Question for all my legal video videographer's out there!

JoeNash

JoeNash

Well-known member
Hey everyone. So after years of low paying jobs, I finally got a good job working for a legal video company. I'm trying to implement some new work flow processes here and would love everyone advice.

I'll lay out three of the main issue's I seem to be dealing with.

1) This is a pretty general question. What is the best system you or your studio uses for managing / vaulting you digital media? Weather it be source tapes or finished product. We've been live for about 6 months and have already cataloged over 2k worth of DVDs. We have a system for backup on our server, but I'm looking for a more efficient way to store these other than just alphabetical order in storage.

2) Sometimes we have videographer's who will digitize their tapes for us, instead of just sending us DVCAM tapes. I've done research on ripping DVDs (that are mpeg1 based) to MPEG1. We normally capture at real time, but this has become very time consuming. We are all PC Based (except for me, yay) and i'm trying to find legit software that is not some crappy freeware.

3) When recording Depo's - everything is DVCAM based, backed up by mini DV. With streaming digitizing I've been playing around with different ways, so when we record a depo in house, we could just hook up our data (via firewire, etc..) and cut out the capturing time. This has posed many issues, during my research. Does anyone know a PMP style (or firestore style) digital recorder that will record directly to and only MPEG1?


Okay well that's about the tip of the iceberg for some of the issues I'm dealing with here. Any advice would be much appreciated!! Cheers

-Joe Nash
 
Well I must do low budget legal videography , I use my A1 and record straight onto dvd and use a VHS as my back up. I also have a 4 chan mixer, a time code gen, and & a 7" monitor. Then there is a cassette recorder, that I use to make audio copies for the court reporter. DV cam would just seem like its too big to be in small lawyer offices or doctors offices. All my equipment is built into a single cart that I wheel around its super easy efficent and gets great results.
 
On Question 1... We use DVD, Quantum DLT tape, and a Small NAS server. We have discussed hard drives as they are quite cheap now. Raw footage is being stored on the DLT and NAS server, Finished spots on DVD. We use a date naming convention on our files so we sort by client and date. 12.31.07clientspot. We name our raw tapes the same way so we can find them based on the shoot date. Hope some of this helps.
 
Krook -

- When you record straight to DVD, does it record as a DVD (as in VOB), or does the DVD record an mpeg (as in a data cd)?

- We use the cassette as well, always nice to the C.R. to have a backup copy so she can proof it (we use a marantz)


- DV Cam is the format we use just because its reliable and its what all our freelancer's have been using for the past 16-20 years of their legal video carrers. We do most our Depo's in huge conferences rooms (We do primarily mass tort cases), so we could have 10 attorneys in one room.

I also like the idea of putting it all in one cart, that might be something I look into.

Cruser2fast4u -

We store everything on our server as well, and use the same naming convention except use that naming convention for the name of the files on the DVD. Than we simply store all the DVDs in drawers in alphabetical order (or by case, if there part of some of our major clients)..

My biggest worry is in the next 6-12 months we will probably have logged over 10k worth of depo's, and digging through drawers of storage with everything can be a hassle. When I worked at a Motion Graphics Post house, we had a storage software program, but I forget what it was called; something 'vault'. Everything would be scanned in, and information would be entered than stored away. A very clean and efficent system. Was wondering if anyone had any insight into something along those lines.

Thanks very much for your comments!! Happy new years!
 
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