Backing up on-set

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bosindy

Veteran
My plan is to shoot a feature downloading p2 cards (2 4gig's) downloading on set to a lap top. I am not planning to do the edit and I do not have an editing system. The one thing that has been a glaring issue for me is that I'm more than a little uncomfortable about having the film reside on one piece of hardware that can be dropped, malfunction, or have a diet coke spilled on it. Is the best back up dvd-rw? (this had been suggested on another post)

Since I am told you can only put 4 gb on a dvd, it seems like there will be hundreds of these if the shoot ratio goes up. Any other good inexpensive ideas on redundancy in storing the work during and after the shoot? I am a novice in the tech arena so feel free to use small words. Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
 
The most practical way to back up would be on an external hard disk. One 300gb hard disk will cost under $200 and would hold about 12 hours of 720/24p footage. That's about as much as 75 DVDs would be, although the DVDs will be cheaper, of course -- you'd be using DVD-Rs (not RWs) at maybe 50 cents apiece, for a cost of around $38. But tracking 75 DVDs vs. one hard disk, it'll be obviously much more convenient (and incredibly faster) to use a hard disk.

Hard disks are probably not the best long-term archive solution, but for safety/redundancy on your footage a hard disk is probably the most practical.
 
Yeah, dump to a big hard disk. But I would ALSO do the DVD thing, just to have a "hard" copy. It shouldn't take too long to burn 4GB to DVDs, especially if you do it nightly after the shoot. You're probably not going to shoot more than one hour of footage a day on a narrative feature, so that's around 15 DVDs worth of footage. If planned right, you burn most of those every night while preparing for the next day. By the end of the shoot, you'll have the master on the Hard Disk, and an almost complete backup on DVDs. A few more hours of burning, and you'll be set.
 
If you're going to shoot a feature you'll need at least a terabyte, unless you delete the bad takes as you go.

you won't need to lug around a big hard drive though. you transfer the dailies from the laptop every night at the end of the shoot.

this of course doesn't apply to DOCs where you're shooting all the time.

I believe a terabyte will hold around 16 hours of HD 1080. Given that many features take 50 to 200 hours of rough takes, it clear a lot of the bad takes will have to be deleted on set or you'll be spending a fortune on hard drives.
 
P.S.

I'll also be shooting a feature this way, but intend to have my editor on set, editing as we go and dumping the bad stuff. And we'll have a backup hard drive.

My intent to have four 4gig cards, so when we fill two it's handed off the editor as we shoot the other two and downloads and wipes the first two.

The scripty will be making notes on copy paper so she can hand off a copy to the editor with each card change.

at the end of each day I'll have cut dailies to view and know if I really got everything I needed that day.
 
I just got a MacMall catalog by mail, and they're advertising a LaCie 1TB Firewire HD for only $799. I can't imagine a feature using 200 hours of footage, unless it's a Documentary that was shooting everything. A narrative feature shouldn't require more than 50 hours of raw footage for only 2 hours of finished film. Maybe if you're doing Braveheart or Cold Mountain-style battle scenes with 15 cameras running at the same time...
 
thanks for the info everyone. I was figuring a 90 min feature with a 10:1 shoot ratio (900 min). That would be 15 hours. (hopefully with strong rehearsal and a detailed story board)

Barry mentioned at 720/24, (which is what i would want to shoot at), requires a 300G drive to cover 12 hours of shooting, so I guess 400G would cover me. Pehaps buy 2 and keep one in a temperature controlled safe as extra back up...LOL.
 
bosindy said:
thanks for the info everyone. I was figuring a 90 min feature with a 10:1 shoot ratio (900 min). That would be 15 hours. (hopefully with strong rehearsal and a detailed story board)

Barry mentioned at 720/24, (which is what i would want to shoot at), requires a 300G drive to cover 12 hours of shooting, so I guess 400G would cover me. Pehaps buy 2 and keep one in a temperature controlled safe as extra back up...LOL.
Click to expand...

Definitely get 2. Drives are really cheap nowadays. A 250GB LaCie Firewire drive is $160.

And 15 hours for a 90 minute feature sounds about right. Good luck!
 
wow.. 25:1..10:1..., you guys shoot alot! I've been about 4 maybe 5:1 in my fiction shorts. Granted, I've shot 16mm, which is a bit more expensive, but I can't imagine shooting that much extra stuff. If I had the choice between too much footage or too little in the editing room I'd choose too much, but before either I'd choose just the right amount.

One thing to remember as well is that you can erase the takes you KNOW won't be any good off the P2 before you transfer it. That alone should cut the ratio down significantly.
 
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