Reality Show, HVX's, P2s and an Alaskan Cruise

Jonathan_Healey

Jonathan_Healey

Well-known member
I'm leaving in 1-week for an Alaskan cruise. We'll be documenting a family of 6 as they vacation on the cruise. We will be filming them for 7-days. 2 of those days are at sea. The other 5-days include shore excursions like canoeing, rock climbing, wildlife tours, a seaplane ride and a tramway ride. We'll be documenting their meals, day-to-day activities on the ship, their excursions as well was nightly "confessional"-type interviews.

Today, we made the decision to bump the project up to HD so we'll be using HVX200 cameras and P2 cards; however, I'm concerned about storage. We will have 2-cameras rolling at all times and an occasional third when we have the extra help. We plan on shooting 720p at 29.97.

Is the ratio approx. 1-min of video per gigabyte of space? That could be intense shooting 8-hour days @ 2-camera. Something like 960GB of footage per day. Yikes!
 
I think you should undercrank the entire show - say 12 fps. They should have done this on SpeedII: Cruise Control.

J/K!!!

:beer:
 
Can someone please help me with the question above at the given specs I've provided? First time bumping to HD and I could use the advice. Thanks. Any reality show advice would be appreciated as well. Trying to figure out the days actual footage time is challenging me at the moment.
 
1GB/min at 1080. You'll net 2.5x that at 720/24pN. Then it's just a matter of multiplying your number of camera(s) * number of minutes per day * data rate.

For example: 2 cameras * 180 mins/day * 1GB/min @ 1080/24pA = 360GB/day. At 720/24pN, you'd get roughly 144GB/day.

Have you considering mixing 720/24pN for the follow work with 1080/24pA for the landscape and other areas where 1080 will really be needed? It's a hassle to switch back and forth - especially when it comes to reviewing clips - but the space savings might mean something to you.

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Why not shoot 720 30pn? since you're shooting 720 29.97 anyhow, shooting native will allow you to double your storage (2 minutes per gig).

Another option is to use Firestores for your cameras. They're reliable, cost effective, and can offer you up to 250gb of storage on camera. That's ~500 minutes at 720/30pn.

Your biggest problem no matter what happens will be downloading time, moving 250gb off of those hardrives is going to take some time, time you wont be able to use the firestores to shoot.

The most efficient solution is probably going to be to rent a mix of 32gb cards and firestores. Using the firestores while on ship, using the cards when going to more remote locations and when the firestores are not available due to downloading.

No matter what you should have a media manager position within your budget who will be in charge of downloading, verifying, and backing up your data.

You'd get roughly 60 minutes per 32gb card at 720/30pn, with a runner, a media manager, some walkies, and say 4 Cards per camera, you should have no problem keeping the cameras rolling 24/7 provided you have enough batteries, and caffeine ;)

As for storage, I think your best option is something like this:
http://www.g-technology.com/products/G-SAFE.cfm
Its firewire 800 and it automatically mirrors data to 2 drives. This way you can buy a bunch of SATAII internal drives (say you get 10 1tb drives)
That gives you 4 TB of storage total, 2 spare drives in case something bad happens.

Shooting 8 hours of footage per day, with 2 cameras for 7 days is roughly 112 hours of footage, no matter what you are going to have huge amounts of storage required. at 30 native you're looking at roughly 3.3tb of storage required. Shooting at 1080i30p or at 720/30 non native, that jumps to around 7tb.
 
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Thanks for taking the time to respond. I really appreciate it.

VenezuelanD said:
Why not shoot 720 30pn? since you're shooting 720 29.97 anyhow, shooting native will allow you to double your storage (2 minutes per gig).
Click to expand...

We've now decided due to "look" and storage concerns to shoot at 720/24pN

VenezuelanD said:
Another option is to use Firestores for your cameras. They're reliable, cost effective, and can offer you up to 250gb of storage on camera. That's ~500 minutes at 720/30pn.
Click to expand...

I already own own. And FS-100 (100GB) which I will be bringing with us.

VenezuelanD said:
Your biggest problem no matter what happens will be downloading time, moving 250gb off of those hardrives is going to take some time, time you wont be able to use the firestores to shoot.

The most efficient solution is probably going to be to rent a mix of 32gb cards and firestores. Using the firestores while on ship, using the cards when going to more remote locations and when the firestores are not available due to downloading.
Click to expand...

Great idea. I don't think I'm going to rent a second Firestore ($1,400) but I will make sure each camera has two 32GB cards and one 16GB. I think each HVX having three P2 chips and then a floater Firestore should have us covered.

VenezuelanD said:
No matter what you should have a media manager position within your budget who will be in charge of downloading, verifying, and backing up your data.
Click to expand...

Oh we certainly do. MVP and VIP hire right there!

VenezuelanD said:
You'd get roughly 60 minutes per 32gb card at 720/30pn, with a runner, a media manager, some walkies, and say 4 Cards per camera, you should have no problem keeping the cameras rolling 24/7 provided you have enough batteries, and caffeine ;)
Click to expand...

Still think I need that fourth P2 chip per camera? We have 4 5200mAh batteries per camera plus 4 DVXUser batteries. I think that should be good. Might need a bigger charger though.

VenezuelanD said:
As for storage, I think your best option is something like this:
http://www.g-technology.com/products/G-SAFE.cfm
Its firewire 800 and it automatically mirrors data to 2 drives. This way you can buy a bunch of SATAII internal drives (say you get 10 1tb drives)
That gives you 4 TB of storage total, 2 spare drives in case something bad happens.
Click to expand...

Those are out of stock and won't be available before we leave. I think we'll get regular G-Tech external drive (3-4TB) and then use IDE drives for backup.
 
Shooting 24pn 2x32gb cards and a 16gb card with a FS100 as a floater should be just fine.

I would have a backup way to download the cards (bring two laptops with PCMICA slots, or two laptops with cardbus and 3 or 4 duel systems adapters) The last thing you want is to not have redundancy to dump footage while stuck on a cruise.

Your bottle neck right now is the media dumping and backing up. 1 laptop would take roughly 20minutes or so to dump each 32gb card to an external FW800 Hard drive. Then copying that footage to another hard drive for redundancy might take what? another 20minutes? 15? thats 35minutes per card if are doing that on the same computer. If both cameras are running at the same rate, you are going to have 2 32gb cards waiting to be dumped, backed up, and confirmed, before they can be formatted and given back to your crew. At ~35 minutes, thats 70minutes before those cards are available to your crew again. If they are constantly recording that means they're 10 minutes away from the second 32 gb card being full when they get the fresh 32 gb card. You have a 16gb card as a 40minute buffer. When the second 32gb cards go to download and come back, you'll be 20 minutes into the 32 gb card, and say 35minutes from having the 16gb card back out to the crew. You still have a ~60minute window
Figure a couple of computer crashes here and there and before you know it, everyone is nervously awaiting that other card and your P2 manager is feeling extremely pressured.

Either adding a 4th card per camera (say 16gb) or (and this makes more sense) having a second dumping station would alleviate this bottle neck. The second station would double the speed at which cards are dumped and backed up, and provide a backup in case of the computers comes down with a case of the "I want to mess up this shoot-itis"

Of course this is all assuming worse case scenarios and assuming your crew is shooting almost 24/7 which I doubt will be the case.
 
Glad to hear you are shooting 720/24pN. It'll help your shooting capacity.

Definitely agree with another computer for offloading, or rent a P2 Gear.
 
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