i have made a few purchases this week that should finally give me all of the gear i need to do some major media organization. i just bought a dedicated film/slide scanner and a 1/2 terrabyte hard drive. basically, i'm "digitizing" the 15+ years of media that i've acquired so far.
i started digitizing in 2000 when i made stereo mixes of my vcr/adat and cassette 4 track material. i put everything in reasonably hi bit rate mp3 format. i've kept all of the original cassettes, which now fit into a small box in my closet.
earlier this year i began sifting through my 50+ vcr videos and managed to downsize quite a bit of material. i had concert films, high school/prom/performance videos, various home movies and hours upon hours of stuff recorded from cable between 1989 - 1998. i bought a stand alone dvd recorder and simple hit record/pause when something worth saving was on the screen. i started out doing the 2-hr dvd option, but now i've decided i want higher quality so from now on i'm going to use the highest resolution i can. i still have about 20 or so to burn onto dvd.
i also have a small mountain of mini-dv tapes. these are mostly vacation footage and band/live performance stuff. with these i'm considering importing directly into i-movie so i can do some more efficient editing... and then burn to dvd. i also have a lot of multi-camera footage of the spots and through the sparks that needs to be edited together at some point. now that i have final cut pro, this is feasible.
i also have a lot of film negatives and slides. a lot. i'd love to transfer the best images of these slides and negs and of course, keep the originals as backup. i'm still not totally comfortable with digital storage, but i'm getting there. in recent years, i've gotten images on disk along with prints when i get film developed. this is fine for web-based images, but i want more hi-res options now.
and finally, a low-priority goal is to transfer some albums i have on vinyl to acc format. i probably won't get to this for a while. i'll probably be "digitizing" for at least the next 2 years, but it will be nice to have everything in dvd and jpeg/tiff format. now that mac osx / leopard is here, i'll have the option of scrolling thru all of my digital media with real-time previews... even video. incredible.
my first task will be to finally finish transferring my vcr tapes to dvd so i can put them in storage. i'll also do some massive back-up data dvd's for everything and put them somewhere for safe keeping. organization: it is what separates us from the animals.
i started digitizing in 2000 when i made stereo mixes of my vcr/adat and cassette 4 track material. i put everything in reasonably hi bit rate mp3 format. i've kept all of the original cassettes, which now fit into a small box in my closet.
earlier this year i began sifting through my 50+ vcr videos and managed to downsize quite a bit of material. i had concert films, high school/prom/performance videos, various home movies and hours upon hours of stuff recorded from cable between 1989 - 1998. i bought a stand alone dvd recorder and simple hit record/pause when something worth saving was on the screen. i started out doing the 2-hr dvd option, but now i've decided i want higher quality so from now on i'm going to use the highest resolution i can. i still have about 20 or so to burn onto dvd.
i also have a small mountain of mini-dv tapes. these are mostly vacation footage and band/live performance stuff. with these i'm considering importing directly into i-movie so i can do some more efficient editing... and then burn to dvd. i also have a lot of multi-camera footage of the spots and through the sparks that needs to be edited together at some point. now that i have final cut pro, this is feasible.
i also have a lot of film negatives and slides. a lot. i'd love to transfer the best images of these slides and negs and of course, keep the originals as backup. i'm still not totally comfortable with digital storage, but i'm getting there. in recent years, i've gotten images on disk along with prints when i get film developed. this is fine for web-based images, but i want more hi-res options now.
and finally, a low-priority goal is to transfer some albums i have on vinyl to acc format. i probably won't get to this for a while. i'll probably be "digitizing" for at least the next 2 years, but it will be nice to have everything in dvd and jpeg/tiff format. now that mac osx / leopard is here, i'll have the option of scrolling thru all of my digital media with real-time previews... even video. incredible.
my first task will be to finally finish transferring my vcr tapes to dvd so i can put them in storage. i'll also do some massive back-up data dvd's for everything and put them somewhere for safe keeping. organization: it is what separates us from the animals.