Andrew Alexander Published on Nov 26, 2002 12:00 AM

With the exception of newer disk-based recording technologies, when you record video on your camcorder, the medium that you record on is videotape. Different camcorders record different types of video signals onto the videotape - for example, an older 8mm camcorder will record a different signal than a new MicroMV camcorder - but the medium is still the same, magnetic tape. The principal isn't that new, in that magnets in the camcorder's recording heads charge the particles on the tape in a certain order to store a signal, and then later reads the signal to reproduce the video for viewing.

The problem is that as time goes on, this tape loses its ability to hold the charge placed on it, and the quality of the signal begins to suffer. This degrading process is affected by many different factors, including temperature, humidity, the proximity to magnetic interference, normal everyday usage of the tape, dropping it on the floor, and finally, cosmic radiation from outer space. Conservative estimates place a lifespan of around ten to fifteen years on magnetic tape before it will begin to deteriorate.

Which would prove something of a surprise if twenty years after your wedding, you wanted to relive the memory and were presented with a screenful of static. So, apart from putting your videotapes in a temperature-controlled, radiation-proof lead box, what is a videographer to do?

The first question you have to ask yourself, is what you are saving the video for in the first place. This isn't a cynical question about sentiment, it's a practical question about what you're going to do with it. For example, if you are saving the video so you can watch it again and again and again, your storage medium will be different than if you need to save the video so you can edit it again in the future.

Archiving video for viewing

The first thing you should keep in mind is that nothing lasts forever, at least when video is concerned. Even DVD, the latest and greatest video archiving format, has an estimated lifespan of 100 years when kept at room temperature. That said, one hundred years is a very long time.

Converting a video to DVD has gotten much, much easier than it used to be even a year ago. Notwithstanding the continuing fight between competing DVD writable standards, it is possible to buy standalone devices which convert between any video signal and write it to DVD. I would expect that the 100-year lifespan is for studio-produced DVDs; home-produced DVDs, especially on rewritable discs, are probably much shorter, but still probably at least 50 years.

Alternately, VCDs are also a viable solution, although to view them you will either be at the computer, or playing them on a VCD-capable DVD player, so it might just be easier to look directly at the DVD format.

Finally, VHS tapes or just keeping the product on the DV tape are very viable solutions. You'll just have to keep in mind when the tapes were recorded, and every ten years or so, get into the habit of copying over your older tapes to fresh new tapes. For DV this isn't a big deal - the copies won't degrade - but for VHS and other analog formats, every generation of tape will reduce the quality slightly.

Archiving video for editing

I make the distinction between archiving for viewing and editing because the two viewing styles put different stresses on the video medium. For viewing, we tend to stick in the video and press play, lay back on the couch and watch from one end to the other, perhaps pausing once or twice. For editing, the medium gets rewound, fast forwarded, played, stopped and recorded on many times in the editing session. Wear and tear is probably the number one cause of tape degradation, and the less of that you put your tape through, the longer it will last.

Let's assume that in a regular editing session, you capture all your footage to the computer, do a final edit, and then output your final product. Now you have all this leftover footage that you want to save, that you might use again in a future project. What are your options?

1. Back to DV tape.
Again, you're looking at a ten to fifteen-year lifespan. Personally, I'm fine with these limitations because I know my style will change in ten years, and if I haven't used the material in five years, it's because I've moved on to other interests or I've just lost the tape. Keeping the material on DV tape is handy because no conversion is necessary to get it back onto the computer for editing, and your quality is exactly the same. For long-term storage, it's entirely possible to buy a new tape after ten years and dub from the old to the new.

2. Burn to VCD (CD-ROM).
If you have a CD burner, a cheap alternative is to make a video CD by converting the footage to MPEG1. The only problem with this is a major loss in quality, but if your products are destined for the web, this loss will not be noticeable. However, as the problems with writable DVD get sorted out, and the price comes down, there will be a real incentive to move away from VCD and invest in DVD technology. But for right now, it's a perfectly acceptable alternative for long-term archival. Just keep in mind that you will have to go through a few hoops to edit the footage, like re-converting the VCD from MPEG to a frame-based codec (the way MPEG footage is compressed makes it hard to edit).

3. Burn to DVD.
This is the latest archival technology, and with it you have two options. You can burn the video as either video, which can be played back in computer-based or regular DVD players, or you can treat the video as data, and copy it as one or several files to a writable DVD. Or, depending on your burner, you could do both; make a copy of each type. The advantages and disadvantages of your choice are obvious. Making a copy that plays on a DVD player makes it accessible for viewing, but puts it in the MPEG2 video format, which is not very useful for editing. To edit the footage you would have to reconvert the footage to DV or any other frame-based footage, which may result in a loss of quality. There may be some programs which will edit in MPEG, but it is just far easier to edit in frames. Copying the files as data to a writeable DVD makes it perfect for editing, but as current writable DVDs are limited to around 4.7GB of data, this equates to just over 20 minutes of DV footage. So to back up an hour-long DV tape, you are looking at three DVD discs, which will cost around thirty dollars.

4. Keep it on computer hard drives.
Until last year, this was actually a relatively cheap and versatile possibility. The cost of a 20 gigabyte hard drive has dropped to ridiculously low levels - pricegrabber.com lists a Western Digital 20GB drive at $55. Just plug it into your machine and you could have instant access to your footage. However, last year hard drive manufacturers recognized that computer hard drives are inherently unstable, and reduced their warranties to a single year. Hard drives have comparatively terrible life spans, at least for archiving. But for six-month turnover operations, they might be an ideal solution, especially if you go through a lot of video.

In the end, choosing a long-term archival solution shouldn't pose too much of a worry, given that technology manufacturers are bringing newer and better products to market every year. Advances in the future promise to put more data onto smaller mediums which last for longer periods of time. That may sound like I'm suggesting the problem will just go away in the future, but consider that twenty years ago, the idea of a storage medium that would last for one hundred years was just science fiction. Now it's common place.

Finally, one of the best strategies for maximizing the lifespan of your tape over the long term is just how you treat it in the short term. Here are some tips for getting the most out of your tapes.

• Always use SP (standard play) mode to record. Long-play (LP) mode or any of its extended play variants compresses the video signal onto a smaller amount of tape, meaning that you will see degradation sooner over the long haul.
• Make a copy as soon as possible for projects to be stored long-term. For projects you will be working on, use the copy tape, and store the original somewhere safe (like a temperature-controlled, radiation proof box; just kidding).
• Avoid excessive rewinding and fast-forwarding. This has a tendency to stretch the tape, as well as applying unwanted friction to it. For computer editing, the best practice is to capture a whole tape in one pass and then just work off the data.
• For miniDV, use 63-minute (or shorter) DV tapes. There are 83-minute and even 120-minute tapes out there, but they achieve this length by using a thinner tape. The thinner tape gets, the more susceptible it is to losing its charge over the long haul.