Backing up footage from af100 in the field

M

melodyj

Member
How many of you use backup deceives in the field & would you recommend one?

My current workflow is to capture onto SD cards, then create a disk image, and then log & transfer into FCP. I'm going on an extended shoot where I may not have the ability to get to a computer before filling the cards that I have. So I'm trying to decide if it makes more sense to just stock up on extra cards or to get a backup device like one of the Nextos.

I'm also curious how using an external device changes the post workflow, if at all. Sorry if this is wrong forum...my searches turned up outdated or stuff specifically for SxS cards--looking specifically for best practices with af100.
 
Personally I'd get a small and light laptop before a nextos - I travel with a mac book and 2 500g G-tech drives and copy cards to both drives - just finished a 3 week trip and it worked well, hardly noticed the weight of the extra kit. You're alternative would be to use a Ninja (or if you can afford the SSDs, Hyperdeck shuttle) - that way you can record to SDHC and hard drive at the same time, creating your backup at source.
 
I do travel jobs with a laptop and backup each evening in the hotel room (or tent, or by the fire). With P2 media that was expensive, offloads during the day were sometimes tight and often took place in the back of a moving van or sitting on a rock near where we were shooting (like a shoot I did on the side of Everest).

But - we just came back from a weeklong shoot in Costa Rica; 2 AF's and a bag full of relatively inexpensive Panasonic Gold 16G SDHC cards. Could have shot all week without an offload; and this was an unscripted handheld-ish travel adventure shoot, cameras always rolling… But I still did a back-up each evening in the hotel room while the rest of the crew enjoyed some time on the beach with a drink in their hand. (not bitter at all)

To me best practice is backing up to a raid or two separate hard drives at the end of -or during- each shoot day with a laptop that allows me to review footage for errors during offload.

G.
 
heavyG said:
But I still did a back-up each evening in the hotel room while the rest of the crew enjoyed some time on the beach with a drink in their hand. (not bitter at all)
Click to expand...

Like heavyG, our travel gigs usually involve two, or three, cameras rolling much of the day, so it becomes a task to download, & double backup all footage. A number of times we've also had to hand off footage the following morning, so triple backups are required on those.

This can leave a crew member, or two, bleary-eyed for the whole trip, which is a liability. Not only might they screw up, but there also more prone to getting hurt.

So I'm looking into a Nexto so we can start the downloads in the field. We'll still bring plenty of cards in hope of not deleting anything until our return (which is feasible with SD, not P2), but I also want the footage on a pair of drives.

Nexto has (or is about to) released an updated storage device, so a previous model has been discounted $500. I don't believe this model plays AVC, but otherwise works fine with the AF100.

http://www.abelcine.com/store/NEXTO-NVS2500-w-500GB-Video-Storage-Pro-and-7200RPM-3Gb-s-Hard-Drive/

Best,
Bern
 
You can also make a sd card copy of your card using the 2nd slot on the camera, the cost is well priceless.
 
I use the Nanoflash which is great and flexible, redundant recording for something very important is priceless. The SD has not failed me but I am new to the AF, P2 cards killed me on my 170 and the two 64g P2's cost me more than the Nano.

I know you are asking about back up and not redundant but what would be the use of a back up if something happened to the card?
 
In the field, if you have enough cards, I leave the files on the cards, and backup the files to a laptop drive.

SD card to harddrive is safer than harddrive to harddrive. The failure rate of sd cards is lower than harddrives
and read/ write read errors are also less.

I don't erase the sd cards until I'm satisfied I have a good copy on a harddrive. Then, of course, I backup to another harddrive.

Other than that you could also backup to usb flash drive. Or an external ssd.

I guess the point is, in order of reliability: SD cards, usb flash drives, ssd, harddrive.
 
