Archiving your airchecks on DVD shouldn't create much of an issue and should work fine if you are using a good DVD recorder with a hardware encoder that will encode in real time. We use the Pioneer-PRV-LX1 and love it. It has two drives along with a 100GB hard drive. It also has an embedded authoring system so you can get as fancy as you want or simply burn your video to disk in real time.
Archiving to DVD for editing is a different story altogether. Our operation requires that we keep all of our video in its native state as long as possible. We save all compression questions and encoding variables for final output.
If you DO archive file or raw tapes to DVD's for future use, you should probably archive DATA in your native DV format. Archiving to MPEG2 will require you to reingest the file video from the DVD disc anytime you need to use the file video. Doing this can create all kinds of decompression/recompression issues that were not acceptable in our operation.
We found that per gigabyte, a simple network attached storage server (using gig-e networking) is just as cost effective as going with DVD, plus your archive is always there and ready to go in real time....no transfer time issues. With gig-e we can playback and edit 25Mbps DV direct from the server on any of our NLE's or playback direct to air from the server - in real time. This alone save us LOADS of time.
We store all of our archive video as a Type 2 DV compressed AVI. We have found that no matter what platform we, or any of our clients have, most if not all NLE's will handle these files natively. So....should you have Premiere Pro on your laptop, or FCP on your Mac at home and maybe Avid at work, you should be able to use your archived video on ALL of them interchangeably. File sharing with the Avid however has been a bit of a challenge as they like everything in their native OMFI. Basically, we can work on projects anywhere without being tied to our primary NLE.
For our purposes, we have network attached storage (of about 3 terrabytes) that receives all video from the NLE that was ingested that day. We normally archive about 90% of the video that comes in. A newsroom however, from a media management perspective, would probably have to be more selective in what is archived due to the sheer volume of daily video that comes in. Our video is automatically pushed each night from the NLE to the archive. We then dump the video from the NLE drives when we're done with the project. The video will then reside on the archive should we need it again. Folders and file names are identical. To recall a project into a timeline for revision, we simply change the drive letter to point to the archive drive for the video instead of the NLE drive, make the changes and rerender the new version.
We also have a gang of firewire drives (about 1 TB) mounted in a Pelican case that contain our most critical backups. This portable archive can be added to or subtracted from for long term or remote assignments. It also lives offsite in case of a fire or some other disaster to our facility. With the portable archive and a laptop, we can be up and running from a remote truck or facility almost immediately if need be.
Bottom line, archive your airchecks on DVD in real time, but go with network attached storage for your video archive. Use a DVD recorder with a hard drive and burn your airchecks by show or over a period of time. Depending on how much compression you want to use, you can put all of your shows for a day or several days of shows (morning show DVD...11P DVD..etc.) on a single DVD maximizing it's storage capacity. If you just really want to, or must archive to DVD, do it with native data....not MPEG2.
We've been archiving video for over a year now. You're application and results may be different, but this has worked very well for us.
Good luck!
[ May 21, 2005, 02:21 PM: Message edited by: C St. SW ]
