Best method to store home movies ?

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Level 1

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Best method to store home movies ?

I have recently learned to transfer camcorder miniDV home movies to iMovie and then to iDVD. And I have learned from this forum and the book "Missing Manual iLife 05" that movies can be stored on an external hard drive or transferred back to miniDV to free up Mac hard drive space. I make about twelve 60 minute miniDV home movies per year on the camcorder and would like to save these long term. In your opinion, is it best to 1) save as iMovie on an external hard drive, 2) save as iDVD on an external hard drive, 3) transfer to a new blank miniDV tape every 10 years, 4) burn DVDs and save in that form only, 5) other. I apologize if this topic has been beaten to death in the past. To this point, I have been saving DVDs made from camcorder movies transferred to a DVD recorder. But I like making the DVDs on iDVD and will eventually learn to edit on iMovie. The hard drive thought came as a result of some posters who are concerned about the longevity of a DVD should it get scratched or some other such thing. So I am looking at what would be the most durable way to store home movies long term. Does iMovie take up less space than iDVD on an external hard drive ? If so, does it make sense to watch the movie on a DVD but store the files from iMovie on an external hard drive ? Can the stored iMovie files on an external hard drive then be transferred back to the computer to make more DVDs ? Am I just missing the point altogether ? Thanks for your help.

Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Posted on Jan 8, 2006 11:14 AM

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Answer 1

F Shippey

Level 7

21,500 points

Jan 8, 2006 1:15 PM in response to ndbob79

I would either:

1. Save as DV Stream from iMovie (File>Share>QuickTime>Full Quality) on an external FireWire hard drive.

(Since DV Stream runs about 13 GB per hour, your 12 movies per year would require about 160 GB (so you would need about a 200 GB drive).)

or

2. Save each movie on miniDV tape

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Answer 2

ndbob79 Author

Level 1

0 points

Jan 8, 2006 2:23 PM in response to F Shippey

Thanks Mr Shippey. You are outstanding.

Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

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Answer 3

Len Goff

Level 6

17,911 points

Jan 9, 2006 2:53 PM in response to ndbob79

I save my edited iMovie back to MiniDV tape and the iDVD disk image to an external FireWire hard drive that is rarely turmed on.

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Answer 4

T. Haire

Level 3

755 points

Jan 9, 2006 9:24 PM in response to Len Goff

In addition to what was mentioned above, I've recently been saving my smaller movies(full quality quicktime from FCP, approx. 4GB and less) to DVD via disk utility...For larger movies, I export them in 4GB chunks and burn them on multiple discs.

I don't have Toast, but I believe it has a feature to burn large files over multiple disks.

Not that importing from tape is tough, but being able to drag and drop has it's benefits.

Just a suggestion.

T.

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Answer 5

Jan 9, 2006 10:24 PM in response to T. Haire

Hi all,
To support T.Haire's solution. Saving to the .img file to an external and the movie to a Mini DV tape are aslo excellent suggestions. After all, some back up is better than none at all, however, external HDs do fail (occasionally) and mini DV tapes only have a shelf life of about five years, which can be shorter depending on how you store them. They should be RW and FF at least once a year and stored away from direct sunlight and excessive heat. The ultimate long-term solution is to save your full quality Quicktime movies to DVD as data thus giving you an editable copy of your movie. A ten minute iMovie clip is roughly 2-2.2GB, so 15-18 minutes of iMovie Quicktime will give you about 4GB of QT movie. The max you can burn to a data DVD is 4.2GB. It is not difficult to export parts of your iMovie using the 'export selected clips only' option in the Quicktime pane under 'share'. It does take a bit of time to do it, but it is well worth it. You can create your project to allow for this by splitting the clip and then drop an over black title and fade out/in transition in the spot with no text giving you a few seconds of black leading in or out. Then just delete the title before you save your completed project for burning. This makes it a lot easier for future use to re-edit your clips. They key to any successful iMovie/iDVD project is to plan ahead right from the capturing the video stage.

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