There seem to be a lot of concerns about the durability of archived, non-commercially burned DVDs. Use the best media you can get your hands on. Probably only time will tell. OTOH, another, probably more robust format is sure to appear soon. mg

The industry hasn't even come close to standardizing HD tape formats, especially in the consumer realm. If your material is SD I think you should archive in SD. And DVD is a format that should be around for a while.

I was hoping to just go composite into a dvd recorder (easiest way I can think of). The other option was to go to SX Beta. Obviously there will be compression issues. What are people's thoughts on going composite into a HD Camcorder? Is it still too early adopt HD (in a domestic camcorder) as a way of digital storage? Would a professional HD camera have better Analigue to Digital conversion?

I am at the end of converting all our beta SP/Umatic video to DVD. we opted to go to DVD because of cost, storage space, and the amount of times old footage is needed. (our more recent material we opted to go to XD disc). Since we were on a project and time constraint we simply ran the video out of a player into composite in on a recorder. The video was as good as it was going to get coming from analog tape but it worked.

My problem with going the DVD route is that the 1" signal is coming out as composite video-so less compression would be a concern more so then if the source were---even analog componet. I second Matt in thinking of a digital tape format. Though I would ask yourself how often will these archives really be used. If only a few times then maybe the compressed DVD would be ok. Would you be babysitting the transfer, thus building chapter markers for easier access...or would you be archiving footage as files to DVD? Just curious... you have me thinking about all our BetaSP Masters. Scott S.

DVD is definitely a cost effective way to convert tape to a digital format. MPEG compression will cause the compressed video to not look as pristine as the original. Have you considered moving the analog tapes to a digital tape format?