I just got back from a week long shoot in Florida and two days in Texas with four 8gb Panasonic Gold SD cards and four 16gb (two PNY and two Transcend)... I never had to re-use the cards, so they were kept intact untill I got home, but just for safety, each night I loaded them onto my portable PC with an SD card slot to the computer's hard drive and then onto two separate Passport portable external drives... I could then go to sleep easily... exhausted, but not worried. The SD cards hold so much, they don't need to be re-recorded onto untill I got everything transferred to the actual workstation RAID with a safety copy onto the house server...
Do I sound too paranoid? Just new to the tapeless workflow... it's all so etherial... but I am gaining confidence. By the way, the images from the cam are astounding in it's native codec... I am re-thinking the necessity of the Blackmagic Hyperdeck Shuttle, but the idea of a simultaneous backup is comforting...
Best Regards
 
G-raid Mini

G-raid Mini

I've got the G-raid mini, and really like it. In the field I use my 13 inch mac book pro, and copy the card to it (it is powered by the firewire 800 port). I have it set to Raid 1 (mirror drives) so it is it's own back up. I'm also over protective and save it to my hard drive on the mac as well. Then at night I 7xz (zip) the file so I don't fill up my mac book hard drive.

On a side note, I have become a really big fan of using the 4gb pana gold cards. They are dirt cheap right now, and you can back up the entire card, folder structure and all, to a DVD for longer term storage.

(update, Um never mind about the 4gb cards. about a month ago I bought 5 of them for 11 bucks a piece. Now I can't find them anywhere. I still really like the work flow of a 4gig card though)
Brooks
 
Last edited:
brookstomlinson said:
I've got the G-raid mini, and really like it. In the field I use my 13 inch mac book pro, and copy the card to it (it is powered by the firewire 800 port). I have it set to Raid 1 (mirror drives) so it is it's own back up. I'm also over protective and save it to my hard drive on the mac as well. Then at night I 7xz (zip) the file so I don't fill up my mac book hard drive. On a side note, I have become a really big fan of using the 4gb pana gold cards. They are dirt cheap right now, and you can back up the entire card, folder structure and all, to a DVD for longer term storage. (update, Um never mind about the 4gb cards. about a month ago I bought 5 of them for 11 bucks a piece. Now I can't find them anywhere. I still really like the work flow of a 4gig card though)Brooks
Click to expand...
I'm still very much a fan of nexto storage devices when you need a small foot print for travel. If you have the luxury of a laptop & drives the hdvu app from imagine products is a nice add to your app suite.
 
I'd say buy more cards. SD media is pretty cheap. Buy enough that you can guarantee not having to wipe them until you get back to base. You should still back them up, for sure, every time you can, but that'll at least mean the primary source remains intact while you are in the field.

I have 6 x 16 GB Sandisk, each of which takes about a day's footage from a typical shoot. I either use this to keep media through a trip, or to have one card per project through a day (if shooting projects sequentially, which we often do in the studio). I just swap to a new card when we're done with a project so each card contains media for one and only one project; on location we use a card a day instead. I always write protect any card I take out immediately and don't un-write-protect it until I have the footage on at least three separate physical storage devices and have flicked through the footage to verify files copied OK.

I back up to a MacBook Pro with two attached 1 TB WD passport drives, which in principle gives me 4 versions (the original on the cards plus 3 copies) of the footage so long as I back up each night. With AVCCam being so space efficient this is nothing LIKE the headache it was with P2, where I plain couldn't afford enough cards to get me through a day guaranteed, let alone a week.

Cheers, Hywel
 
Last edited:
SD cards are now as cheap as HDV master tape and a netbook with a SD card slot and 250gb drive is less than $300. That's the way I went.
 
Multiple SD cards with a simple computer backup seems the solution to me. We have three 32gb class 10 cards, and we just never clear data off them until we are sure we have what we want on a physical drive that is backed up.

I'm not a triple-backup kind of guy, but to me, card with original footage and HD with the same is good enough for rock and roll.
 
Lexar has 128GB SDHC cards at B&H for $229 each....if you record to both cards at once that'll give you ~12 hours of recording time + an instant backup on the second card.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top