Videopad editor Archives

With the prolific rise of cheap USB drives, we can store more projects than ever before. You can carry terabytes of storage around for around $100. With digital real estate being so cheap, why is it so difficult to backup and archive projects and media on a regular basis?

The backup and archival process is a lot like going to the dentist — people know they have to go but somehow it always slips their mind or doesn’t fit into their busy schedule. But with the right hardware and methods in place, keeping projects and media safely stored can be done easily and with a lot less drilling.

Backup Protocols

USB drives can be your best friend if you cannot afford an expensive media server like an ISIS 5000. A quick web search will show results of 3TB USB3.0 external hard drives for about $130. There are a variety of drives available including highly-recommended RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) drives which provide redundancy to the data in case part of the drive fails.

There is a way to create a redundant backup system of media by rotating three non-RAID USB drives. Here’s how the system works:

• Drive #1 is the master drive that you work off of.
• Drive #2 is the first backup drive.
• Drive #3 is the second backup drive.
• On week 1, COPY Drive #1 to Drive #2.
• On week 2, COPY Drive #1 to Drive #3.
• On week 3, DELETE Drive #2’s contents then COPY Drive #1 to it.
• On week 4, DELETE Drive #3’s contents then COPY Drive #1 to it.
• Continue repeating the steps for weeks 3 and 4.

The benefit to this is that there is always at least two copies of the media. Some editors have several master drives. In that case, create folders inside the backup drives that label Master Drive #1 Backup, Master Drive #2 Backup, etc. Remember to physically label the drives. Some yellow gaffers tape and a sharpie work great. When using multiple master drives it is beneficial to tape a list of what projects’s media on is them.

A schedule is key to the backup system working. The media drive backup should take place at least every week. Elements should be backed up in a similar fashion at least every week if not daily. Most importantly, projects need to be backed up everyday. Since projects are generally small in size, get an extra 1TB USB drive solely for the daily backup of them.

One extra note to mention about USB drives is that they must be turned on at least once a month. If they sit on a shelf in a closet longer than that, bad things can happen to the motors and other internal parts. Pull them down every couple weeks and fire them up.

Archiving Protocols

Digital archiving is another vital routine editors need to practice. A simple digital archive is a full-resolution file, like a QuickTime movie or MXF file, backed up to a medium like XDCAM, Blu-Ray or a USB drive. Regardless of where the file is stored, it’s important to have it for two reasons.

1. It’s a failsafe in case the hard drives containing the media and project die. This should never happen if they are properly backed up though.

2. It is far simpler to throw a full-resolution QuickTime into encoding software like Sorenson Squeeze or Adobe Media Encoder and export a .mp4 file than to reload the media off a hard drive, open the non-linear editing (NLE) program, quality check the sequence then export a .mp4 (that’s even if the NLE exports .mp4!).

There is a case to be made against exporting a full-resolution QuickTime movie because it will take up drive space and a few hours to create. However digital real estate is cheap, so you don't have to be too stingy. Back in the analogue days, how long did it take to stripe a tape, set the bars and tone, print labels and record at real-time let along having to re-ingest or capture off the tape if it’s needed again?

Conclusion

Many future headaches will be saved with a small investment and a firm schedule of backing up and archiving projects and media. Do you have other methods? What works for you?

"Archiving means collecting, organising, describing, preserving, and providing access to materials of evidential, historical, cultural, or other value".  WITNESS lists some of the uses of archiving as follows:

• To create alternate or updated versions of your video
  
• In your future video advocacy campaigns
  
• As evidence in legal proceedings
  
• By other human rights defenders
  
• By news organizations reporting on your issue
  
• As an educational or research resource; part of our historical memory
  

Balance authenticity and organisation

We can divide the uses of archiving above into two main areas, evidence archiving and technical archiving, as we need to take different approaches to both. Archiving for legal reasons aims to leave the original footage from cameras and phones as untouched as possible to make authenticity easier to verify. When archiving for re-editing check that your archiving solution will be create files that are easy to reuse and migrate.

