FS7: backup

P

Publimix

Veteran
Do you know this kind of producer:
- the budget is minimal,
- can you do this in two hours?
- I made some nice shots with my Iphone, you can use them.
- And yeah, the sound is not good, but the interview is important.

After delivering: Hey this montage sucks, the interview-sound is bad. he I-phone is a good camera.

But he is nice, brings some work, so he has some credit.

This guy brings his footage on a portable HDD. He put the disk in a protective box (lunchbox-like thing).

Yesterday he brought it again and we could not read his files. And he has no backup. (should have seen his face.)


That brings me to the real question;
I have a 5 TB backup drive, is it possible to compress xavc-i files more for backup or are these files already compressed beyond compression.
 
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I would not start screwing around with the master files. All it takes is one little thing not being as it's supposed to be and you have a drive full of useless 1's & 0's. Drives are dirt cheap. Get some more.

As far as the clients drive being unreadable/doa/whatever... I don't have any good advise. I know you want to help him, but if it's his drive and that's the only copy, that's on him. No one should ever send out their sole copy of any data. I did a shoot a few years ago for a longtime network client, two-cams, audio, go pros on people, 5D lock-off... The producer could not fly down and be there, so they brought in an associate producer from the office here. We dumped all the footage at the end of the day and the ap was going to send the drive off. She had to go back to the office first and she decided she should back-up that drive at the office while she was there. The next afternoon after the original drive got to the producer it was completely dead. Thankfully there was a full copy sitting there on another drive for them.
 
At the end of every shooting day I will pull cam 1 cam2 and audio in to respective folder call the whole thing day1,2,3 and pull a copy to the clients drive. At the end of the shoot client leaves with all shot footage I retain a copy of everything. I have the client sign off that he will check the footage and secure backups within 2 weeks after wrapping and thats how long I keep it then I delete it on my end. This guarantees data security but doesn't muddle up responsibilities- its not my Job to secure backups that is the responsibility of the producer. Back in Tape days the universal rule always has been a shot tape gets labeled and handed over to the producer at that moment the producer is solely responsible for it. Its very important to stick to a workflow and clear responsibilities for all parties this avoids disasters.
 
Thanks.

The story of the producer was an introduction, at this moment he is very busy collecting his files from various cameramen and sources :-)
It reminded me on my backup-scheme.
I think he learned his lesson. And I could help him because I rendered some files for him and I didn't empty the folders yet, that saved him a few megabytes.

The backup is for my own files. And I know xavc is already compressed, I hoped I could save a couple of terrabytes by compressing it a bit more.

It is a pitty an LTO with high capacity is so expensive, but for now I have plenty of HDD storage left, 15 Terrabyte so far.

My first pc had 512kb RAM and a 20MB Harddrive.
 
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Many times when a HDD goes bad it is not the drive itself but the power supply, connectors, or some other hardware. I would pull the HDD out and put it in a new enclosure and see what happens. I've recovered some client's data that way more than once and have been their hero after that.
 
If you're going to make and hold backups, don't think about compressing them further. Think of backups as a service you provide. If you amortize the cost of the backup media over the number of jobs for that client your per-job cost is probably not that high. But also be specific about what you are (or are not) providing. I typically only hold 1 backup copy of client data - and only commit to holding it for 60 days (though typically hold it much longer.) This is not an archive (which would require a more robust solution) - but a simple backup on a hard drive.
I assign one hard drive for each client (or occasionally more if they do a lot of shoots). A feature length documentary will get its own backup drive, for instance. Right now I have ~20 dedicated backup drives on the shelf. If one of my drives goes down and they need something from it, they can take it for recovery without compromising security of data from other clients.
In cases where I deliver to distant clients via FTP I also make sure that I hold a second backup of the camera data on a rotating temporary drive. (Typical upload size for these shoots is 70 - 135GB, so they're not huge.)
I've also found that certain clients seem to really beat up their hard drives (I've had clients bring drives that wouldn't read or mount on either my computer or theirs!), while others will bring two new hard drives for every project.
Of course the biggest PITA is running those extra backups at the end of each day -- since that's certainly not on the client's clock.
And also remember -- if the audio person has been recording on the mixer (or on their new wireless transmitters) you need to xfer and hold a backup of that as well!
 
My advice is NOT to be a depot for footage producers have to take responsibility otherwise this will come back an bite you in the ass.
Once there is vagueness people tend to not do what they should and rely on others: "I'm too tired to secure the footage Jerry has a backup blah, blah.
If **** hits the fan producers who are not exactly known for their backbones will blame everybody but themselves. define a clear timeframe.
 
I got a free advice once - dont ever call it "backup". That term has significant redundancy, server cooling, and safeguards attached to it. Rather, state "a copy" in your contracts. Thats what it is.

Calculate extra harddrives into budget. I only keep "hot" projects on my RAID NAS unit for safety and my RAID internal unit for online editing. When a project goes off it goes onto HDDs for long term storage.
 
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