Advise needed on managing digital video collection...

[nharikrishna]

Sorry, wasn't sure which category of the forum to post this question in...

I currently about 30 MiniDV Cassettes on which I have recorded various events, children playing...etc. The number of cassettes keeps growing as I complete 1 cassette once in 3 months. So I imagine piling up 100's of them by the time my children reach teenage.

I always beleived that the original source of video should be reserved, and that is the reason I always buy a new MiniDV cassette to record if the current one is full.

I need advice from you all on the overall framework that needs to be established...

I started doing the following...

1. Capture each MiniDV cassette onto Computer via Firewire.
2. Then note down the dates and events covered in it
3. Encode & author a DVD (possibly Verbatim Dual-layer DVD) with menus and chapter marks covering all different dates and/or events

By doing the above, I am going to have 3 versions of my videos:

a. The original MiniDV Cassette
b. The captured DV AVI file (13 GB/Hour) on hard drive (I have invested in a 2 TB Hard Drive recently)
c. The final DVD in DVD-Video format

Is there an established methodology or software that will help me keep track of all my video collection?

I know this question is not organized in the best manner, but all I wanted to know is, how are you guys storing and organizing your Digital Video collections so that...

a. they can be retrieved easily (based on date and/or event) when wanted
b. if one mode/format fails or gets damaged, the same content can be recovered using other format or mode
c. it is future proof and can be accessed by "future systems"

I have about 10 VHS Cassettes also....so my digital video collection should take care of "digital captures" of the VHS as well. (I currently have Canopus ADVC 110).

Please share your good practices.

Regards

[shaema]

I suggest Microsoft Access program [part of Microsoft Office] to make a database file (myevents.mdb)

create new table (events_table) with the following fields:

1 - date_of_event [date type]
2 - event_name [text type]
3 - event_duration [general number type]
4 - dvd_number [general number type]
5 - dvd_chapter [ general number type]
6 - original_tape_number [ general number type]
7 - avi_file_name [text type]

Assuming that each event_name is a unique one, you can set it as a Primary Key, which would be used for searching.

So now if an event such as [smith_birthday] in the DVD is damaged or corrupted, you can search for it to get the relevant avi_file_name or the original_tape_number to auther a new DVD.

You could add any other bits of info as additional field e.g place_of event [ home, school or a holiday] ..etc

And don't forget to make a backup copies of the resulting myevent.mdb file and save them separately [ on a hard drive or as a data file in a dvd.

I think AVI files are future proof in that most of the current and future video software would be able to deal with them.

If you don't have Microsoft Access you can get the free OpenOffice Suite from openoffice.org and use the database in the same way.

[nharikrishna]

Thanks for the response.