REDDRIVE offload in the field - practical workflow?

[Michael Hastings]

We shoot underwater and nature where we are in the "field" i.e. Fiji, or Bonaire, or for topside wildlife say Kenya, where we are limited in what we can get locally and limited in what we can bring with us for a week to 2 weeks shooting. We want to be brave and shoot 4k REDCODE RAW.

With my Ikegami Editcam Hard drive recording camcorder I was able to buy 21 of the Fieldpak hard drives government surplus for $80 (thank God for Uncle Sam who paid about 20K for them. They are still normally about $300 each and I replaced the 4 gig drives with 80 - 120 gig drives) so I have plenty of drives - but I can't afford that many REDDRIVES.

Assume I have two REDDRIVES and our Mac Laptop. Practically speaking what's our work flow? I assume I will bring a suitcase of small 2 drive raids with 320 or 500 gig drives in them, or a Raid with removable drives. When we offload from the REDDRIVE do we have to go through the computer? Do we have the ability to choose the clips to offload or do we just have to dump the whole drive. Can we see the clips in the viewfinder or LCD of the RED and we erase clips easily?

I would like to do raid 1 where we automatically have a backup but maybe is better to just dump it off twice to 2 separate drives - maybe just a bunch of off the shelf 320 or greater Firewire/USB external drives which are getting pretty cheap these days.

[DSH]

These are very much the questions that I need to work through. I work in drama, and though I have the relative luxury of a camera truck, its often without mains power, though that can be sorted out with a large battery bank and inverters. Generators end up too noisy near set, and feeds can get dumped at the wrong time, particularly at wrap. I do need to find a way that I can reuse the drives knowing that I have at least a two or three way backup. It has to a field friendly system though.

[tj williams]

Soon assistants will remember the good old film days where they may have been the last one off the set, but at least they left the set!!!

Aqua...

2 drives for wildlife in some bumpy truck in Tonga???....no thanks... look to some hard card storage. Better a raid with some kind of redundent situation, so drive failure won't wipe out your shoot. Here I speak as a person who lost my Steadicam monitor in china and finished the shoot by making a sort of sight on top of the camera out of chopsticks. Not great headspace but they used the shots. now I own 3 Steadi. monitors!!!

[Nick Shaw]

I was discussing offloading workflows earlier today with my business partner in my RED venture. One thing we wondered about was if you were to take enough RED-DRIVEs that you would not need to re-use them during the course of a shoot, whether it might be possible to daisy-chain two of them on the back of the camera, such that they were both recorded to simultaneously. That way you would have an immediate backup, with no user action needed, and no additional kit (laptop etc) to carry. Then you could send the 'clone' back to the edit suite, and keep the other for safety with you for the remainder of the shoot.

An alternative would be if RED-DRIVEs could 'self clone', by hooking two together with no need for a computer. This would require the ability to configure a RED-DRIVE in clone mode, and connect it to the other via eg Firewire. You would probably also need a power supply.

[Trevor Meier]

I've wondered for awhile whether we could use the RED-DRIVE in a RAID-1 stripe at a slightly lower data rate... no official response from the RED team though.

[Nick Shaw]

I think Stuart has said before that it will be possible to configure the RED-DRIVE as either RAID 0 or 1. But what I'm talking about is mirroring two completely separate RED-DRIVEs, so that one can be kept on the shoot, and one sent back to the edit suite. Then when the edit assistant has copied, verified and archived his drive, the other one can be re-used.

[MikeCurtis]

there will be a zillion solutions for the zillion possibilities. In this conversation, a couple of key points: if you can't afford enough Red Drives, then "some kind of card solution" is going to be waaaaaaay too expensive to implement effectively. If you're in the sticks, keep in mind that ALL external drives that connect to a laptop REQUIRE EXTERNAL POWER AND WON'T RUN OFF THE LAPTOP BATTERY. So Red Drives start making more sense after all. Rent a bunch, or buy then sell extras when you get back is another solution. Shooting 2K would greatly increase your recording capacity as well if you had no other solution, but then that changes your lens choices and depth of field and resolution as well.

-mike

EDIT - apparently I'm wrong about the bus power thing - maybe that was older generation of computers? My bad.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I've wondered for awhile whether we could use the RED-DRIVE in a RAID-1 stripe at a slightly lower data rate... no official response from the RED team though.

I know this has been mentioned.... But, what I'm wondering even more so is if we can mount two RED DRIVEs or RED RAM simultaneously in a RAID-1 or mirrored config. That way you're not sacrificing performance or capacity, but you're getting redundant copies of what you shoot right there. I'm also wondering if we can record out to the RED DRIVE and to the FLASH module simultaneously.

Edit:> Ooops, didn't see it at first, but Nick already made the same comment about dual RED DRIVEs.

