classic arcade graffix artwork package down to $999.00

[ChadTower]

It's an insignificant cost but the usability is very low.  The bad disc rate would be a real pain in the ass, too.  Just labelling them with what is actually on each disc would take quite a while.

When I worked at Kodak we had mechanically fed CD burners... could do 16 in parallel and queue up something like 1000 blanks and/or originals (to be duped).

[shardian]

It's an insignificant cost but the usability is very low.  The bad disc rate would be a real pain in the ass, too.  Just labelling them with what is actually on each disc would take quite a while.

I think "Arcade Art - Br thru Bt" Or something like that would be plenty for a label.
An index Word file on the 1st disc could be referrenced for finding a specific file.

[Ninten-doh]

Count me in for $50 as well.   

[ChadTower]

I think "Arcade Art - Br thru Bt" Or something like that would be plenty for a label.
An index Word file on the 1st disc could be referrenced for finding a specific file.

Right, but we're talking about upwards of ninety single layer DVDs.  At the very least it would need to be dual layer just to reduce the failure rate.

[shardian]

So does anyone on here have access to a bulk dvd burner - preferably a dual-layer version? 

Way ahead of you Chad.

[shardian]

Even with a high end burner, that would be a TON of hours devoted to making copies.

The feasibility of this project may be too great, I am afraid. 

Another option would be to tag-team the burning with a partner. We could pair off, and each person of the team could copy 50 dvd's. Then each would ship the other guy his copy. In this case, we would all have the same amount of time and money invested.

[ChadTower]

I've been involved with way too many community projects like that where people not completing their tasks, or taking months to do it, became a huge hassle.

I suspect that given the volume involved, and the total cost of the material, that hard drives would definitely be the way to go.  This isn't like a ten disc MAME set.

[edge]

Taking a quick look at pricewatch.com, I think we can get 400GB external USB or Firewire drives for about 150-175.  If we do a group buy, we maybe able to get it even cheaper.  It looked like some of resellers would offer discounts.

I think, with this much data, hard drives would be the only way (and easiest way) to go.  It will cost more, but would be worth it.

[MaximRecoil]

The set price which includes the USB Drive and all listed artwork is $999.00.

Who would keep the USB hard drive that the artwork comes on? A drive that can hold 400 real GB of data would have to be bigger than 400 of the fake marketing-friendly hard drive GB's, and as far as I know, the next size up jumps to 500 GB. An external USB 500 GB hard drive is two or three hundred dollars alone.

[screaming]

Won't kinkos, or someplace, duplicate DVDs for us?  I wonder how much they cost?

[ChadTower]

Who would keep the USB hard drive that the artwork comes on? A drive that can hold 400 real GB of data would have to be bigger than 400 of the fake marketing-friendly hard drive GB's, and as far as I know, the next size up jumps to 500 GB. An external USB 500 GB hard drive is two or three hundred dollars alone.

If the cost jumps too much I wouldn't mind going to an internal IDE.  You can get external USB housings for IDE drives fairly cheap.

[screaming]

What about splitting up the duplicating work amoung us that have DL DVD burners? How many are there?

[MaximRecoil]

Who would keep the USB hard drive that the artwork comes on? A drive that can hold 400 real GB of data would have to be bigger than 400 of the fake marketing-friendly hard drive GB's, and as far as I know, the next size up jumps to 500 GB. An external USB 500 GB hard drive is two or three hundred dollars alone.

If the cost jumps too much I wouldn't mind going to an internal IDE.  You can get external USB housings for IDE drives fairly cheap.

Well, a USB hard drive is included in the $999 price in the first place, so technically the files themselves cost $600 or $700 and the rest of it is going for that USB hard drive...and whatever the book they include costs.

I'm not sure why people are talking about buying hard drives or DVD's to put the files on, since it already comes on a hard drive that is included in the $999 price...unless the plan is to give all the financial contributors complete personal copies of the files, in which case you are talking twenty 500 GB hard drives, not just one; and it raises the total cost to about $5,000 at least, meaning each contributor needs to come up with $250, rather than $50.

