Some workflow input.

Noel Evans

Noel Evans

Mod V3 New and Improved
Staff member
A little input needed here.

Recently I have picked a few new clients. These are production companies. They usually script everything and send a producer into the field with me where I act as the cinematographer for the piece ,interview set ups, locations,couple of heli shoots thus far and who knows what else will come - TVCM, promotional pieces etc . Glad to say its become regular and I need to make a small workflow change.

These clients are unfamiliar with p2. So thus far what I have been doing is taking the footage away, offloading it into a HDD on my edit bay (as backup) and then copy to a fw800 drive which I deliver the footage to the client on. They then copy it from there and do their own backup. Thats fine.

The issue is, the clients would prefer to just take the footage away post shoot. And Im not really keen to hand over p2 cards at the end of everyday.

A p2 store is not really a consideration due to size restriction - some of these are up to 100gb a day, some a lot less.

Just thinking of my options considering some are half day shoots where I may have a morning and afternoon booked. So theres not a great chunk of time in between either.
And consider its me as crew usually, and thus offloads during shoot is not easy, especially when theres a few shots to push through.

Ive sent my FS100 in for changeover to PAL - so its possible I can leave that with morning client in the event of above and pick up later. But I want something I can apply across the board, that makes it easy for me and more importantly for the clients.

I know fairly well the options out there. But if you are using a workflow that has a similar requirement per above, I would appreciate to hear what youre currently doing and how its working for you.

Cheers

Noel

EDIT - as I stated this has become regular and as such if I need to spend I can recoup that fairly quickly.
 
that´s the beauty of P2. it keeps you scratching your head at real-life situations.
I would ask them to bring a small HDD and copy the files over. Or you buy one and charge them the $80.

If you copy in the P2 structure then they can use Mac, PC or whatever to edit without additional costs. Would you be using XDCam you could give them a disc everyday, but they might not have a player to offload from there. If they are used to XDCam they will probably ask you to use it sooner than later :(
 
Noel,

Take a look at the P2 Gear or the upcoming P2 Portable for the offload tool. You can also use it on set for playback of footage in to a larger monitor, and the offload is generally faster than a coputer to HDD. I concur with the Alpi on buying a small drive, but think about if you have AC power, It might also be an idea to use a Raid1 system so that you have a backup of the shoot and they have thir footage. Take a look at the CalDigit or the WeibeTech Silver Sata II.
Both can slide out a drive and move into a single enclosure.

I would also look at the Metadata part of this workflow and see if there is something that can add to the post that was not there before. That is how is the client archiving the footage. Or are they just dumping it when done? If archiving, you could add more value to your services if you lead them to an archive solution that allows them to find things quickly.

Best,

Jan
 
If this is a big client and the money is there, I would suggest the Convergent Design Flash XDR/Nano Flash.

For $5,000/$3,500 you could record on compact flash cards that are cheap enough to bill the client and not give them a heart attack.

Or you could have a bunch of cards that stay in circulation them.

Full day shoots + P2 means get your wallet out..., more than $5,000 I would suspect.
 
Bassman2003 said:
If this is a big client and the money is there, I would suggest the Convergent Design Flash XDR/Nano Flash.
For $5,000/$3,500 you could record on compact flash cards that are cheap enough to bill the client and not give them a heart attack.
Or you could have a bunch of cards that stay in circulation them.
Full day shoots + P2 means get your wallet out..., more than $5,000 I would suspect.
Click to expand...

If Noel hands of the cards, then he has no back-up, that isn't good. So during the day the recordings would still need to be transferred for this fail-safe to be there.

That same money could buy the P2 Gear and another card or a P2 Portable. Point is they will be able to edit natively in DVCPRO HD if they stay within the P2 Environment and they can take advantage of the fact that the metadata and parity checking is there on the P2 Card.

