Made the switch to mac, and now have no idea how to archive my footage

W

willber

Active member
So I made the switch to mac a few days ago, now to realise that Apple ProRes file sizes are about 2gb for a minute of footage.

I am starting to work on a skate film, which I will shoot over a period of about a year, and film every Sunday but will be filming about 3 maybe 4 days a week this summer.
And after a days a filming the footage converted is about 100gb.

To store this all on externals is probably gonna cost thousands, are there any other more affordable solutions?
 
Sure. Store the raw data from the HMC's SDHC cards, blow 'em up to ProRes as necessary. FCP will re-"Log and Transfer" as necessary...

As with any system, I'd suggest testing and perfecting your workflow and archiving/dearchiving early in your production process. Like now.
 
But when it comes to editing the dvd, Im gonna have to convert them all anyway, so will still need somewhere to store them.
 
How long is your final DVD? How much of your raw footage will actually be used in the final project?

Log and Transfer only what you really want.... or even 5x what you really want, for editing choice. But not EVERYTHING!
 
Hmm it will be around 30 minutes, but its not always easy to tell what is gonna end up being used. I think after every time filming I could log and transfer, and then go through all the clips and delete the ones I know Im not gonna need.
And order either 1tb or 2tb for now and see how I go.
 
You need to develop a good logging process, to avoid unnecessary transfers, etc. You know all the features of the Log and Transfer process?
 
I would suggest two options for storing/archiving; depending on your own personal needs, you can decided what works best for you:

1. Store all the footage to an external hard drive. And I mean EVERYTHING. Grab all your quicktimes, place them in the external hard drive, and store the drive. (And all your project files).

Maybe you don't want to archive everything you shot, so we have option 2:

2. Store ONLY the footage you used in the final edit. Let's say you have 2 hours of footage, and your final edit is 15 minutes. That means you have 1 hour and 45 minutes of footage that isn't used that you can get rid off.

- On the browser window, select the sequence you have your final edit.
- Go to File / Media Manager.
- On the Media Manager window select "COPY the media", give it 2 seconds of handles (or what ever you want), and save everything to an External Drive.
This way, you'll end up with a new project that includes your final edit, but only with the footage you used (with the handles). Far less than the original 2 hours.

This way, you'll end up with far less footage to archive.

I hope this helps.
 
The problem isnt archiving the raw avchd, its once its converted to prores, as I dont want to film for a year stacking up lots of footage, then have to convert it all to prores. And at that point I would still need lots of space to convert it to.

Its a better workflow for me to convert to prores straight from the card.
 
How much footage are you planning to shoot over a year?

If it's as much as you're making it sound, then you're going to have a nightmare of a time sorting through all of that footage anyway (hundreds of hours?). You might be better served to process the footage as you go, and deleting clips you know you aren't going to need.

Either that or buy a lot of hard disks. I can't really think of an alternative, that's just the nature of having tons of footage.

But from what I understand, FCP is very good about allowing you to covert to Pro Res for a batch of footage, let you edit that footage, and then remove the Pro Res files for whatever you didn't use. If you ever change your mind, it's a simple matter to point it to the AVCHD files and it'll recreate the Pro Res files.

Definitely play around a lot before you get too far into this, though. Try it with one-minute projects, practice archiving, and check disk space usage along the way. See what you can come up with.
 
Thanks thats pretty good advice. I think I'm gonna have to get into a routine of deleting the clips from the card that I know I dont need, then converting from the card to Prores.
And I'm gonna order either 2tb or 3tb tonight and see how long they last.
 
Also, bear in mind hard drive prices are only going to go down. Granted, not by a ton, but you will save money if you wait until just before you need the new drive to order it (as with any evolving technology, of course ;))

Good luck :)
 
I think I'm gonna have to get into a routine of deleting the clips from the card that I know I dont need, then converting from the card to Prores.
Click to expand...

I'd say NO! Just in case, leave your card images intact.

Yopu didn't answer my last question... in the Log and Transfer window you can preview the AVCHD footage BEFORE transcoding; you can select exactly the parts of clips you want to transcode. Further, FCP will remember this, so you can retranscode the clips at a later time.

