Media Backup Device [recommendations/experiences]

[Neil]

Originally Posted by kuntushi

Yeah, it seems to be a pretty common route these days. We toyed with the idea of going through Turkey, etc, but decided to go the other way. Kinda wish we were going through Turkey and stuff now though.

We've already left too. The guys are somewhere in Southern France and just got the long range fuel tank installed. Should be in Tunisia in under a week. I'll meet them in Cairo.

Dan.

Shame, would have been nice to meet you guys. Next time

Originally Posted by beddhist

You seem to value your data, so remember the golden rules of backup:

make more than one copy
keep the copies in different places
backup often

Taken on board, I'll try and do you proud.

Originally Posted by edteamslr

Almost forgot. What you doing about filming on the move? Bikers love watching onbike footage of themselves, the more the better. Non-bikers get bored of it quickly. To capture decent onbike footage you end up recording a lot of footage that is only fit for the cuttingroom floor but then you end up wasting SD card space. Using your camcorder is fine occasionally, and allows you to edit the boring stuff, but it may end in tears and you're risking the quality footage for the rest of the trip if you break the camera in the meantime. You could also edit out good scene-setting footage because you think you won't use it. ContourHDs, GoProHDs, Stills-cameras in video mode all fit the bill but vary in expense, methods of attachment and ability to toggle recording on/off. You also often need proprietary chargers, adapters etc. More STUFF and more TIME spent tending to charging batteries.

I think it would be a shame not to have the option of including some onbike footage in a movie about travelling but it is a lot of hassle for what may turn out to be only 1% of your total final movie. If you can't easily turn it on to capture footage then chances are you won't.

Ed thanks yeah will endeavour to take all that on board, as for filming and suchlike: both cameras film in 16:9 and both will be filming at 720 HD .. they also both run on SD cards so in a way I'm ironing out all those snags in one move.

I'm going for 720 as it is the common denominator between the cameras and also most efficient in terms of gigabye/hours.

I have been asking my friends in the movie world what they recommend in the audio department as I cannot agree more about the sound. Ideally I'd go all out and get myself a Zoom H4n but frankly I'm not sure my budget can go that far. The Digimate V (if I do get it), has a function for audio recording and the lappel mic would do the trick on that.

Two cameras rolling in HD I'm hoping 500GB will cover it, I'll take two (of the same hard drive, i think) in addition i'll be carrying spares for the (reasonably fast) SD cards, as they do have a read/write life etc. Already started fabricating the waterproof/vibration proof tin for the HDDs.

The cameras I have and will be using are:

Panasonic Lumix DMC TS1


GoPro HD Helmet HERO


I'm sure in years to come I'll be wondering about why on earth anyone thought these were good. :P

[Grant Johnson]

" Already started fabricating the waterproof/vibration proof tin for the HDDs."

in one word - well two words - Pelican Box!

[colebatch]

Originally Posted by KTMmartin

It sounds like you have a few options:
1) Use tape
2) Copy from SD to hard disk (& compress?), replacing hard drive when full
3) Copy from SD to hard disk (& compress?), taking all the disk you anticipate you need with you beforehand.
4) Apply RAID to options 2 or 3. G-Technology - G-RAID mini - Portable High-Performance Dual-Drive Storage System

My call in your scenario would be option 4. But you may still need a laptop/netbook to compress the data decently before archiving.

I dont think you should compress the video data ... its already highly compressed. The codecs used already compress the data as much as the manufacturers feel is sound. DV tape (the least compressed) is already compressed about 5 times. Stuff recorded to flash drives (AVCHD / H.264) is typically much more compressed that that. Raw HD video would be something like 1080 x 1920 (pixels) x 3 (colour channels) x 10 (bits per channel) x 25 (frames per second) bits per sec ... Over 1500 Mbits/sec. Yet many camcorders record it at 7, 9, 15, 24 Mbits sec.... i.e. its already super highly compressed.

USB powered 2.5 inch drives now are available up to 1000 GB ... that's a truck load of footage.
Western Digital My Passport Essential 1TB USB 2.0: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo
At 180 grams its barely bigger than an iPhone