Now if whoever is going to host the files has a dedicated server that they leave on 24/7/365, then they could simply plug the included HDD into their server and call it good. I see this scenario as unlikely. More likely is, that whoever ends up hosting the files, does so through a hosting service, and they will have to upload all those files to the hosting service's server (uploading 400 GB is no small task in and of itself). In which case, that leaves someone with a "free" 500 GB USB HDD; though I suppose it could be sold and the money split up among the contributors.

Another option would be that the person hosting the files keeps the USB HDD with the provision that it is not a gift for personal use, but an official backup copy of the files.

[JONTHEBOMB]

Well were not quite to the mark yet.

19 members x $50 = $950

Names of members contributing $50:
(Please say something if you would like to be taken off the list)

- diverdown
- Level42
- arcadefever
- slycrel
- cw
- CheffoJeffo
- davieboynj
- edge
- NinjaEpisode
- mccoy178
- JONTHEBOMB
- JeepMonkey
- somunny
- More Cowbell
- shardian
- JoyMonkey
- ChadTower
- screaming
- Ninten-doh
- Kremmit
- Oddfeld
- MameMaster!
- Truecade
- Jabba
- Nannuu
- NickS
- woodygjw

Still room for one more!

We have hit the $1000 mark, but we do need to decide if we should let more join.  Opinions?

We are still adding more people at this time.

[Kremmit]

Guess that better be me, then.   Yay for me! 

[JONTHEBOMB]

Through research I have come up with some plans.

Plan 1

We put the artwork on discs.

400GB / 5GB (about the amount of data that can fit on a DVD-R) = 80 discs

A 50 pack of DVD-Rs costs $30 x 2 = $60 = 100 DVD-Rs

In addition a service like kinkos could perform the copying.

So the cost would be $60 + kinkos service = I will call when I wake up tomorrow and find out.

Plan 2

We put the artwork on 500GB harddrives.

External 500GB hardrives cost $200 each.

Chad, you mentioned an internal harddrive with a USB 2.0 enclosure.
Unfortunately, I found that a USB 2.0 enclosure that supports a 500GB harddrive costs $30 and a 500GB internal harddrive costs about $200.

Plan 3

We put the artwork on 80GB harddrives.  One member would keep the original.

400GB / 10 parts = 40GB

This is how we would split it up:
Two 80GB hardrives have part 1 of the artwork
Two 80GB hardrives have part 2 of the artwork
Two 80GB hardrives have part 3 of the artwork
Two 80GB hardrives have part 4 of the artwork
Two 80GB hardrives have part 5 of the artwork
Two 80GB hardrives have part 6 of the artwork
Two 80GB hardrives have part 7 of the artwork
Two 80GB hardrives have part 8 of the artwork
Two 80GB hardrives have part 9 of the artwork
Two 80GB hardrives have part 10 of the artwork
One person would have the master if say both harddrives containing part 4 of the artwork didn't work.

External 80GB harddrives cost $60 each.
Internal 80GB harddrives cost $41 each.
USB enclosure that will support 80GB harddrive costs $19.

With this plan everyone would have to be willing to share their 80GB harddrive with everyone else.  Also, we could trade harddrives say one person wanted part 9 of the artwork, but had part 3.

Plan 4

We come up with another plan. (This plan took the most research. )

Note: All these plans will require shipping costs too.

[mccoy178]

I nominate Level42 to handle the collection of money and the purchase.

[NinjaEpisode]

To me, buying a 400-500 gb HD for this material is a minimal expense considering the contents.

I only need access to the original drive once.  I'll buy a drive to copy all the goods.  Once I have them, I'll gladly share them at no cost, as needed to anybody who needs a specific marquee, or cpo, or whatever.   

Getting someone to host 400gb worth of files and then allowing people to freely download them, would take a HUGE pipe.  Look at it, 3 people download the entire collection and just like that, you've done a terabyte of traffic.  That just doesn't seem feasible.