So, for example, lets say you have one 1-hour long clip on card A at the end of April 17th. You copy the card to your HD in a folder called "Card A - April 15 2009". In FCP, you open the log and transfer window, point it at "Card A - April 15 2009", and identify all the segments (say, five 2-minute subclips) of the big clip that you think you might want to use; each of these will show up in your clip bin (for now with a red line through them, since it's not yet "tranferred").

At this point, you can just save the FCP session and the "Card A" folder for later use, or you can batch transfer (transcode) the clips you've identified to work with.

1) If you just stop at this point, then, say in August, you can open the FCP project with all your daily selections, and batch transcode all them (or transcode a few at a time, edit them together, then clear up space and transcode some more)

2) If you work at this point, you can batch transcode the selected clips and do some editing, and export a temporary draft, then delete the ProRes files. Next time you want to edit some more, the clips will again have a red line through them... and FCP will let you re-transcode all or some of them in one operation, and they'll be automatically restored to your edited timeline.

So: Store ALL your raw AVCHD footage in case you need it later (e.g., even if the shot was imperfect and seemed discardable at the time, in the pinch of final editing it may just be the only thing that works). Use the powerful Logging features of FCP to manage your data storage issues without having to discard anything.

When you're done, archive the final video perhaps in ProRes, the FCP project, and the raw card images. Then, you can easily excerpt trailers etc. from the ProRes, or reconstitute the whole project from the AVCHD images for re-editing/coloring/etc.

Sound reasonable?
 
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If you have external Drives, just let it transfer over night and reconnect the media in final cut. After that, you should just start logging and transfering all the data to that drive and then always work from that drive on that project. It seems to work for me 100% of the time and I do 2 hour videos for the most part.

That is the pain of jumping to High Def. You have to figure out how you are going to archive harddrive intensive footage and maintain a steady workflow. But i still say let it take the time to transfer because it will take just as long to move the footage and retranscode it.
 
I do weddings mostly, and after the client has had the DVD for six weeks, my obligation to them is done. They have had their time to make changes. I've had a few instances where they want something that wasn't on the video. If I keep the untranscoded clips, I have everything. If I keep the final .movs, then I can't peel my effects away. I'd rather rebuild it and have the luxury of all the footage.

QUESTION: I have four bays on my 8-core Mac. Does it make sense to just buy 7200 1tb internals and swap them out when filled? I'm tired of externals, and internals are cheaper.
 
I copy and store all the original folders on a mirrored raid. I will also store my project files in a folder with each shoot. Eventually I hope iDive or another catalogue program will support AVCHD native files.
 
Hi Brian,

I imagine that's an external system. When you fill them up, are you going to replace it and start over?

Does it make sense for me to just buy 7200 1tb internals and swap them out when filled? Is that either slower or more dangerous? I suppose if I got a raid it would not even spin after transcoding if all I was doing was storing the files there for safety. That would make the RAID's speed moot, and performance speed would be up to the internals. Right?
 
Ha! Those are appropriately named! It's just so easy to open the case and slide a new one in. I just feel a little odd going internal when everyone else goes external and RAID -- though might go external RAID for backup someday.
 
Internal is fine, but you can't hot-swap, you have to shut down, etc, and in my case it's not always so easy even to get to the side of the computer. That's why I switched to external... also, any internal drives tend to fill up for me. So I have 4 internal drives, 3 dedicated to scratch space and active projects, etc.
If you don't mind these constraints, you'll have no problem... I just tend to have more projects going at once than will fit on the internal drives, and I back everything up redundantly... so I'd have to be shutting down my computer more often than is optimal. However, if your workflow allows you to go that route, there are some companies that sell additional drive "sleds" for about $4.99... if you keep your bare drives on the sleds, swapping 'em in and out of the mac is even easier!

I got an eSATA card and two eSATA Toasters, and they're wicked fast!

Keep in mind that RAID is good for high throughput, but NOT for frequent seek times. So multiple drives are often better than a RAID (when edit density is high, when working with multiple streams, etc.... especially with multitrack audio, which I do a lot of). And a "speed" RAID is a little less safe than a single drive. So I wouldn't suggest a RAID for ProRes or DVCProHD projects... better to carefully distribute data across multiple drives.
 
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