[AV Media Matters] Apple Superdrive

[Ted Chapple <tchapple@rochester.rr.com>]

Hello all,

I've spent a few bleary eyed nights trying to read as many past postings
as possible.  I've learned there is a lot of honest disagreement among
archivist.   As an individule I've decided the best strategy is do what
you can now.  My situation is somewhat similar to Brian Levy's.

I work in residential construction and remodelling but as a hobby I have
owned camdorders since 1986 when I bought Kodak's MVS 8 mm camcorder.
This amateur dabbling caused my sister to look to me as her video
technical advisor.  My sister is Dr. Patricia Wright of Stony Brook
University.  She is an anthropologist who co-discovered a new species of
lemur in Ranomafana, Madagascar and established a National Park in
Madagascar to protect it.   I was fortuanate to accompany her to
Madagascar in the late 80's and early 90's and have many hours of 8mm
and Hi8 video of wildlife and documentation of early days of creating
the Ranomafana National Park.  Since then she has provided cameras to
locals so that now there are even more hours of video not only of
wildlife but also of the local native peoples' culture and history.
Pat knows that videotape degrades and has  asked me how to archive these
videos onto a medium that is more permanent.  I've told her that DVD is
a way but until now it has been too expensive.  With the arrival of
Apple's Superdrive I think an affordable solution may be at hand.  I
have several questions though.

1) Will Apple's DVD Studio Pro allow 2 hours of video to be put on 1
DVD?

2) If so would the quality suffer to the extent that it would really be
better to stay with 1 hour of video per DVD?

3) If iDVD takes 2.5 hours to render 1 hour to DVD does that mean DVD
Studio Pro would take 5 hours to render a 2 hour video to DVD?

4)  I can see it easily taking a full 8 hour day to transfer one 2 hour
video onto DVD and burn a couple exta copies.  Converting several
hundred hours of video to DVD is going to require industrial use.  Is it
likely that the Apple Superdrive system will hold up under such heavy
use?

5) Is there other 3rd party software and or hardware that could do the
encoding faster and yet still be affordable?

6) I've read of "video scrubbers" that are used to reduce the video
noise on the original video tape.  Is this something I should look into
or is this actually a negative for archival situations?

7) My 8mm tapes have held up much better than my Hi8.  A lot of my Sony
Hi8 metal evaporated tapes display so much jitter on playback they
become unwatchable.  It seems to come and go as the tapes are played and
doesn't always seem to happen in the same spot which to me indicates the
video information is still there and it may be a tracking problem.  Play
back on different VCRs and cameras all display the same problem.  Is
there a fix for this?  I would like to send out a tape for testing and
evaluation to someone who has expertise in this area.

Well that is quite a bit.  Replies and comments to any of the above
would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Ted Chapple