Archiving the Storyboard

[TimKennelly]

Rte,

The simple answer on how much drive space will be used with a two hour Project is there is no direct correlation as it backs up the entire drive, all Projects and not just the one.

If you get in the habit of backing up just a Project or two "individually on external drives it's more manageable, but even so as it backs up the entire Scene bin as well as the Storyboard you still cannot have a direct correlation between Project length and drive space it takes.

It is easy to know that, whatever your internal drive capacity used shoes (Gigabytes) is how much space on the external drive it will take so you can easily know how much space any back up is going to "cost" you.

Also, the HD-backup process tells you what percentage of the external drive the back up will take.

[Rte80west]

Just so I'm clear: if I have 1 project in the S4000 and backup to an external HD, it will backup the entire S4000, but because the other project slots are blank, it will essentially only backup 1 project. If I then blow that project away on the S4000 and work on 5 new projects, then back those 5 new projects up on the external HD, the external HD will again backup the entire project slate, but again essentially only backup the 5 that are active. In other words, I can continually be adding/exporting/deleting projects on the S4000- so if space permits, I could theoretically have a number of backed up projects on the external HD that far exceeds the number of project slots on the S4000... it's not like the backup HD is just limited to the # of project slots on the S4000, correct?

On a related note, if I try to export 1 project to the external HD and blow away all scene bin clips first so I essentially am just backing up the storyboard, will it result in significantly less drive space used? Similarly, if I try to a) backup a storyboard with all transitions, effects etc in place vs. b) first exporting that same storyboard to tape then reloading it in one HDV "chunk" and THEN backup to external HD, will THAT result in less drive space used? I understand both would have the same content (i.e. transitions, effects etc), but is one method more space conscious than the other based on the fact the transitions & effects are already "in" the footage? I know this is a complex, nit-picky question that probably has no clear answer, but I figure I'd float it out there anyway... Thanks in advance

[TimKennelly]

Yes, the backup is whatever is currently on the drive.

Projects used have no bearing, only the amount of actual data.

When you are in the Project menu, you can look towards the top right of the screen and it shows the drive percentage used which gives you an approximate amount of data you have there and in System Settings, HD Backup, Save it will tell you how much data is on your external drive, how much is on the internal drive and what percentage of our external drive will be needed for this backup.

Both the Storyboard and the Scene Bin are essentially just markers to the data on the drive.

Deleting the markers deletes the data after the tenth deletion, switching out of Projects, crashes and a few other such will do the same after deleting a Scene.

However, if you delete a Scene in the Scene bin, but it's on the Storyboard you don't save anything as there is still a "marker" saving the Scene data.

Same with deleting from the Storyboard, but still having it in the Scene bin.

I doubt that transitions and such represent much data, but they DO represent data so going out to tape and back and deleting everything else would reduce the total data.

Of course, just making a Scene of it all and deleting the rest would do the same.

The problem is if you get into deleting all the Scenes (markers), but one and that one becomes corrupt (happens) you just lost essentially everything even though it's still on the drive you will not be able to access it ever again.

I always have an "Archive" Project where I Clipboard finished Scene segments over to as I complete them just in case a Scene goes corrupt or even more specifically in case a Project goes corrupt (I have had that happen probably a half dozen times over the years) and having all or most of the completed work in another Project saves me big time.

My standard operating process is to import to a Project labeled Raw footage with the date or gig nomenclature.

I then Clipboard pertinent segments of the raw footage to another Project where I do the actual editing and Clipboard finished segments to a third Project as mentioned.

Between that practice and the relatively recent HD Backup I never have to "start over" which I really, really hate doing (ran into that several times with my original Avio before starting this practice.

[Rte80west]

Very thorough answer. Much appreciated, as always.

[HansJoachimKoenig]

Tim,
very funny, I do it the same way you do since going to HDV.