[CheffoJeffo]

Agree with NE and like some of screaming's ideas ...

Perhaps we can have those folks who are happy to buy a 500Gb drive (me!) and they get a full copy.

Those who don't want to buy 500Gb drives can have partial copies if they want (need to work out the details, but I like screamings plan for "coverage"). If, in the future, they opt for a full copy, they contact the folks with a full copy and arrange.

Everybody is free to provide specific artwork (as opposed to just a bulk copy) they have to anyone else.

Cheers

[Oddfeld]

If you still need more money, I'll go in for $50.

If you want to ease the logistics of collecting $1000 and possibly hundreds more for hard drives or hosting or whatever, might I suggest something like http://www.fundable.org/?

They skim 7% of your cash, but it saves the hassle of refunding money if your group purchase never hits its target.

[screaming]

Plan 1

We put the artwork on discs.

400GB / 5GB (about the amount of data that can fit on a DVD-R) = 80 discs

A 50 pack of DVD-Rs costs $30 x 2 = $60 = 100 DVD-Rs

In addition a service like kinkos could perform the copying.

So the cost would be $60 + kinkos service = I will call when I wake up tomorrow and find out.

  A 100 pack of SL DVDRs ccosts $20 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817132389

  A 25 pack of DL DVDRs costs $36 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817132394

  At 6x the price, and considering the market penetration of SL DVDR drives, it seems that SL is the way to go.

  I still suggest we get some form of DVD burning tree going. I'm in for a couple sets to mail out to people.

[NinjaEpisode]

If you still need more money, I'll go in for $50.

If you want to ease the logistics of collecting $1000 and possibly hundreds more for hard drives or hosting or whatever, might I suggest something like http://www.fundable.org/?

They skim 7% of your cash, but it saves the hassle of refunding money if your group purchase never hits its target.

Nice find.  If we went that route, we'd be looking at $53.50 per person to cover the 7%.

[CheffoJeffo]

If you still need more money, I'll go in for $50.

If you want to ease the logistics of collecting $1000 and possibly hundreds more for hard drives or hosting or whatever, might I suggest something like http://www.fundable.org/?

They skim 7% of your cash, but it saves the hassle of refunding money if your group purchase never hits its target.

Nice find.  If we went that route, we'd be looking at $53.50 per person to cover the 7%.

Or add another person ...

Cheers.

[JoyMonkey]

I'd be willing to host a scaled down version of the collection; every image could be resampled to a more manageable web-friendly size with Photoshop's batch convert function. Then I could make a thumbnail gallery of all those scaled down images. Then if anyone wants the original full-size version of something I could email it or put it on a shared FTP or something.

Might be a good short-term solution while the full logistics of the distribution are figured out.
 

[NinjaEpisode]

I'd be willing to host a scaled down version of the collection; every image could be resampled to a more manageable web-friendly size with Photoshop's batch convert function. Then I could make a thumbnail gallery of all those scaled down images. Then if anyone wants the original full-size version of something I could email it or put it on a shared FTP or something.

Might be a good short-term solution while the full logistics of the distribution are figured out.
 

I could mirror said site and do the same with JM's permission of course.

[screaming]

I was thinking the same thing.. Even implementing some sort of full-size request system..?

[CheffoJeffo]

I believe Mike has generated thumbnails (about 200Mb) ... interesting (and good) idea.

I am also happy to burn 2-5 of sets of DVDR in a tree.

Cheers

[ChadTower]

Well, a USB hard drive is included in the $999 price in the first place, so technically the files themselves cost $600 or $700 and the rest of it is going for that USB hard drive...and whatever the book they include costs.

Reasonable data management practice demands multiple copies at all times.  That means at least two drives making up at least two full copies of the entire dataset.

Now if whoever is going to host the files has a dedicated server that they leave on 24/7/365, then they could simply plug the included HDD into their server and call it good. I see this scenario as unlikely.