[Nick Shaw]

ALL external drives that connect to a laptop REQUIRE EXTERNAL POWER AND WON'T RUN OFF THE LAPTOP BATTERY

Not strictly true. The LaCie Little Big Disk comes in a 320GB version, so a good match for a RED-DRIVE, and runs bus powered off Firewire 400/800. I've edited DV50 material using mine with a Powerbook, totally off batteries while traveling from one location to another in the back of a van!

[Scott Webster]

Nice find Nick. Ruling out a straight Red-Drive to clone drive connection, what will be the best portable set-up? (let's assume no access to mains power)

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Nice find Nick. Ruling out a straight Red-Drive to clone drive connection, what will be the best portable set-up? (let's assume no access to mains power)

There are quite a few 2.5" HDD enclosures that can run bus-powered via Firewire or USB2. Be sure your notebook does supply bus power for Firewire as many do not. There's some portable HDD units out there that can run off battery power too, but I haven't looked them up recently.

Either way, if you're working for extended periods away from power all I can say is that portable generators have become very compact and efficient over the last few years. Start here --> www.honda.com

[Scott Webster]

There are quite a few 2.5" HDD enclosures that can run bus-powered via Firewire or USB2. Be sure your notebook does supply bus power for Firewire as many do not. There's some portable HDD units out there that can run off battery power too, but I haven't looked them up recently.

Either way, if you're working for extended periods away from power all I can say is that portable generators have become very compact and efficient over the last few years. Start here --> www.honda.com

Yes we carry a 1k Honda.

Are there issues running 2 FW800 bus powered drives from a laptop? is this a common feature?

[MDP16]

Yes we carry a 1k Honda.

Are there issues running 2 FW800 bus powered drives from a laptop? is this a common feature?

I run 2 FW 800 bus powered drives from my MacBook Pro all the time. No issues here.

[Sean Michael Johnston]

I've found a nice solution for my own needs.
http://www.reduser.net/forum/uploaded/709_1174970339.jpg
http://www.reduser.net/forum/uploaded/709_1174970372.jpg
This is @ $200 plus $20 for each hot swap tray.
Hard drives are @ $100 for 400GB now. They'll be cheaper next month. And by the time I get my RED, even cheaper.

This unit is cool because you don't have to deal with a power brick - the power supply is built in - and, having a steel enclosure, it can handle a little abuse in the field.
Still needs a laptop, though.

http://www.macgurus.com/productpages/firewire/Burly1FirewireHS.php

[Scott Webster]

Thanks Sean. Those may even be rental proof!

[Nick Shaw]

You need to be a bit careful running multiple bus powered devices on the same bus. The instruction manuals for most such devices say "Don't do it". I suspect the LaCie LBD is pushing the limit for power that can be drawn from a single bus. I certainly wouldn't want to put a RED-DRIVE on the same bus as one.

I don't know if the FireWire 400 and 800 ports on a MacBook Pro share a power bus. If they don't, it might be worth taking the speed hit in order to put one on each bus.

We don't of course have definite confirmation that RED-DRIVEs can be bus powered.

[planet e]

i posted this before but it bears repeating....

G-Tech also has amazing high performance hard drives that run off laptop batteries.

http://www.g-technology.com/Products/G-DRIVE-mini.cfm

you'd probably need several, but they are highly portable and very stable. and they will undoubtedly be increasing in size and performance in the near future.

[Mark L. Pederson]

i posted this before but it bears repeating....

G-Tech also has amazing high performance hard drives that run off laptop batteries.

http://www.g-technology.com/Products/G-DRIVE-mini.cfm

you'd probably need several, but they are highly portable and very stable. and they will undoubtedly be increasing in size and performance in the near future.

we use them all day long - great product!

[Scott Webster]

You need to be a bit careful running multiple bus powered devices on the same bus. The instruction manuals for most such devices say "Don't do it". I suspect the LaCie LBD is pushing the limit for power that can be drawn from a single bus. I certainly wouldn't want to put a RED-DRIVE on the same bus as one.

I don't know if the FireWire 400 and 800 ports on a MacBook Pro share a power bus. If they don't, it might be worth taking the speed hit in order to put one on each bus.

We don't of course have definite confirmation that RED-DRIVEs can be bus powered.

That was my understanding when researching HVX laptop field options. I was interested to see if anything had changed in recent laptop design to provide a dual FW800 bus option.

If the RED-DRIVE isn't bus powered then it's back to battery, mains or gennie options.

[Chris Armstrong]

Just stumbled across this: "ImageMASSter Solo-3 IT" (http://www.ics-iq.com/index.cfm/action/product.show/id_product/9181ac95-5b57-4b88-9c61-d5d1228ce82f/alt_view/08small.jpg) It's a bit pricey, but would probably be perfect for duplicating data off the 1/8" flash drive an onto 2 backup HDD without a computer. It also does error checks so you know the data was copied correctly.

Supports SATA, SCSI, PATA, and Flash. Portable in size, but from what I can tell still uses a cord to power it.

