Posted by JT on 12/06/05 14:33

"hackerjosh" <hackerjosh@gmail.com> wrote:


> How well does Premiere support distributing? I guess if I see
>a need for it, I can easily build some rendering boxes with only the
>necessary hardware for a pretty good price.

Not well at all, although AfterEffects has a scheme of some sort I
believe. If I have a long project there are usually natural breaks. I
copy the project to a second drive - PP does that nicely, although it
takes the time and space needed to copy the source files - and split
the render across two computers at a break.
>
>That's kind of what I was thinking. I plan to do RAID, but do RAID 0
>for efficiency, not redundancy. If worse comes to worse, I can reload
>all the data from the tapes. I will just need to sensibly name the
>consecutive files so it will be easy to recreate them.

>This question might not relate to the original thread, but since we're
>on the issue of hard drives, how should I archive projects? If I want
>to be able to go back to a completed project and make changes to it,
>how is the best way to store it. I thought of deleting the
>preview/render files if necessary and just save it to a fresh hard
>drive. I guess my question is: how well do hard drives / MiniDV tapes
>store? Would they still be good after sitting on the shelf for 3 years?

Helical-scan tapes seem to have a reasonable shelf life, whatever
'reasonable' means - certainly 3 years, and based on 8mm at least, a
decade or two is probably not a worry.

I doubt that anyone has gotten concerned about long-term storage of
unused hard drives to study the matter, but I'd guess the only issue
might be lubricant migration. A further guess,nothing more since I
know nothing on the subject, is that they need to be well sealed to
keep the lube off the platters, and thus will happily sit for a
hundred years. Any insight from someone in that industry?

In any case, at .25/GB storing DV files (and the project file) on a
hard drive costs less than leaving it on a high-quality tape
(Excellence at say $8/hour vs $3 for 12GB of disk space). So I'm
getting a collection of Seagate drives (good price/performance,
honored these days by uniquely having a 5--year warranty). Watch
Fry's/Outpost/BestBuy/CircuitCity/OfficeMax for sales and pile 'em on.

>Is this 375MB while just editing or is it even when rendering? How
>about other software like After Effects?
That's the rendering number I see. I don't use After Effects much and
can't comment.

[Back to original message]