footage handling on location & archiving footage

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Cofe

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Hi
sorry this is going to be a tick longer....

This is not strictly Red only, but I was wondering if either the Red team or the Red community has some thoughts on the subject.

Basically I'm struggling to embrace a tapeless workflow because I always stumble when trying to solve 2 basic problems.

We're in the documentary field and always shoot with a very small crew, meaning camera-sound-director, maybe assistant to director. When you shoot tape its a no brainer for the camera guy: tape full - put in the box - grab a new one. One button - eject - that's it. In terms of archiving same story: once its on the tape - nothing else to do. Put it on the shelf. Cost wise it is also straight forward. One expense for the tape - no more. Ok you need a VTR but you can always hire that when you need it.

Tapeless:
Depending on storage size you have to download your footage to a second drive(s) while on location. So you need extra drives - a computer of some sorts to control the transfer - and somebody looking after the lot. You most likely put a lot of shooting days on one large drive - if this fails you loose a lot! Time wise it takes a lot more time to handle your footage on location. Time you normally not have. When being in a remote location power can be a real issue, so needing extra for all the computer/drive stuff is a hasle one would like to avoid. Once back home you would like to archive your footage. The only reliable way I see is DLT or LTO tapes as I wouldn't trust hard drives for long. Extra time and huge cost for the DLT drive. Again much longer to retrive your footage because on one DLT/LTO there might be footage from several projects. I haven't worked with these things, so you might correct me.

So the big question: How can one make a tapeless workflow efficient, if you don't have the men power of a feature film set? And what is the long term solution for archiving?

Thanks guys
Cofe
 
This issue also relates to doing work for clients. Not everyone makes their living just shooting films. As a hired cameraman, I sometimes just go shoot for the day and hand off the tape and pick up the check (love those days). I'm not sure if handing off a hard drive has a positive ROI in terms of cost and time since files need to be transferred and I'm assuming need some level of conforming before they'll be ready to hand off to the clients editor. Even though Red is cool and everything, if I'm going to make a single camera purchase, looking at XD HD and the HVX900 still make sense from a business perspective.

Please, please, please, I'm not saying that they are better in terms of quality or versatility for artistic productions, so don't spill your kool-aid and start down that path. I'm just saying that as a freelance cameraman, these are things you have to take into consideration.
 
These are issues that i imagine will have a major bearing on the one man or two man outfit like myself.

Since i have been thinking a lot about this lately and acknowledge that the sony XDHDCam have a lot going for them in this area i so far conclude.

Red have spent a lot of time solving such problems and making red one work well with such high quality footage. The playing field is changed with red capturing 4k footage. I doubt very much that the XD HD Cams could capture such footage so it is not like for like!

That said i share your concerns and from what i have read (remember i am all theory just learning all of this) the red team might just be able to pull something well affordable for most of us out on the field.

It is not practical for solo guys to carry with them a laptop. Spare hard drives are out since they will NOT work with the red drives. The options so far (things might change remember) is to purchase several red drives and use them out on the field. Costs will be dearer than tapes etc but remember, no expensive decks involved. So far i intend to take the red drives home, transfer footage to cheap hard drives with double archiving on extra drives with the more valuable footage and see how things go from there.

The red drives with their special enclosure will i am sure be able to sustain knocks and jolts. I can imagine Graeme sitting at home dropping one from varying distances and checking the results ( ok i jest). No way will red bring out these drives without being reasonably shock proof.

