5, 10, 18 hours recording time works with F3...

The camera formats it just fine, and quickly too. (Most cameras format in a manner that's readable by both a Mac and a PC. If you format in a Mac you may choose a file structure that is unreadable by the camera.)
 
very cool, stability would need to be tested though, I think SSD is the only way to do this without worries
 
The benefit I can think of this.

Just handing over a drive to the client. Done. No offloading, no BS. Here's the drve. Have them make a clone on their time and that's it.
 
or if you really wanna do that 20 hour timelapse shot without wanting to spike the camera swapping media or simply having no other offload solution.

i'd still be wary of handing off a drive to a client without an additional backup somewhere, be in their possession or yours. walking off set typically, clients walks with 2 backups, and dp/owner operator of the camera has some leftover footage on their cards as safety until the next job. It's more about protecting the client for their own sake, and yours so they can't throw blame on you saying you didn't give them an adequate safety net. if they drop both drives in the river, nothing you can do about that. but if they drop their one and only one, they'll come back at you asking why there wasn't a second to begin with...

did one job where I did 3 copies. one backup went to the edit, it was daisy chained and started clicking, and took out all the drives it was connected to. happened within 2 days of editorial. drive is gone. second backup had to be fedexed to new york down to atlanta. if something happened to that drive in transit, still one more drive left to clone and send another copy. nightmare stories do happen... best to at least stick with standard procedure so demon eyes can't be pointed to you if something happens.
 
Unless the client prohibits it, I tend to carry an extra personal harddrive, and leave set with a complete copy. Shotput Pro means I don't take extra time to make that copy, and it protects everyone if the client does drop their drive in the river.
 
How are you cloning the hard drives? Copying to your notebook and then copying to a portable drive through USB? Seems like that would take awhile on set. Especially to make two or three copies.
 
Duke M. said:
How are you cloning the hard drives? Copying to your notebook and then copying to a portable drive through USB? Seems like that would take awhile on set. Especially to make two or three copies.
Click to expand...

I'm assuming this query was for tom.wong - but Shotput Pro makes it possible to do verified transfers to up to 3 different drives at once. So I just make 2 or three different copies as I dump each card.
 
Duke M. said:
How are you cloning the hard drives? Copying to your notebook and then copying to a portable drive through USB? Seems like that would take awhile on set. Especially to make two or three copies.
Click to expand...

if from SxS i'll just have a 17 inch macbook pro with SSD in it, copy to internal hd, and than copy via expresscard adapter with esata to drives. I specify only drives with esata, if not i'll tell them i'll make the drives for them (internal hd and enclosure) and bill them for it. usually it's protocol to just do 2 drives, the third drive can hang things up the most. that case with the third drive was a special request. i just did the third copy via fw 800 while quality checking the clips on each drive. if at any point i'm stuck with usb drives (they don't wanna pay for a speedy drive at all) i'm usually there after wrap still offloading charging overtime... so they tend to get me the faster drives these days :)


that or i bring my mac pro on set, and offload to my internal 5 bay raid and than copy to external drives. I don't use shotput much anymore, I've had copy errors with them. I visually verify every clip now, and do checksum checks in terminal... the only pc i bring to set is a backup laptop just absolute emergencies. has a built express 34 slot, and a esata port with tons of usb. on some occasions i even used the usb ports to power up bus power drives that have the connection so i'm not solely drawing off my laptops fw port... My setups change all the time from job to job.
 
What version of Shotput were you using when you had errors?

Generally for laptop transfers I have a 17" Mac Book Pro with Express34 slot, and I feed to daisychained firewire 800 externals.
 
Viddovation said:
What version of Shotput were you using when you had errors?

Generally for laptop transfers I have a 17" Mac Book Pro with Express34 slot, and I feed to daisychained firewire 800 externals.
Click to expand...

i forget, I stopped using it last year, plus it was just way too slow. the new macbook pro's with thunderbolt and expresscard slot are a real life savor on set now. I sold my 2008 macbook awhile ago and have stuck with using my tower or rented macbooks till now on a case by case basis because of the connection and bandwidth limitations of past generation unibody macbooks. but with SSD's, thunderbolt, and a expresscard slot it can finally start catching up again.

