Posted by Mike Kujbida on 07/04/07 01:14

ushere wrote:
> Argo22 wrote:
>> Hi All.
>>
>> I work at a local community cable channel, and all of our older
>> programming on Umatic SP, has been given to me instead of being thrown
>> out, since we have no more use for it, and no space for it. I have
>> made it a hobby to archive the shows on to a digital medium, either
>> hard drive or DVD. Most of the productions are 30 minutes, dating from
>> as late as 2000 to as early as 1980, with varying qualities. Also, a
>> portion of shows, were archived on to VHS tape.
>>
>> Need help/advice as to how to archive them. I can use a set top dvd
>> recorder, but leaning more towards digitizing them with my canopus
>> break out box, into my imac and using FCP to fix up and archive. I
>> don't know if these would be ever used for rebroadcast, but do not
>> want to loose anymore quality than i am already loosing from the
>> degrading tapes, especially the VHS tapes. I am not concerned how much
>> space, either hard drive or DVDs, as long as it is good enough. I have
>> thought about encoding it in h.264 in high quality, or encoding as DV,
>> and storing the files on dvds or on hard drive.
>>
>> Any suggestions? This is a very important project to me and i would
>> like to do the best job possible.
>>
>> My main goal is to re-master these and destroy the master tapes once
>> they are preserved.
>> Thanks
>>
>
> set-top. even going the other route you'll end up with the same result -
> a dvd.
>
> just use best setting on dvd record. you'll get 2 progs per disk.
>
> leslie


To add to leslie's suggestion, make sure to use ONLY name brand media as
the cheaper stuff has been known to break down in as little as 6 months.
Taiyo-Yuden & Verbatim are generally recognized as the best there is
right now.
I'd make at least 2 copies of each and store them in separate locations
in case of fire, flood, etc.
Then, every 5 years (at the most), copy them to new blank media again as
the jury is still pout on long-term life expectancy of DVD media.

Mike

[Back to original message]