Apple Final Cut Express 4 - Manual (Page 942)

942 Part XI Project Management and Settings
Depending on the duration of your original footage, the captured media files that you
used for your project are not necessarily worth archiving long-term, simply because
they are extraneous copies of your original videotapes. Also, backing up to inexpensive
formats, such as DVD-R, can be fairly time consuming. As long as you archive your
project file and you have the original videotapes available to recapture clips from, your
project is sufficiently archived.
 Project files: These are typically quite small, and many versions of a project file can be
archived on a Zip disk, CD-ROM, or similar storage media.
 Media files captured from tape or other timecoded sources: These require a lot of disk
space, so it can be impractical to back up these files. As long as your tapes have
timecode, you can simply store the original tapes along with the backed-up project
file. If you need to revisit your project later, you can use the timecode information in
the clips of your project file to recapture media from tape.
 Media files without timecode and files created on a computer: Graphics files, such as
still images, and motion graphics that originated on a computer should be
permanently archived on a hard disk, DVD-ROM, or similar storage media. You should
also save the original project files from the applications that you used to create these
media files. Non-timecoded video sources, such as video from VHS tape or audio
from an Audio CD, should also be backed up, because you can’t accurately recapture
this media later.