Also you don't have to worry about losing power and losing the recording like you would on the CD device. On P2 the most you would lose is 2 seconds as the recording is closed every 2 seconds. Not the same as the Convergent Design. On top of that the small drives basically cost about the same as the CF Flash and The CD unit doesn't have nearly to additional feature set that the P2 Gear or even the P2 Portable bring to the table.

Let's not make this a CF vs P2 thread, that isn't what Noel asked. He was looking for insight to a P2 workflow, not switching codecs and recoding devices.

Thanks,

Jan
 
I've found the most cost effective way is a laptop and two harddrives.
Either I provide the drives and charge the client or they provide the drives.
P2 Genie is a good off load software. Turn it on and let it go. It will back up to 2 drives without any intervention. P2CMS is way too kludgey.
Hard drives are available that power from the USB bus so you can use your laptop batteries.

At the end of the day I keep one drive and the client leaves with the other.
When we're done and the client is safely home I overnight the other drive to the client.
Sometimes they just call and say they've dumped it and everything is ok.
Then I have anther drive to add to my collection.
I've never lost a frame this way.
On bigger shoots I have a dedicated person or two to act as DIT's so then it's there problem!
Multicam iso is still a problem. A lot of cards to dump.

I still have cameramen who hold their breath whenever they have to format a card in the camera.
 
davhud said:
I've found the most cost effective way is a laptop and two harddrives.
Either I provide the drives and charge the client or they provide the drives.
P2 Genie is a good off load software. Turn it on and let it go. It will back up to 2 drives without any intervention. P2CMS is way too kludgey.
Hard drives are available that power from the USB bus so you can use your laptop batteries.

At the end of the day I keep one drive and the client leaves with the other.
When we're done and the client is safely home I overnight the other drive to the client.
Sometimes they just call and say they've dumped it and everything is ok.
Then I have anther drive to add to my collection.
I've never lost a frame this way.
On bigger shoots I have a dedicated person or two to act as DIT's so then it's there problem!
Multicam iso is still a problem. A lot of cards to dump.

I still have cameramen who hold their breath whenever they have to format a card in the camera.
Click to expand...

We have a 3 camera flypack and the ISO issue is being wrestled with here.

My boss has reservations about P2. Right now I'm trying to talk him into couple HPG20's loaded with 2 - 64gig cards shooting Intra. The idea of this workflow scares some people.
However, I can't tell you how many times I have had head clogs, unacceptable dropouts, creased tapes, mechanisms eat tapes, and other problems with video decks.
We have been running around $5000 per year maintaining 12 assorted betacam and DVCAM machines. Probably the same on tape stock.
Now that I can get enterprise class 1tb drives for $150 I would be more than happy to use that $10,000 we will spend on maintaining betacam crud in the next year on 3 64 gig cards and a case of 1tb drives.
If the HPG20 only allowed simultaneous recording to P2 AND an external drive it would be a done deal. How long does it take to dump 2 64gig cards?

Funny enough, the younger producers I work with are THRILLED to go into the edit with pre-clipped footage and NO digitizing or decks to deal with. And have no problem hauling around a laptop and a few drives.
 
Th problem with the 64 gig cards is the transfer time. I shoot 16 gig cards and they take about 10 minutes to transfer. So for two drives it's about 20-25 minutes per card.

For multicam unless you have alot of cards you'll need laptop and drives for each camera.
Of course your mileage will vary based on the length of the show etc.
P2 is great especially when it has to get on the air right now. Plus you don't have to buy a deck.
If money is no object there are less compelling arguments.
 
Jan_Crittenden said:
Let's not make this a CF vs P2 thread, that isn't what Noel asked. He was looking for insight to a P2 workflow, not switching codecs and recoding devices.

Thanks,

Jan
Click to expand...

I disagree. Noel is looking for options, this is a viable option.

Noel could record the P2 at the same time the CF cards are recorded.

That way no hard drives or laptops would need to be lugged around.

Give the CF card to the client and take the P2 home.
 
Thank you for the input all.