Others might wish to comment i just try and learn what might be best. Follow me and be guided by these guys here at DVXuser they will figure it all out and red will probably have figured and even better way when the camera ships:happy: Michael
 
HD tapes are not inexpensive (thinking sony 900 here)

Give drives to clients after shooting, retrieve after they have downloaded. This may mean we have to have at least 2 REDraids for projects. Maybe 3 or 4. Ultimately the client will save money in tape stock. They can output EDLs in whatever format they wish. We recoup money in rental rates vs. camera rental cost to us.

whadayathink?

j
 
Not sure if Blue ray factors into the conversation at all here, but perhaps once these discs become cheaper could they offer an onset solution? Dual-layer discs will hold 50gb. Could you have a laptop with a Blue ray burner, and once a drive fills up, you swap it out and burn discs from the used up drive? Then you have a disc backup as opposed to a drive which has movable parts and could fail. Perhaps the capacity of these discs is not great enough yet to make this practical. I know LTO does hold quite a bit of data, but does anyone know offhand how long it takes to write, what the interface is?

Steve
 
LTO reads/writes takes a tad long but not incredibly so.

My understanding is that RED One is not optmized for one man crews. 35mm DOF, probably two to four cases worth of camera+mags+lenses+acessories, it seems to me it substitutes a film camera. Meaning every RED crew would look more like a 16mm crew than a video ENG. Sure, when 16mm was used for news, we had cameramen that would do it all alone, just like what we will see when RED comes out, but not without some effort on their part.

I feel that for tapeless based workflows, the assistant editor is working as we shoot. And what I always thought was P2 technology worse drawback was:

Sure, we can do data dumping on set just like we exchange rolls on our film mags, but it's still not practical, and don't seem very safe (especially because when it's all over, somebody still have to back up the days footage on the lab/editing suite).

RED's new 360GB announcement, is really cool, because we don't dump the magazines on set anymore. Two mags can take care of everybody's need and if needed extra mags can be rented (in fact most people will do pretty well with only one mag!). We just fill our mags during the day - no more second assistant! and at night we dump them and erase them.

So how does it work. To me what I'd do would be bring back the camera to the company, give red-drives to ass. editor, go home. The Ass. Editor, would dump them for their on-line storage bay (A large raid that can handle something like 3-4TB of data in a manageable speed) in a folder named roll 1, he checks data integrity, and dump a copy on a LTO-3 tape. The tape is labeled roll 1, we use one tape per roll regardless of how much of the mag was actually used (for organization's sake), and goes in the shell to be never seen again, only in sad days of data failure, or if months from now, the client asks for another edit, or for some specific image.

The Ass. Editor, still would have quite enough time to print a table with all the metadata of the roll, (an electronic camera report), fold it, and put it in the tape's label.

The mags are clean and back toghether with the camera gear for next day of shooting.
 
That sounds like a reasonable workflow for a crewed narrative or doc project. And does seem in keeping with the cameras intended purpose. I mean, I don't think anyone was truly thinking that Red was a good replacement for Run & Gun/ENG work.
 
Lto-3?

Lto-3?

Taubkin

Hi Mainly a film DP here. I have shot some HD stuff in the last couple years but have no idea what a LTO-3 tape is? How much capacity does it have to dump a whole 360gb red drive to it? What format is it?

Thanks
 
I used to think that the tapeless workflow was a lot better, but now I'm not so sure. With tapeless, you still have to ingest the data into your NLE, AND you have to make backups. It's true that ingesting takes a little longer with tape, but then you can just put the tape on the shelf. You already did your backup as you were shooting.
 
Field Data Manager

Field Data Manager

Taubkin lays out a very reasonable solution that will suit many situations, kudos. My plan is similar but looks to leverage the process in the field. Rather than an assistant editor dealing with the footage after the strike, which will be the best plan in some cases, I want to accomplish these tasks on set. Like many of you I have learned to scale up and scale down my production profile to suit my clients. This often means a two man crew in the field and sometimes just me - schlepping nightmare. How about this alternative...

Non-hardlined EFP option:
My assistant and I show up and set up everything; lights, sound, picture up on the monitor for the client/director, etc - this goes way faster than I can do it by myself. During the shoot, assuming that the sound is pretty straight forward, I can operate the camera wtihout much need for the assistant except for when we change set-ups, this frees up the assistant to do the FDM job, field data manager. Prior to the shoot we have determined what format the client needs the footage delivered in and they have either brought their own hard drives or purchased them from me on the original invoice. The FDM takes the RedDrives back to the van and makes a RedCode clone for archive and via RedCine makes a client friendly version dubbed onto their drives. At the end of the day we start the final download off the last RedDrive and while the data is being dumped the two of us roll up the gear. You hand the client the drives just like tapes and get your check.

