Wondering what the thoughts are for archiving digital tapes as well as older analog tapes. I have alot of digital 8mm and hi8 tapes that I would like to archive. My initial thought is to pull the vid off of my taped through my digital 8 camcorder via fire wire into my computer and archive to an external hard drive. Just wondering about prefered compression type or file type to save as. Thanks for any info.

I don't know what the Pro's do, but I've been backing up to Hard Disk. I can't imagine a news room doing this, though!

Cheers,
Hugh

I save as AVI files. 13gb for a hour of DV.

Usually there are two ways to save;
1hr Complete (or Recorded Duration)
Where each Video clip/scene started – which helps when editing.

Im going to bump this back up to the top just in case there is any additional info from anyone. Is AVI uncompressed or the least compressed format?

You might find valuable information on archiving footage here, and you may have already read it, but this article has detailed info on the AVI format.

My son works as a photographer and a gaffer in the movie industry. I'll ask him for you, but he's moving this weekend so it might be a couple of days before I get a reply.

Mike.

Thank you very much for the links. I will check em out.

Thank you Mike. I appreciate it.

Jeff

Well this subject might need a bit of adjustment now that the Firewire port on my vid cam stopped working. It's a Sony TRV120 Digital 8 and I believe I bought it back in 2000. Sony wants a flat rate or $200.00 to service it but im not sure its worth bothering. The only problem is that I need to be able to play back the digital 8 tapes. Is there a dedicated digital 8 tape player out there?