Delivering Raw Footage on Hard Drive

C

ctb1010

Well-known member
Hello everyone,

I'm a wedding videographer and I have a couple that has paid me to deliver all of their raw footage to them in addition to the edited version. I told them that I'd give them the footage on an external drive for them to keep. I have about 350gb of footage that I'd like to deliver to them. I kept the camera running for the entire ceremony (1.5 hours!) so one file alone is over 100gb. The question is, how do I deliver this to them on a drive? I know they have a mac laptop, but I'm concerned that they may want to view this footage on a pc at some point, so I'd like to give them a drive that's as compatible as possible. If I make the drive fat 32, then I can't transfer files to it over 4gb.

Suggestions?

Thanks!
 
I've been struggling with this, too. What format did you shoot it on? A lot of codecs today (like DVCProHD) won't play on consumer devices, leaving me to consider transcoding to an H.264-based format. You might also consider something similar.
 
Raw footage is raw footage. If that is what they want, give it to them, er well, raw. Not to be flippant, but you earn your money delivering an edited product. Giving them the original footage is fine, but at some point, it becomes their problem if they want to work with it.

Grant
 
ggrantly said:
Raw footage is raw footage. If that is what they want, give it to them, er well, raw. Not to be flippant, but you earn your money delivering an edited product. Giving them the original footage is fine, but at some point, it becomes their problem if they want to work with it.

Grant
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Thanks for the responses, Grant, I totally hear your point, however the client has paid me extra specifically for the raw footage, so it's not their problem, its mine. Basically I want to give them footage that they can view on their coomputer. The problem is getting these large files off of my mac onto a drive that they can read no matter what their computer is. So I'd love it if anyone has a solution to this problem vs an opinion on whose problem it is.
 
Best solution I have found for the 4gb file size limitations is to Zip them up in 100mb chunks . I actually use WinRar but not sure if that is an option on a Mac.
 
You have let them paint you into a corner, and the only way out is nwstudios' solution: Chop up the big files into pieces that will fit the disk format. It won't degrade the video if done properly.

However, I would NOT transcode the video into a different codec. Point out to the customer that if they are that keen on getting the raw footage, then any transcoding into something that happens to be "more convenient" today is NOT in their best interest long-term.
 
If they have a MAC, then give them an HD that a MAC can read. It's not your problem if they decide to get a PC later.
 
swoopie said:
If they have a MAC, then give them an HD that a MAC can read. It's not your problem if they decide to get a PC later.
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I guess that's what I'll have to do, in the future though if a client wants the Raw Footage and they have a PC, what's the best way to deliver the files? It happens all the time that clients want the raw footage and they won't always have a mac.
 
format it NTFS. Mac OS leopard and above reads PC hard drives. they just can't write to them. so if they have a mac, they can still open up and watch. If they have a PC, no issues there either. done deal. just explain that they won't be able to write anything to the hard drive if they are on a mac.
 
ctb1010 said:
I guess that's what I'll have to do, in the future though if a client wants the Raw Footage and they have a PC, what's the best way to deliver the files? It happens all the time that clients want the raw footage and they won't always have a mac.
Click to expand...

But is on a Mac formatted volume, and add the price of MacDrive 8 to the purchase.

Codec issues aside, this will enable them to see the drive on a PC.
 
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