I realize that for some shoots this wouldn't be feasible but it should accomodate some pretty low budget scenarios with an efficency factor that even the stingiest producer should appreciate. BTW - I do think that the RedOne will be a tremendous camera for run & gun work whether that was a design priority or not.

Blair S. Paulsen
RedOne #19
 
Finner said:
Taubkin

Hi Mainly a film DP here. I have shot some HD stuff in the last couple years but have no idea what a LTO-3 tape is? How much capacity does it have to dump a whole 360gb red drive to it? What format is it?

Thanks
Click to expand...

Hey Finner, LTO tapes is not a video thing, it's more an IT thing. It's a tape based data backup solution, meaning you record a digital signal on tape that corresponds to folders and files you have on your disc. It's like burning a CD, but with much higher capacity, much safer and durable archive, and also much slower to read/write. It works just like cassete tapes and the amiga computers, from ages past...

LTO-1 (I think it has another name) is cheaper and can fit up to 80GB on one tape. LTO-2 around 200GB, and LTO-3 around 400GB, but an LTO-3 tape drive may cost around 3000 dollars... Another problem is that costs you around 80 bucks a tape... But at least you get to sleep relaxed!

check it out:

http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/pvaul_110tlto3?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd

Still, I think an LTO solution is a must for anyone considering going for a tapeless workflow, being XDCAM, P2 or RED.
 
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The current incarnation of LTO (LTO-3) has a 400GB cartridge, and can write at up to 80MB/s. This means that a 320GB RedDrive could be backed up to a single LTO-3 cartridge faster than real-time (in theory). I don't claim to be an expert on this, but I got the info from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open). It certainly sounds like a good archiving option for Red.

Nick
 
Taubkin

Thanks that helps a lot. One problem I see though. $3000 for each archived red drive adds up real fast. Unless the price of an LTO comes way down I do not see it as being a shelf logging option.
 
From my quick research, $3000 is the cost of an LTO-3 drive. The cartridges cost under $100 each.

Nick
 
Blu-ray dreams

Blu-ray dreams

It seems to be taking forever but Blu-ray optical discs for data (not the compressed media version for content distribution) will soon provide another alternative. Dual-layer Blu-ray at 50GB per disc should be a viable alternative as mainstream computer manufacturers start adding the drives. Notice that Apple's newer towers ship with an empty optical drive bay... It may be Q3 or Q4 of 2007 before the availability/pricing of the drives and discs starts to make sense but it sure seems like a great option to me. I realize that write speeds may be poor at first but if CD and DVD are any guide that will improve, there is also a 100GB spec for Blu-ray that will likely be implemented down the road unless some other storage topology supercedes optical.

Blair S. Paulsen
RedOne #19
 
The problem with optical, is that the media degrades really fast. I can't read my first DVD-R archives, for instance...
 
I have heard that for robust archiving linear tape (eg LTO, DLT) is considered to be the best option. Some people use helically scanned tape (eg AIT, Exabyte) but I have heard there are reliability issues.

I have had bad experiences with optical media in the past.

Of course no doubt other technologies will soon emerge.

Nick
 
Oop's

Sorry I thought the LTO-3 drive was a storage unit with the tape based inside.

This seems like a perfect logging option. A lot cheaper then HD tapes.

Does anyone know the shelf life of an LTO tape?

Also is this drive format universal or is it a dell thing (If its not universal I would fear it going the way of old sony beta format)?

If it is not universal who else offers a LTO drive recorder, and does anyone know which company is making the best one or if there is a product comparison out?

Thanks
 
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