Think about your archiving medium and redundancy 

If possible, don't archive to only one place. If your optical disks (DVD, CD, Blue-Ray) decay or the the hard drive fails it is good to have 'redundancy', which means a back up in another locations. Archiving onto good quality hard drives with in-built redundancy is a great option. If you are unable to afford this, archiving to more than one DVD is a cheaper, if slower, solution. 

Video metadata and archives

Metadata can be stored as part of most files (avis are poor at this). Your archiving system is likely to create lots of metadata - which is text data about your video file. This may include where it was shot, contents, subtitles, publisher, camera person, editor, where to find out more information. Presenting this data along with your video is key to helping people to take action as it acts as vital evidence.

Other tips on archiving

Archiving can seem like a big responsibility to take on. Don't be intimidated. It is better to do some archiving than none at all. Here are some tips: 

• If you rename video file names, keep the original camera generated file name in the title
• Try to find a partner organisation with resources to help you archive your work 
• Try to make archiving part of your publishing process and you can make your rendering methods create multi-purpose videos: for example create a high quality video for upload to a video sharing site that you then also use as an archive file.
  

Hands On: Moving your project to another computer

The easiest way to move all files to another computer is to use an external hard drive. To do this plug in an external hard drive to your computer and copy all files in your project directory into a folder on the external hard drive. It is very important that all files in your project are inside your Project folder.

Video files can be big so the transfer may take some time. 

Plug in your hard drive to another computer with the same version of the same video editing software. Copy across the project folder to the new computer or leave it on the hard drive if you want to. 

Open up your video project on another computer. If you have copied the project folder so that it is in a similar location on the new computer as on the older one - say in the Videos directory - the project may open up ok with no errors. If not there may be a Clip Problems pop up window.

If this occurs, don't panic, click on Search Recursively.

Browse to the new location for your Project Folder and click on Ok. 

The error icons on your window should turn to ticks.

Click on the OK button option.

You may now see some messages asking where the if you want to create a new Project folder / directory. Click yes to this. But then remember to re-set this correctly in Project > Project Settings  > Project folder option in the menu.

Transferring your skills: The same technique and knowledge should allow you to transfer projects using any video editing software. In many the process should be slightly easier as you will not have to reset the Project folder option.

Hands On: Compressing and archiving to disk

If you need to use DVD disks or similar there are some additional steps to take. We will compress your project folder to a single file, this process makes it easier for us to know that we have transferred all the project files when we are archiving or migrating the project.

Browse to the folder in your file manager. Right click the folder and select Compress from the options.

Give the compressed file a recognisable name and select .7z from the list of file types.

If you don't have the option 7z available then you may need to install the p7zip application from the Software Centre or by using the following command.

The capacity of a DVD disk is 4.7 Gig so to be save let's split our file in to chunks of 4.5 gigs or roughtly 4600 Mbs.

You should then have a list of files which you can archive to different DVDs. Be careful to store these securely together as you will need all of them to uncompress the project again.

Transferring your skills: The same effect of splitting your archived project into different files suitable for burning on to disks is available using different software on different operating systems try 7zip in Windows or Keka for Mac.  

Hands On:  Export your project to a compatible file type

There are many options for archiving your project files. In other parts of the guide we have looked as using mp4 files with the H.264 profile. To archive our project as a file we can repeat the process but use a higher video and audio Bitrate to make sure that there is little quality loss.

The above settings should be fine for archiving your work. If you want to be extra careful not to lose detail in your video you can double the settings to;

Video: 50000
Audio: 500

Transferring your skills:  DV AVI files were the default file type for capturing DV tape footage onto PCs. it is still supported as a format by nearly all video editing applications. As such, it may be a good option to share your work. There is help to create DV AVI files in the section on video file types.

1. http://www.witness.org/how-to/curriculum/documenting-and-archiving-file-based-video^{^}