The plan, as it stands now, most likely doesn't include hosting or making them freely available.  It does not preclude that possibility if one of the buyers so chooses. 

[screaming]

We have 3 "hosters" so far.  What if we split up the collection?  400GB is pretty tough, but 100GB maybe? 50GB maybe? What's the limit?

I could reasonably do 50GB. 100GB, probably, at least until the collection is propagated through the group.

[ChadTower]

400GB / 5GB (about the amount of data that can fit on a DVD-R) = 80 discs

It's not 5g, it's a MAX of 4.6g, with a more likely scenario of 4-4.5g or so.  That pushes it to closer to 95 discs if you play conservatively (and this isn't exactly a dinner bill here, play safe).

Another possibility is SATA 400G drives.  Looks like they can be had for around $120 before shipping.  That probably brings us just under the actual capacity needed, though, so it is probably prudent to find out the exact size requirements.  If it's 450G, we come up with another plan.  If it's 410G, perhaps we just eat the extra size in a couple of DVDRs to bring the cost down.  There could be a lot of crap in there that most people aren't going to want or could be pulled out to "cold storage" because it will rarely if ever be accessed.

[NinjaEpisode]

We have 3 "hosters" so far.  What if we split up the collection?  400GB is pretty tough, but 100GB maybe? 50GB maybe? What's the limit?

I could reasonably do 50GB. 100GB, probably, at least until the collection is propagated through the group.

I like the idea of just hosting thumbnails and lower res images as needed then fulfilling requests as needed.

[JoyMonkey]

Looking through the file list, there's a lot of ridiculously big PSD and TIFF files in there. The 005 marquee is 300mb, the 10 Yard Fight CPO is over 350mb, Cops N Robbers has a bunch of files over 400mb.

If the PSD files are final, I see no point in keeping these that way. They could be flattened and saved as jpegs.
The TIFF files can also be saved as high quality jpegs without loosing any noticeable quality, or even saved as TIFFs with zip compression.

Converting files this way, I'd imagine the entire size of the collection could be cut in half.

[screaming]

good point, to both NE and JM.

[NinjaEpisode]

Given JM's idea, theoretically, that would mean a 250gb drive with enclosure would work, keeping the price point right at $100 bucks for the HD and enclosure.  Not bad if you ask me.

[JoyMonkey]

Here's an Excel spreadsheet with the filenames and filesizes (sortable). The biggest offender is the Martial Champion Sideart; weighing in at over 2gb!

[screaming]

...which is a little large to be downloading anyway..

[shardian]

I really don't want to do the HD route. DVD's are cheap and replaceable. If any one of us loses or ruins a dvd, any other guy can hook said person up with a replacement. I also don't want to spend $100-$200 on a HD just for this artwork. I think it would be neat to have, but I don't want it that bad.

I would be willing to burn a copy.

I like the idea of trimming and zipping the majority of the files, especially the lesser known titles.

I also like the idea of using this fundage site.
If joymonkey is offering to cut down the file size, then it would theoretically save us all time and money in burning dvd's. That money savings (around $20 probably) should go into a separate account to be payable once the job is completed for his services. That seems like it would be a time consuming job.

[JoyMonkey]

We won't know exactly how much storage we're dealing with until we get the drive and start going through it all.

I say we start collecting money now (it's paydal after all) and immediately make a web gallery as soon as we get the drive. We could use any of the freeware gallery scripts that allow comments on each image; we can use the comments to submit and fulfill requests for the full size images.

Whoever has a large hard drive to spare can immediately get a copy of the full thing exactly as it is.

Then the crazy big files can be started to be converted to a more manageable size (as small as possible without loosing any noticeable quality). Once they're all sized down a DVD mailing tree will be much more manageable.

[JoyMonkey]

And FYI, the total file size (from the Excel spreadsheet) is 344.92 gigabytes.

[screaming]

Do we have a volunteer to collect and manage this thing?