Total Newbie Needs Direction - 8MM/VHS to DV and DVD Archiving/Preservation

I'm a tech savvy gadget guy, but don't have a clue about video
editing, archiving and analog to digital conversion.

I have 15 years of home 8mm and VHS along with 4 years of DV. After
some research it appears that Canopus ADVC-300 would be a decent
choice for converting / restoring the 8mm and VHS to DV format Once
I've done that however, then what? Do I burn it back from the PC to
DV via my DV Camcorder?

Also, what about archiving my current DV material? How "safe" is my
content on this medium? I realize that DV is modestly compressed
while DVD (Mpeg) is more compressed, therefore, I assume DVD isn't
considered a high quality archive?

Lastly, should I focus more on my 8MM / VHS conversions now and sit
tight for HD burners in a couple of years before worrying about
archiving my current DV tapes?

Thanks!

bradesp

 

Lastly, should I focus more on my 8MM / VHS conversions now and sit

Let me start from the end, HD burners will be mostly for burning High
Definition programing, nothing to do with DV (digital video) unless you mean HD
DV from JVC HD cam.

a) You can record straight DV into DVD as data. The disk won't play in your
tabletop but you can move that data file back to your computer and then tape.
b) Unless you'll be doing some heavy editing later on, MPEG2 compression can
look almost as good as original DV. There are many compression settings for
MPEG2 and with high data rate you should not see the difference and if you
conform to DVD video standard it will play on any DVD.
c) If you think tape is safer storage medium than DVD disk, you're entitled to
your opinion but I don't think so.

Converting VHS and 8MM to DV makes no sense to me unless again you want to edit
the video (besides simple cutting). I would convert analog video straight to
MPEG2 DVD format and burn to disk. You'll need to experiment with settings
(compression rate, interlace, number of main frames and subframes etc.) before
settling on one with best quality. Once you get MPEG2 files you'll need
authoring program to create and burn working disk. I don't know capabilities of
Canopus. I use ATI all in wonder video card and have pretty good results but it
took some time to find right settings. For example recording video interlaced
gave me much better results for TV display than deinterlacing it during
capture.
Hope this helps a bit.

 

IMHO, hard disk is the safest (and most expensive) storage medium
there is, as long as it's not being used. CD-rom can last as short
as two years (very cheap brands), and I suspect DVD-rom might be
the same. While tape is also magnetic (like a hard disk) it's more
exposed. A new hard disk stored on a shelf is your best bet...

 

Since DV stores about 1 hour of video on 13 GIG of disk space, a 200 gig
drive, at $150 U.S., would store about 15 hours of video. Blank dv
tapes cost about $4.00 each, so the equivalent storage capacity would be
about $60.00, which is still considerably cheaper. You could make an
extra copy and still beat the price of a large capacity hard drive.

Do we really know how durable those hard drives are?

Also, if one hard drive fails, you lose 15 hours of video. If two or
three tapes fail, you only lose 2 or three hours. And tapes are less
likely to fail for reasons other than decay; drives are vulnerable to
electronic failures, static electricity, drops, etc.

And I don't trust DVD or CD's either.

I rather suspect that carefully stored copies of DV tape is your best bet.

 

I agree with both the conclusion and with the reasoning.

 

And I don't trust DVD or CD's either.

Cheap CD or DVD can have unrecorevable errors even during recording (guess how
I know) so every DVD I record, I check for errors right away. I have 10 year
old CDs in the same condition as when brand new. Good DVD or CD can last 50
years or more. There is no tape or hard drive that could last that long. Hard
drive can fail even if not used (even more so than when used from time to time
- guess again how do I know). Nothing is 100% failsafe but DVD is most reliable
(I've seen bad tapes, clogging video heads and I've seen hard drives failing
before 1year warranty expired). As a matter of fact after about 4 years of
using other means I just switched back to D-VHS tape and D-VHS recorder for HD
video recordings and still think nothing beats DVD for longevity and
reliability but that is just my opinion.

 

There are already tapes that have lasted longer than 50 years.

 

Wow, some honest differences of opinion here! I thought this would
make life simpler for me!

No one has yet really commented on my suggested use of the Canopus to
do the video clean-up / digital conversion. Any thoughts?

bradesp

 

Confused whether you are talking about current production
(where cleanup/conversion using current equipment would
make sense) vs. archiving (where you are better off keeping
the original tapes and using whatever advanced equipment is
available when you go to produce something with the footage.)

 

No one has yet really commented on my suggested use of the Canopus to

I don't have Canopus but don't see any reason why it shouldn't work. Capturing
standard video is pretty straightforward and shouldn't cause any problems once
you get the right settings. You have another option nobody mentioned yet. In
less than a year we will have new DVD formats based on blue laser. Capacities
of blue laser dvd will start at 20GB (models are already sold in Japan) and go
up to 50GB and more. You didn't state your main purpose of going digital but
whatever the reason is you should still hold on to the original tapes for
anything important regardless which media will you use for digital backup.
Having 2 copies of video in different formats is a safest bet.

 

Actually both. I want to "clean up" old vhs tapes made of the kids
when they we're young (6-10 year old tapes) as well as move them to a
format that's likely to "last" for a while until I can get to a more
"permanent" high resolution format (blue laser, etc.).

So, I'm looking to move the content off the old 8mm and VHS tapes and
in the process do the best I can to clean up the video and audio. I
then want to "dump" this cleaned up video to something else... DV
tapes perhaps?

Bradesp

 

Do whatever you wish for your current requirements.
But most certainly do NOT get rid of the original tapes.
History has shown that at least in the mid term (~15 years)
there will be better equipment out there to capture/clean/
whatever for less $$$. Even if it is nothing more than used
industrial/broadcast equipment on eBay. Writing optical
disks may seem sexy, but I haven't seen any conclusive evidence
that they will outlast mag tape, at least in our lifetimes. And
historical evidence would suggest that hanging on to the tapes
would be a smart thing.

 

I believe this information is no longer up to date. Initial reports on
DVD and CD formats claimed a long life-span. More recent reports claim
that they may begin to deteriorate in as little as 5 years.

If only part of the disk goes bad, the entire disk may become
unreadable. If part of a tape goes bad, the rest may still be recoverable.

That also begs the question of compression. To store any length of
uncompressed video would require multiple DVDs. Even dual-layer will
only store about 25 minutes of uncompressed video.

Needless to say, it is not desirable to store video in compressed format
on DVD, if you ever intend to re-edit it.

Still seems to me that tape is the best archive medium, for the moment.