Transferring My Video to a Digital Archive

[SkiBum]

Hey Mike -- or anyone else on this social network....
What is the best, most cost effective way to transfer my huge library of 150 analog DV tapes (all shot on our Sony Hi-8 camcorder) into a digital format for the sake of preservation and/or future retrieval?
FYI, I have a nice iMac and up-to-date version of iMovie 2008, but I don't think I've got the time to edit down my footage (I'm too busy these days), so I really just need a way to dump it all into a digital repository for some future editing. My main motivation is to preserve all this footage (it's mostly of my four kids, growing up) before the analog tapes wear out.
Previously, I had assumed the way to do this was to burn everything onto DVD's, using my iMac. But now I'm not so sure, because I assume burning all the video onto DVD's makes it watchable later, but not editable later.
Right?
Thanks in advance for any advice people can suggest.
For example, is there some huge external hard drive (capable of storing terabytes of video data) into which I can dump all my footage? If so, would it bankrupt me to buy such a device?
-SkiBum

[SkiBum]

Sorry, one correction to the above posting: I should not have referred to my tape library as being "analog." It's actually digital Hi-8 format. But it's still just tape, and will therefore wear out faster than other storage media will wear out, won't it?

[droidmaker]

Hey SkiBum! These are good and important questions you ask -- and they've been on my mind for months now. Here goes:

Don't burn it to DVDs. Go buy a 1TB hard disk (<$200), and use iMovie or maybe Final Cut Express to dump whole tapes into unaltered DV files on this new hard disk dedicated to your video tapes.

It will take weeks or months to convert it all, and I'd recommend you watch it and log it as it gets filed, but it's okay to start transferring.

For the record, i've been going through my last 10 years of MiniDV tapes (comparable to your digital8 tapes), and i find almost no drop outs. There are occasional blips that interrupt editing and timecode, but the video and audio are still intact. Still, it's good to get the stuff off of tape. That being said, keep the old tapes stored for awhile, just in case hard disks crash and you need a backup. Short of having a real back up system for your new drive (like a RAID or duplicate of some kind), the tapes are great and inexpensive archives.

Your question prompted me to post a few items to the blog today. Check those out and let me know if you have more questions.

[SkiBum]

Hey, Mike.
Thanks for the advice, which I took.
I bought the same 1 terabyte hard disk you recommended. It cost $323.71, from Amazon (shipping was free).
Then I hooked up the camera to our iMac, the nice 24-inch one that we have in our kitchen, which has iMovie '08. Then I proceeded to dump (and watch and log) the oldest videotape in our collection, into the iMac. The tape was recorded in December 1993 and includes video shot on the day that my first daughter was born, plus scenes from our life over the next few months. It was great. It surprised me to find out that this was not a 1-hour tape, but rather a 2-hour tape. This means that my library is bigger than I thought. (So I guess I'll be buying ANOTHER 1 terabyte hard disk at some point...) Naturally, the whole family (we now have four kids) crowded around to watch the footage, too. They made fun of me for carefully logging each scene, but I figured it couldn't hurt to have this.
After all the video had been dumped into iMovie, I noticed that iMovie automatically generated thumbnails of each scene. Next, I disconnected our camera from the sole firewire port on the iMac and then connected the 1 TB drive to the same port. Then I exported the file to the 1 TB drive. All of this took a while, of course.
Anyway, it's obviously going to take a long time, and many evenings like this, to digitize our entire library of home movies this way. But we have begun!
Thanks for all your advice.
By the way, I don't think you've figured it out yet, judging from your reply, but this is one of your pals from college writing this. I just assumed you would be able to check my identity from my registration, since this is your social network. But if you can't figure it out, I will "reveal" my identity to you shortly...

[droidmaker]

1) I believe the TB drive has two FW ports on it -- which means you can connect it to your Mac, and your camcorder to the drive, and everything should work without recabling.
2) I'm still experimenting with iMovie 08 and making sure it works for this process... it does break clips into pieces, and keeps the time/date, but it might break things up more than you need. I wouldn't normally say this, but it might make logging somewhat obsolete, or at least altered, since it moves stuff around and labels. You may have to do some of this evaluation yourself, until I am more convinced about it. I'm not as familiar with iMovie 08 as any other of these programs.
3) I'm really glad to hear this is working out. I'm doing the same thing pretty much, using Final Cut Express. Less user friendly than iMovie in some ways, but I like have just a few big chunks of video I can manipulate. If you're planning on doing any real editing, be cautious about iMovie 08.
4) I know who you are... !!