Hi-MD Question

[BonnutFilmStudio]

Hey,

So I've used regular MDs in the past for soundtrack on film sets. It's quite handy for very mobile scenes. I'm thinking of switching to Hi-MD because as I understand it, records in PCM for higher quality. I'm also trying to find a good way to archive audio. So I'm wondering, can Hi-MD store .wav and or .aiff files? Also what it the life span of a Hi-MD disc in theory? I've tried finding the best way to archive audio. All magnetic tapes (analog and digital) have that hiss no matter how high the quality. Removable hard drives' disks stay intact but the compenets (such the USB port) can degrade. CD-R's decay and Gold seems to be long lasting but I haven't read any articles that guerantee that it's not a gimmick. MDs are almost like little hard disks, but of course regular MDs compress quite a bit. What I'm looking for is a format for master back-ups. If someone can tell me, "yes Hi-MDs support .wav and or .aiff" and "Hi-MDs have a long life span (at least 20 years)" thn I'l know that Hi-MDs are the way to go for proper archival. Any feedback would be awesome.

[ozpeter]

You can store whatever you like on a Hi-MD disc as data. The discs should last for a great many years - but whether the rapidly disappearing players will remains to be seen. With the rapidly falling prices of hard drives, making multiple copies and refreshing them by copying those every few years (perhaps to whatever takes over from hard drives - terabytes of storage on a credit card??), or some such scheme, would probably be a better bet.

I have hundreds of master tapes on DAT - the tapes are probably ok but only one of my machines seems happy to play any of them. And as the CDs made from the tapes have now largely disappeared from the shops anyway, who'd want to go back to the original takes anyway? But I can't quite bring myself to throw them away.

[BonnutFilmStudio]

You can store whatever you like on a Hi-MD disc as data. The discs should last for a great many years - but whether the rapidly disappearing players will remains to be seen. With the rapidly falling prices of hard drives, making multiple copies and refreshing them by copying those every few years (perhaps to whatever takes over from hard drives - terabytes of storage on a credit card??), or some such scheme, would probably be a better bet.

I have hundreds of master tapes on DAT - the tapes are probably ok but only one of my machines seems happy to play any of them. And as the CDs made from the tapes have now largely disappeared from the shops anyway, who'd want to go back to the original takes anyway? But I can't quite bring myself to throw them away.

Interesting. I guess I'm a little wary about hard drives because they do crash and have crashed on us before. Actually we powered on our lap top and external with itention of backing up some audio on that drive as our first task. Then the damn thing crashed. MDs have those highly durable shells and if they do indeed hold any data and last long, I might give them a try at least as a back up to my back up.

ALSO: Thank you very much for the response.

Edited November 28, 2007 by BonnutFilmStudio

[Strungup]

MD is basically MO , for archiving you could use MO drive and discs , slow but durable , and MO drives will be around for awhile , Hi MD is available in Home system form from Onkyo , Sony has stopped making MD , But as Oz said , MD is tough stuff , .......as for 20 years ????? my MZ-R50 lasted 10 before dying .

So if you buy a stock of RH1 's or 200's then you would be OK . I am also on Mac , I use the RH1 with Macbook Pro Core2Duo , no problem . You have to Use HiMD Transfer 2.0 , (Version 1 is not safe , do not even attempt to install it) Audio quality , with the Audio Technica AT822 is superb .

PM me with email info , we can get hooked up on iChat . I used to be a Studio Engineer .