Re: [Avid-L2] OFF-TOPIC: Archiving Memories

Funny,
Reminds me of a project 10 years ago.
I was asked to design a capture system for a retail chain, they wanted to offer VHS digitising.
So I asked, how many tapes do you expect?
-Not that many, every store receives an average of one per week.

Now work with me. A VHS with home movies has some 2.5 hours of content.
This chain had 700 stores. (HEMA, for the Dutch and Belgian listers)

This makes 1750 hours, every week.
Divided by 5 working days and 7 hours a day pure digitising time (and that is optimistic) that needed 50 capture sets.

10 years ago I was able to do 4 streams with a (back then) relative cheap computer, straight to H264. (High end systems back then could do 4 streams of HD in DNxHD..)

Still makes sense to make a good setup with as little transcoding as possible.
Capture to DV is only transferring data, so a half decent system should be able to do 25 streams (assuming bandwidth to save is just Gigabit ethernet, and you're able to get that many ports in your system)
For VHS, a composit to DV device is dirt cheap…
Getting a decent VHS deck in good working order nowadays is another story...

It's just math on what is wise, but it will pay off if volumes are large enough to make a custom setup, and see if you can get 'some' form of automated QC.
(Let alone a system that lets you enter metadata so you can at least feed the system the label info / client / etc.)

My reason for H264:
It's SMALL, and it can be 'visually lossless' (FFmpeg -c:v libx264 -crf 16 and you're there…)

That will save on backups. (Nowadays I would put everything on YouTube anyways, let them deal with it…)


Bouke / edit 'B

videotoolshed.com
Van Oldenbarneveltstraat 33
6512 AS Nijmegen, the Netherlands
+31 6 21817248
If you want to send me large files, please use:
https://videotoolshed.wetransfer.com/

> On 5 May 2023, at 11:49, Tim Selander <selander@tkf.att.ne.jp> wrote:
>
> Right smack dab in the middle of the same project -- hundreds of DV & VHS tapes. Using an old Mac 2011 with MC5.5, digitizing through firewire. Have the rig set up next to my desk, just keep feeding in tapes when I notice it needs another. Capture in DV, every 20 or so tapes, batch export it all to mp4 -- the Mac runs unattended, so it doesn't really take any time.
>
> Saving to local HDD and Google Drive. I have the base $9 a month, 2TB Drive that I use for a lot of stuff. There are no doubt cheaper cloud services, too. Will ANYONE ever watch all these again? Probably not!!
>
> Tim Selander
> Tokyo, Japan
>
>
>
> On 2023.05.05 5:28, Sol Fischler via groups.io wrote:
>> Hi --
>> My plan, as cockeyed as it may seem, but based on the hardware & software that I've got:
>> The video source is VHS. It's family stuff, and that's what we used. (I also have 8mm & 16mm film (Dad was a filmmaker) but right now my concern is the flood of VHS's we have in the closets. That, and I don't have a film chain.) :-)
>> My plan is to hook my VHS deck to my computer running FCP7 and digitize everything into FCP, where it creates Quicktimes. This process worked well with my entire book of work from WNBC where we had mastering everything to DVCPro -- I digitized everything through FCP and it all now lives on a couple of drives as QTs.
>> I imagine the h.264 would be an extra (time consuming) step but would save space. I'm not sure that space will be an issue, so staying with QT and not compressing it would be a good option.
>> I also have a VHS-to-DVD deck, which is why I asked about the DVD-R option. But I've also heard that DVD-R isn't particularly archival, so while in the short run it'd be easier to access and play, if the discs are going to die in 3 or 5 years, then yeah, that process would just be a waste of time...
>> ...and I know nothing about blu-ray...
>> If there are any other options that I'm not considering or aware of, please let me know --
>> Thank you!
>> -- Sol
>> -------------------------------------------------
>> Sol Fischler
>> Editor: Image & Sound
>> 914-525-2579
>> _www.solfischler.com <http://www.solfischler.com/>
>> _
>> On Thursday, May 4, 2023 at 03:24:37 PM EDT, Jo's Mailinglists <lists@filter-media.net> wrote:
>> Pending the source I am not so sure why _archiving_is recommended here in H.264? I know I am in a thread with Bouke but… QT is a container, H.264 is a compression.
>> So Quicktime as a container can hold a lot of different and especially for archival purposes, different compressions.
>> Again, pending the source…
>> my 2¢
>>> On 4. May 2023, at 18:59, bouke <bouke@editb.nl <mailto:bouke@editb.nl>> wrote:
>>>
>> QuickTime is NOT obsolete, QT player is, but the file format is not.
>> (But Mp4 and QT are VERY much alike if you don't want the fancy stuff, like QT ref…)
>> DVD is obsolete…
>> Archive to H264 in either QT or Mp4 and you'll be safe for the next 30 years.
>> Now, where did my latest post go?
>> Bouke / edit 'B
>> videotoolshed.com <http://videotoolshed.com/>
>> Van Oldenbarneveltstraat 33
>> 6512 AS Nijmegen, the Netherlands
>> +31 6 21817248
>> If you want to send me large files, please use:
>> https://videotoolshed.wetransfer.com/
>>> On 4 May 2023, at 18:53, Sol Fischler via groups.io <http://groups.io/> <sol.fischler=yahoo.com@groups.io <mailto:sol.fischler=yahoo.com@groups.io>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Off-topic I know, but:
>>>
>>> In 2023, how does everyone archive their family home movies & tapes? I'm interested in both digital and physical possible formats...
>>> I know both Quicktime and DVD-R are obsolete, but are they still viable, and what are the alternatives?
>>> Thanks!
>>> -- Sol
>>>
>>>
>>>
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