JacksenTube #3: Swimming In Data

I finally got it! When I came home from work on Thursday, Jacksen was happy just lying on the couch when he started talking as he always does. Except this time I had the camera ready and he had lots on his mind. We hear this every day but few friends and family have heard it before now.

There may be more video coming - I have 24 GB of DV eating up my hard drive right now. I need an easy way to back this stuff up! Converting to XviD in nearly-equal-to-DV quality compresses it down to 3 GB but still, it's a lot. I'd like to retain the originals if I can. So far I can only think of these ideas:

• Seven or eight data DVDs, unplayable on a DVD player of course. This is probably cheapest but I don't trust writable DVDs over time so I'd have to re-write onto new discs periodically. I can't loose this footage and I'm bad at maintaining schedules like that.


• Buy a huge hard drive and external USB 2.0 enclosure. Expensive, but I'd say more reliable than DVDs over time. It is, however, prone to physical damage which would render all content lost.


• Buy more DV tapes and forget the computer methods. This may be the best option. Tape lasts a long time and they're only $10 for an hour. It doesn't, however, allow me to edit the video and back up the edited copies since I don't have a software DV encoder.

If anyone has suggestions I'm all ears.