Little BG. I am not new to this, I have offloaded direct via macbook pro to external drives and handed those to clients many times in the past. My usual workflow though is finish shooting, offload to my macpro, label the p2 folders for the clients, backup, overnight HDD - and Ive done this many many times to people in many countries without one failure or loss of any data whatsoever.

Some other points - I now have enough p2 media to shoot approx (off the top of my head) - 2 full hours of 1080i - or even more if I am shooting in pn modes. (Well I will when I pick up the new 64 today).

Im thinking I may have to just sweat a little more and take the five minutes to offload cards as they fill, thus cutting time down at end of shoot.

The clients do have "external HDD" like the lacie LBD with FW800, if I just offload to their drives take the data home for backup its going to be a little easier.

But

I would also look at the Metadata part of this workflow and see if there is something that can add to the post that was not there before. That is how is the client archiving the footage. Or are they just dumping it when done? If archiving, you could add more value to your services if you lead them to an archive solution that allows them to find things quickly.
Click to expand...

This is something I do need to consider.

So then my question is, as I really havent troubled myself too much with metadata in past (havent needed to), where should I look to do this? Will p2 genie for example allow me on ingest or will the p2 gear simplify this even more.
 
Its like my question went dead :P

From my last post -

So then my question is, as I really havent troubled myself too much with metadata in past (havent needed to), where should I look to do this? Will p2 genie for example allow me to on ingest or will the p2 gear simplify this even more?
 
Hi Noel,

Take a look at our Metadata Workflow paper it is on the www.panasonic.com/p2hd site under the resources area.

Also, if you are taking your laptop on set, take a look at Shotput from Imagine Products. The guys at the Iditarod were raving about it. They use the Metadata a lot during this race and they have the offload sort by checkpont which is in the metadata. As each shooter gets to a checkpoint they load in that checkpoints metadata. That way at the end of the race with 120+ hours of footage, it is already presorted. Last year they had the edit done and DVD ready for tourist season.

Lots of great stories coming back from Alaska this year. They used HPX170s and HPX500s this year. I sent an HPX300 up for a couple of days at the start. One of the HPX500s wouldn't power on, but the power tap was working, so they just left the camera on. In about an hour the camera came back to life. It had been frozen solid. If you haven't been following the race, it was a real cold one this year. Lance Mackey won for the third year in a row.

Best,

Jan
 
I take my P2 gear and start offloading halfway through the shoot to a bus powered USB-2 Drive. Then I transfer the rest as we wrap and hand the drive off. If there is so much footage that that method isn't practical, then I courier the drive to their office when it is done.

I also have PDFs of common NLE workflows that I put on the drive for the editor.
 
In the same vein I usually put all the files and drivers or at least links to web sites for the drivers on the drives so that the client isn't hung up trying to find them.

Off loading during the day is the only way to go unless you have a very small amount of material.

The workflow pdf is good idea.

It seems that nle's change their ingest procedures with every iteration.
 
Noel Evans said:
And if you need an extra camera there next year let me know! :P
Click to expand...

All I can say is the souls that travel that trail see some of the coldest weather I care to see. There are a couple of videos that show a land blizzard, that is where the wind picks up snow from the ground and whips it across the landscape. Makes me cold just thinking about it. I think the lowest low this year was at -50. Brrrrr.

Best,

Jan
 
HEH, sounds like some places in Japan.

Also Jan, I purchased TEP - Bronze from Imagine - includes shotput pro.

Shotput pro lets you dump and name very easily. BUT then in TEP there are so many options to keep you completely organised. Im (most likely - waiting for the money), shooting a piece for resorts from Queensland to Sydney and Darwin. Theres quite a number of locations to cover in 15 days shooting. This is going to be gold. Offload all day with (theres not too much - in the end approx 32gb of data per resort), shotput pro - end of day import into TEP to organise log for hand off to producers. When your done you / producer / editor can take that log straight into FCP, Premiere or Avid.

Not to mention, that not only does it work with p2, but also XDCAM EX, AVCHD and RED. One workflow for all. Well worth the money.
 
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