Backing Up: Better Safe than Sorry

Students of documentary will recognize the name Robert Flaherty...director of Nanook of the North. This amazing documentary suffered a serious setback just as it neared completion of the post-production phase. According to legend, Flaherty dropped a lit cigarette in the editing room, igniting the highly-flammable film stock that covered the floor...destroying his film in the process. At the time, Flaherty had no copy of the original film, forcing him to return to northern Canada to re-shoot his epic film about the Inuit culture. The lesson for all of us is that the post-production phase of a documentary project is full of twists and turns...some that cause minor set-backs and others that are more serious. But with a few precautions you can avoid catastrophic failure. I'm talking about organization, storage, and redundancy of your most important digital assets.

First and foremost, protect your camera originals. Tapes should be write-protected, labeled carefully, and stored in a safe place (clean with controlled humidity and temperature). Second, once a tape has been captured/digitized, the security of those digital files depends on the integrity of your storage system. There are various levels of redundancy (RAID 1, RAID 5, etc.) that can be implemented at various levels of expense. A relatively inexpensive solution is to occasionally (e.g., at the end of each edit session) backup your files to a second external HD. Obviously the bigger and more important the project, and the more changes to your EDL, the more frequently this step should be implemented. Notice that digitized video files do not need to be copied more than once...only those files that change as you edit. The most important file is the project file, followed by titles, imported graphics, etc. If you record audio VO narration, save that to CD and treat just like a source tape. Label it carefully and file it in a safe place. If you loose all of your digital assets, but still have your project file (which contains the EDL), you should be able to redigitize the footage from your source tapes and be back in business with little down time.

I have external storage that you are welcome to use to backup your digital video files if you have not done so. The project files are quite a bit smaller, and you have several options for backing up those files such as the network storage, USB flash drive, CD-R, etc.

You've put in a lot of hours of hard work...don't let it slip through your fingers.