Archiving videos in the MiniDV format

Q I have some videos recorded on MiniDV tape and for preservation purposes I would like to copy them onto another form of storage, but I’m not sure which type I should use.

I had intended to use DVDs, but I’m not sure that’s the best choice.

Dawn Taylor-Jones

A MiniDV tapes can be easily copied to your computer using a Firewire cable, assuming you still have access to the camcorder. Then using a program such as Windows Movie Maker, or any other video-editing program, you can copy the video files to the computer’s hard disk.

If you’ve already done that, or when you have done it, archiving the files is simply a matter of copying them to the appropriate storage medium. In this case, we would recommend hard disks.

DVDs are fine for archiving, but some are susceptible to corrosion and damage unless stored very carefully.

However, video files are quite large. While you can fit hundreds of photos on a CD (which stores 700MB) or thousands on a 4.7GB DVD, video on MiniDV comes out at around 12GB per hour of footage, so a full one-hour MiniDV tape would require three DVDs to store, and even then you’d have to cut the footage up to split it over three discs.

You could use a Blu-ray disc – we recently looked at the Pioneer BDR-203 Blu-ray writer, which will do the job you require. As Blu-ray discs store 25GB each you can probably fit two tapes onto each disc.

At £180 for the drive and up to £10 per disc it’s not cheap and you’ll need a fast computer to do the disc creation, and bear in mind that, as with CDs and DVDs it’s vital to store the discs safely in a cool, dry place away from sunlight, in their original cases, to avoid damage.

For all those reasons we would recommend the easy option which is to buy a good external hard disk that connects to the computer through its USB port, and back the video files up to that. You can pick up a 500GB disk, which will store 40 hours of MiniDV footage, for around £50 online.

Then you can have three copies – the one on the external hard disk, the one on your computer’s main hard disk, and the original tapes (which again should be stored in a cool dry place away from sunlight). Make sure you check the hard disk every few months to make sure the backups still work.