A while back I posted an open question on twitter regarding backing up verses archiving, and it seems that everyone is in agreement regarding the core difference for media professionals. What I have yet to understand is why these same media professionals who understand the concept of long term archival long to use backup practices to achieve this.  Either deploying  binders full of optical media, shelves full of USB driven external storage, or a huge rack of SAN.

Simply trying to adding to a SAN or a RAID strategy for accommodating an every growing amount of data is NOT the path to archival bliss. Studies by IT experts show that the costs for doing this are deceptive – individual disk drives are cheap but not the infrastructure to support them.  Adding rack space, power, and cooling requirements is just impractical.  Also according to  the Clipper Group Inc., the costs for a Terabyte stored long term on SATA disk versus LTO data tape is about 23, to as much as 290 times more!   The issue with trying to grow your storage you will always grow faster than you anticipate. Continue Reading…

If you have not read my three previous posts (if you have not, go and do it now, please….pretty please) you know I have forsaken my low budget video production methods for a Canon 550D and a bad hunger for L lenses.

I’ve been happily riding the tiger of HDSLR production for several weeks now, and as I predicted, the learning curve has a pronounced tilt. Triumphs over the limitations have been frequent however, and the light at the end of the tunnel may not be a train. Perhaps a Yugo with a headlight out, but not a train.

How I stopped worrying and learned to love the bomb: Cineform & Transcoding

What if I told you that you could improve the speed of your NLE by at least 8x and up to 16x for only $129. Think about what an 8x speed improvement in your post workflow would mean to your income. You’re going to save hours a week – gain back weeks every year. Continue Reading…