I also rarely worked with SxS until the advent of Alexa and F3. I'm always looking for faster ways to get the offloads done safely. Most of the time i just visual verify the footage if the shooting ratio is really fast and high, and if it's more relaxed i'll do full checksums along with visual verify. I hate daisy chaining drives because if one drive does it can take out the other, not to mention you're just splitting the 800 bandwidth and end up with 400/400. Best way is going to either copy to large internal ssd first, than copy to external esata drives. or copy to a thunderbolt raid, and than copy to client drives. That raid option is probably gonna be my eventual laptop setup, as a large raid costs just as much as a large SSD these days, and you get more capacity out of it.
 
tom.wong said:
i forget, I stopped using it last year, plus it was just way too slow. the new macbook pro's with thunderbolt and expresscard slot are a real life savor on set now. I sold my 2008 macbook awhile ago and have stuck with using my tower or rented macbooks till now on a case by case basis because of the connection and bandwidth limitations of past generation unibody macbooks. but with SSD's, thunderbolt, and a expresscard slot it can finally start catching up again.

I also rarely worked with SxS until the advent of Alexa and F3. I'm always looking for faster ways to get the offloads done safely. Most of the time i just visual verify the footage if the shooting ratio is really fast and high, and if it's more relaxed i'll do full checksums along with visual verify. I hate daisy chaining drives because if one drive does it can take out the other, not to mention you're just splitting the 800 bandwidth and end up with 400/400. Best way is going to either copy to large internal ssd first, than copy to external esata drives. or copy to a thunderbolt raid, and than copy to client drives. That raid option is probably gonna be my eventual laptop setup, as a large raid costs just as much as a large SSD these days, and you get more capacity out of it.
Click to expand...

Great strategies. Usually I'm only directly responsible for data management on smaller sets. Haven't been able to justify the upgrade to a new 2011 Mac Book Pro with Thunderbolt yet. I've looked at the Sonnet device before, because it would allow you to expand the Express 34 slot and transfer directly from SxS or CF to an Esata external Hard drive...
 
if ur are talking about the qio, do a little more research on it, it doesn't work as well as you think... lots of glitches, lots of hiccups. basically you can get it working, but you are always working AROUND it. case in point

A. when osx 10.6.8 came out, the qio stopped working, sonnet had to scramble to get new drivers out.

B. there are known issues such as, if you ever unplug the qio from your computer, you have to shut down completely with it inserted, than reinstall drivers to get it working again.

or

C. only 1 sxs card works at a time... and p2 crashes OSX.

it's almost a thousand bux, i was ready to throw my money at them, but after a year and still having issues i'm gonna put it towards a promise 4 bay thunderbolt raid instead...
 
tom.wong said:
if ur are talking about the qio, do a little more research on it, it doesn't work as well as you think... lots of glitches, lots of hiccups. basically you can get it working, but you are always working AROUND it. case in point

A. when osx 10.6.8 came out, the qio stopped working, sonnet had to scramble to get new drivers out.

B. there are known issues such as, if you ever unplug the qio from your computer, you have to shut down completely with it inserted, than reinstall drivers to get it working again.

or

C. only 1 sxs card works at a time... and p2 crashes OSX.

it's almost a thousand bux, i was ready to throw my money at them, but after a year and still having issues i'm gonna put it towards a promise 4 bay thunderbolt raid instead...
Click to expand...

Ouch!

Why don't things ever work like they're supposed to???
 
who knows, think sonnet bit off more than they could chew with this product, or didn't expect the application of it to be so intense. either way, i'm not much of a believer of having to work for the technology and always trying to find ways for the user to accommodate it, i much prefer the tech to work the way i set it up and intend it to. with computers you get that enough of the time, certainly not all time.
 
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