Mr. Moore,
You need to take a look at "Storage DNA" and an LTO5 (LTFS) solution.
http://www.storagedna.com/
LTO5 capacity is 1.3 Tb (uncompressed). @ approx $50/tape, my math skills tell me
that 7tb comes to approx five and a half tapes which is about $300 bucks.
This is a no brainer if you're acquiring file based media. THis system can just look at the
SAN and archive the files off of the SAN, unattended. Call me if you want more details on
how we're using it.
Mark Raudonis
--- In Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com, John Moore <bigfish@...> wrote:
>
> On a project I'm involved with the decision was made to record the surveillance/pelco camera footage to hard drive rather than go to DVCPro50 tape like they have in the past. The show is SD and now in order to get the files which came in as prores LT QT movies in 5 hour chunks they are having to break the 5 hours into 30 minute reference movies QT Pro. I'm told trying to import the 5 hour movies to 10:1m is crashing but the smaller chunks work better. There is now approx 7TB of files for the shoot. Here is some of the math I'm using just to access the real cost savings of file over tape in this particular situation.
>
> While 7TB seems like a lot it really isn't more than a set of 2 G-Tech Graids 4TB drives. A quick google shows them going for a ballpark of $500.00 each so that would be $1,000.00. Now to be safe a second backup set should be included so there is another $1,000.00 for a total of $2,000.00 for drives.
>
> Now if I look at the tape costs the DVCPro 126 minute tape will record 126 minutes at DVCPro50 and the tapes are $27.75 a tape. These cameras run 24 hours a day so you end up with 12tapes/Camera/day. With 3 pelco feeds that's 36 tapes a day. Tape cost per day would be $999.00 so lets call it $1,000 per day and the shoot is 14 days. So the difference between tape and file is roughly $12,000. But if the tapes are recorded at DVCPro standard, minidv specs, the tapes twice as long so the total tape cost would be halved to $7,000.00 total. For these pelco cameras minidv for SD is more than adequate and I would think comparable to the ProRes LT files in image quality. So now the difference is $5,000.00.
>
> Then the organization and logistics of files over tape have to be considered. To deliver the camera masters to the network you could send the backup G raids if the network takes disks but I've been hearing that most want LTO tape so now you have to factor in LTO tape cost and the man hours to copy the files. A quick google shows LTO 4 for approx $25.00 for 800GB uncompressed. So that would be total of about 10 tapes for $250.00. I'm not factoring in the cost of the LTO equipment because the company already owns an LTO 4 drive and they also already own several DVCPro decks. If this was a startup these items would have to be considered. Now the hard to keep track of hidden costs need to be considered. With tape you stick it in the machine and digitize in real time and the tape goes on a shelf. With the files the previously mentioned .movs have to be organized and cut to 30 minute ref movie chunks and then imported. AMA is not an option as
> the systems are 3.1.3. Do to complexity of the multigrouping for this production I'm told it is a problem to group the tape based sources with 4 tracks of audio with the imported clips that only have 2 tracks of audio. I was told they had some multigroup behavior issues with tape sources that didn't have the same number of audio tracks. I don't think this is an absolute taboo but in practice there is some quirk for the operators when dealing with the audio of the multigroup clips. So the imported clips which import in about half real time have to have additional tracks manually added and they also have to add a tape name in order to group them. So ultimately once the show is onlined there will be no way to decompose the sequence without throwing off the imported pelco files because they are no longer thought of as imports by Avid. As a result for online the AE's are going to have to look at the sequence and go back once again and manually
> make a short clip of the pelco footage used and import that full res and manually cut it in. At least the time code on the qt imports should match. So now the apparent $5,000.00 savings is diminished by LTO costs and man hours of extra work that won't happen with tape. I can easily see how the organizational overhead could easily cost close to the $5,000.00 savings or at least a big chunk of it.
>
> I am assuming the production of renting 3 DVCPro record decks is comparable to the cost of the Hard drive recording system that takes 3 separate feeds but I don't know what gear they used and it's costs. If anyone else has looked at file based vs. tape real costs I'd like to hear what I'm overlooking and where I may be unrealistic. TIA
>
> I'm trying to be open minded but I'm hard pressed to see a good reason to go file based in this situation.
>
> John Moore
>
> Barking Trout Productions
>
> Studio City, CA
>
> bigfish@...
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
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