DV storage options

[Justin Spence]

Dear ILATers (ILATists? ILATicians?),

I'm a linguist working for Diwurruwurru-jaru Aboriginal Corporation
(Katherine Regional Aboriginal Language Centre) Australia's Northern
Territory.  I'm new to the list and to endangered language work in general
and am hoping someone out there might be able to help clarify a few issues
related to digital video storage.

In a nutshell, we record things on DV cassette and edit them with Final Cut
Pro 3 on a Power Mac G4, but up 'til now we've been unable to keep digital
master copies of our finished projects due to lack of disk space.  Instead
we've generally been exporting the final edit to VHS and then deleting the
intermediate files from the G4 (so we're left with the raw footage on DVC
and an analog master of the final edit on VHS).

Since we're probably losing some quality and flexibility in the
digital-to-analog conversion, we're exploring our options for keeping
digital masters.  One possibility is storing them on DV cassette.  I've been
able to do this from iMovie, but is this possible from FC Pro?  Also, my
understanding of DV technology is quite shaky here:  Is there quality lost
in (a) transferring raw footage to the G4 in the first place and/or (b)
transferring edited footage back to DV cassette (if this is even possible
with FC Pro)?  Although both (a) and (b) are digital-to-digital transfers
via firewire, this doesn't seem quite the same as just copying files since
things like "frames per second" are involved.  (We import things to the G4
using the "DV PAL 48 kHz" setting in FC Pro).

Is DV cassette even a reasonable option for long-term storage? The other
major option on the table is to buy some large-capacity hard disks, but then
we have the problem of how to back everything up and who on staff will have
the skills to cope with inevitable disk snafus.

How have others out there tackled these issues?

Thanks in advance for any insights you can offer!

--
Justin Spence
Southwest Linguist
Diwurruwurru-jaru Aboriginal Corporation
(Katherine Regional Aboriginal Language Centre)
PO Box 871, Katherine 0851
e:  justin.spence at kathlangcentre.org.au
p:  (08) 89 711 233
f:  (08) 89 710 561