storage question

slimjimmed

slimjimmed

Well-known member
I have a friend who is shooting a nature documentary and is interested in this camera.
She has to continuously send her footage from the west coast to the east coast where her editor is, while she continues to shoot footage.

Would her only solution be to:

a)send the SxS memory cards to an editor (this would be bad since she need to continue shooting during the ongoing editing process)

b)transfer the memory card to an external hard drive and send that instead so that she could continue using her memory cards*

c)use an online server so that the editor could have internet access to the footage

d)?

*if she has an older mac, would she need an intel-based mac if all she was doing was transferring the footage from the memory card to an external hard drive?
 
Sounds like b.) would be the only solution. Or e.) hire a new editor that lives close by and dump footage to their firewire hard drive. Trying to ftp that much footage back and forth would really suck a lot of bandwidth and take to much time. To answer your other question NO you can use the old mac for transferring files no problem, unless it's a Apple II c or something. Then that would be to old!

JK
 
I'm digging the LaCie 'ruggedized' external USB hard drive (120 gigs for ~ $90)....

Seems small enough that she could FedEx / whatever to the editor and get a little back-and-forth file exchange going. The only downside to the 120 gig size could be her shooting ratios. Is she shooting a ton of SxS cards? How long is her doc?

I ask only because I've shipped footage drives all over. If the deadline's flexible, there's room for safety. One failed drive in-transit and things can get werid quick (if you're in a crunch deadline environment). My hunch is that w/ a nature doc, there's some flexibility there.
 
Good suggestions, thanks.

Could someone tell me the names of a few websites that do have an online server for video media? Just wondering exactly how slow this option would be.

fevercity-we are still in the planning stages of deliberating on whether to go tapeless or not. It's been narrowed down to the Xh-A1 or the Ex-1.

I am trying to evaluate what exactly she would be getting herself into workflow-wise and price-wise.

Up to this point, she has been sending mini-dv tapes in the mail to NY to be edited. Ex-1 would me a major workflow change. It might be too complicated.
 
I posted an entire feature between the midwest and California via ftp. If you have good, fast connections on either end you might get away with it. Expect file tranfers to take overnight or longer. Just a bit faster than fedex, usually, depending on how much footage.

I recommend getting a web hosting account and establishing a barebones ftp account for file transfer. I pay $10/month for 170 GB on a very fast ftp server at www.aplus.net.

On either end, for the Mac, I use Transmit (www.panic.com) as the ftp client.
 
Could you give me a real-world example of how fast your upload/download speeds are?

I am having a hard time locating specs, and figuring out if this is a feasible idea to
use an ftp client to transfer information from SxS cards.

Also, can I transfer the file as is on the SxS card, recorded at the best quality, or will it have to be
compressed for upload?
 
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I have a pretty fast cable connection and I can upload about 400 MB per hour.

That's 20 hours for an 8gig Card or about 40x real time for HQ footage.

Downloads are much faster - about 8 times as fast (5x real time). With a fiber connection (Verizon FIOS) you can get much faster speeds in both directions.

You don't have to compress for upload and you shouldn't. You won't gain much with lossless file compression and it will make the whole process much more difficult.

If you use a good ftp client (I like Transmit) you can probably upload the EX1 folders intact without having to zip them. But instead, I would import the files from the SxS cards to the mac as quicktimes and send those.
 
Thanks matthew - that is very helpful! Those are really long times if you are transferring multiple hours of footage from 16 Gig SxS cards.

I think it is back to the drawing board! :)
 
But I would investigate fiber - I think it's a game changer and will allow these transfers to happen much more easily.

I think that once you get to 10x real time you'll be able to keep up with what you shoot.

When I do the transfers, I just leave the files queued up 24 hours/day.

How much footage per day are you planning on shooting?

http://www22.verizon.com/content/ConsumerFios
 
I don't think it is available yet in certain parts of Portland(Oregon).

I don't know how much footage will be shot per day. We have yet to discuss the details. It will be erratic, that is for sure. The filmmaker shoots in spurts, travelling around the country when she can get good interviews. She does the operating in most of these cases(she owns a PD-170, I think), so we are making sure that an EX-1 workflow will not be too nasty of a learning curve(or too distracting). Especially since she conducts the interviews as well in many cases!

Also, there will be an additional cinematographer for non-interview. Mostly nature footage(one of the main reason for the HD upgrade). There is a possibility that I might end up doing this, and I am an owner of an Xh-A1, which I shoot all year round and am very familiar with.

I am trying to provide them with some advice about which camera to invest in. Since her schedule is so unpredictable, rental is not an option. I think the EX1 looks great on paper(and footage-wise), and is obviously richer than the XH-A1 HDV. The question is about workflow and money, I suppose. They are such different beasts.

The idea of sending hard drives back and forth through the mail is a new concept to me, and am unsure about how wise it would be. It also might be too expensive since it is going from one coast to the other...
 
Get small bus-powered drives (2.5" firewires are great) and fedex them. With bubble wrap packaging you can probably get them sent for letter rate.

The drives are so light that they tend not to destroy themselves when jostled, if they're reasonable padded.

You might also consider a couple of high capacity iPods, as they are quite well ruggedized.
 
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