In the process of work of any individual cameraman or one video studio the moment happens when there is a question of keeping archived stuff. In general, here are two interrelated and fundamental questions: how to archive and how to keep. To someone this problem seems like a trifle, but for many professionals this is a real dilemma. Even from the point of view of distribution of charges for maintenance of video studio equipment there must to be the contingency expenses where is derailed clearly how many means are for archiving and keeping material. In order to avoid an appearance of problems you need to know that we have a question which is not idle, but, sometimes, it is a stumbling block for many cameramen and leaders of video studios.

It must to be noticed at once that the video is an immensely exacting for the volumes of operating memory content. For its keeping must be chosen a safe and not expansive method. One television story with duration of two minutes in its original state may take bout one gigabyte of the memory. In order to prepare studio for any video works you have to know some unshakeable postulates.

1. A disk space for any work computer which uses for video editing process must to be as bigger as you can provide. You haven’t to forget that every video editing program besides of operating resources absorbs an enormous amount of the free space on hard disk. Considering firstly that video editor will free this disk spaces during his working process is a na?ve utopia. Many programs have mass of subdirectories where they are storing rendered and temporary files distributing them with various positions depending on the rendering type. In this case the eternal tracing a busy the subdirectories is unpardonable waste of time. Moreover, any stuff used before and now is not in need may not be deleted with the same reasons of the suitability. It’s useful to leave old work files for that to provide heredity of many modes of editing process and keeping “live” video material. It’s also useful in order always to have a necessary episode from the previous works ready to hand instead to look for them in archives.

2. There must to be a special server in studios for storing frequently used video footages for providing a quick access. And this video has to be sorted carefully by categories, date, locations and other. The keeping video which is not in demand potentially on this server is not allowed. Or this is possible with account of storing it in archives at the same time. Every computer must to have an access to the server. A speed of data transmission between server and any computer must be maximally high.

3. With using common server no one video file hasn’t to be connected to editing process and project remotely. The situation when from functioning head server or other computer depends a work of the entire project won’t have to appear. Any use of remote video without advance coping it on the hard disk of the computer may be as a result of collapse, workload on the local network, obstruction of the directories. The productivity of the work in this case will be low appreciably as well as on the other computer which is used as a donor.

4. The use of archival video ends after digitizing of the stuff at once. There are no reasons to litter a computer with archival material even if this action seems more rational initially.

And now I want to tell about my own experience working with archival video. To be precise, this is an observation working process in one television studio where the leaders accepted and canceled some decisions about this problem.

The problem itself as usual has appeared when the hard disk space on all work computers in studio hadn’t allowed keeping an enormous number of the video stuff. In order not to devalue the cameraman’s work the decision has been accepted to organize a video archive. With account that the company had a very capacious remote server with a large disc spaces more than one terabyte the question about its using hasn’t brought up. Moreover, all my arguments for that to keep an archive on the hard disks with a large capacity have been rejected point-blank. The most weighty argument against this was a director’s declaration that all operating systems have a distinctive feature to be failed destroying all stored data. Though this reason had more technical weight than rational. The use of disc space to store a video stuff might provide a quick access to the needed file simplifying all editing process.

As a result, the problem with archiving video has been decided not in my favor. The director has bought dozens of black boxes locking by the little key. There are compartments inside of it. Every video file was been burned on DVD disks, and the record itself was been made by only one person. He taunted a CD-ROM pitilessly not having an aversion to load files via local network. This hampered with work for other editors for a long period. As a result, a silly order of my former director has lowered a total efficiency of the work process instead to speed up it.

Another problem has appeared soon. Unexpected pursuit for economy has forced the leaders to purchase DVD with doubtful quality. In the issue, the archived video couldn’t to load to the computer from the disks, or this only happened selectively on some engines. The process of the loading took a long time and devoured the recourses.

But it was always a half of the troubles. Soon has appeared another one. It was very awful. The employer who was responsible for storing video stuff creating a sorting made all this so way that after no one person could work with it anymore. As a result, only one man had a direct access to video files. The rest workers decided to manage without an archive using only accessible video footages instead to address to the “keeper” of storing video. The organization of the archiving has left dreadful. It’s especially important for the television studio a presence of the footage stuff which is cut for quick searching and using initially. In practice, all this has another effect. A short episode needed to be loaded entirely with a video file inside of it this fragment was. A mass of unnecessary works, tormented nerves, absolutely useless the cameraman’s work. It was often that for one special frame the operator has been charged in addition, though sought-for episode may be found in the archives if the last was in good condition.

But this is not a full bouquet of the archival delights. It happens so the pursuit for the economy forces to act with real crazy ideas. In that studio where I worked was been invented a special method to compress video files. But only after all was been discovered that those actions had spoiled hundreds of subjects. As a rule, a compression happened inside of small dialog window where the size of this window was less than the desktop in several times. But we forget about a television screen additionally. All distortions and defects which have simply not appeared after video compression were unapparent on the little monitor. Enjoying with its “genius” godsend, the employer continued to produce one disk after another mechanically. The slapdash work has been noticed only after first need to get an archival stuff for the series of the compressed video.

Thus, there is a quite fair conclusion that you have never to use a compression with your video files for any archives. On no account! Moreover, I still opposite DVD archives in any forms. The hard data medium information may seemed troublesome, but a waste of the precious time and nerves when transmitting data to/on computer is a big evil, absolutely useless process which hasn’t a progress movement. When you have to economy on archiving video files you always lose.