[Chris Armstrong]

Found another one: "Ninja 121" (http://www.storageheaven.com/products/DuplicationHardDrive/ninja_portable.asp) - This one is a bit cheaper.

[Peter Richardson]

I'm in the same need as many of you -- doing field documentary work and need a portable backup solution. Right now I'm shooting a documentary with the HVX200. I have four 8GB cards and two P2Stores which gets me through the day. Then when I get home at night I transfer everything to two 500GB G-Raids -- copying the data once to each drive for backup. When I get home it all goes on my G-Raid Pro (imported through FCP) and then gets archived onto Dual Layer DVD. This is great in HVX land, but I know I'm going to need more storage when the Red arrives. Here's what I'd like to to:

1. Have two Red-RAM modules and record 2k to those. Anyone know approx. how much recording I'd get out of that?
2. Come home at night and transfer the Red-RAM's to some sort of tape backup that I could plug directly into my MBPro, like LTO or DLT or AIT. Someone mentioned a Sony AIT drive not too long ago that looks like it might work:

http://b2b.sony.com/Solutions/subcategory/storage/branded-tape/AIT_Drives/AIT-4

The trick would be connecting this to the MBPro. Does anyone know if there would be an ExpressCard adapter to be able to plug this into the MBPro? Jeff, Mike?

What I like about this solution is that you're backing up to tape, which I trust much more than hard drives, and you already have your final tape backup, which saves another HDD to tape transfer in the process.

Does anyone know if a workflow like this is feasible? Is there a better tape-based/portable solution out there? Curious to hear thoughts.

Peter

[Peter Richardson]

This looks like a great solution:

http://b2b.sony.com/Solutions/product/AIT-e390

They will be shipping in May with a SATA interface.

Peter

[Chris Gearhart]

Found another one: "Ninja 121" (http://www.storageheaven.com/products/DuplicationHardDrive/ninja_portable.asp) - This one is a bit cheaper.

Hey, that's a pretty cool find, Chris. Expensive, but if it does testing and repair as well as duplicating to two target drives, that might be an alternative for archival in the near term.

EDIT: I saw it (the first linked one--the "Solo-3") has a PCMCIA slot on the side--wouldn't that be great if they came out with one that had an Express Card slot! Pop them into this puppy on set, press COPY and get two verified copies while you're shooting with another--hand one to the client, archive with the other. Kinda like the P2 Store, but much more flexible.

[Jeff Brue]

That sony drive is silly you can get an LTO-3 drive for the same price with double the tape capacity. Notice that the 390 GB is based on a 2:1 data compression.

[Sean Michael Johnston]

The problem with the duplicators is that they DUPLICATE exactly. If you only shoot 15 minutes of footage on your RED drive that's what you get on your duplicate disc. You can't add more later. You can only clone the source drive.
This product: http://www.gethitch.com/ is kinda mickey mouse and slow, but its a viable field option if you don't want to bring your laptop. But if you've already lugged your backup discs and cables and power supplies along, then why not add your laptop?

[Chris Gearhart]

The problem with the duplicators is that they DUPLICATE exactly. If you only shoot 15 minutes of footage on your RED drive that's what you get on your duplicate disc. You can't add more later. You can only clone the source drive.
This product: http://www.gethitch.com/ is kinda mickey mouse and slow, but its a viable field option if you don't want to bring your laptop. But if you've already lugged your backup discs and cables and power supplies along, then why not add your laptop?

I hear you, Sean--good points to consider, but for me, I actually don't mind exact copying if I could be assured an easy and fool-proof workflow. (Btw: P2Stores suffered from the same duplication issue--it didn't matter how much you recorded on a card. I hated the idea of it, but it wasn't really an issue that often.)

I'm not so much propounding this as thinking out loud, here: what are 40gb hard drives now, 15-20 bucks? You can always archive them to a different medium/size later and reuse the 5-20 you could have around. And I wouldn't be surprised if you could get one of these duplicators that could do a safe append copy.

Besides, if you are handing a copy off to a client, one-to-one disk copy is like handing tapes--much easier to sell as an "original".

As for adding a laptop into the field duplication workflow, unless you have a van or video-village, my experience has not been good:
1. It hinders you from using your laptop for other things;
2. There is too much room for user/mouse error--I like the press-button ease of a dedicated solution like, e.g., the P2Store.
3. If it overheats or gets unplugged and runs out of battery (this happened twice on a shoot this year), you have to wait for it to reboot before you can start the copy over; which brings up,
4. Setup is more complicated to get it up and running.

Still, with the plethora of IT solutions spilling forth, I suppose we'll all find something that works with our styles and tolerances (price, storage efficiency, and workflow).

[Peter Richardson]

Jeff is there an LTO solution you recommend for field work? Something I can plug into my MBPro would be ideal. Thanks,

Peter

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Peter, no good portable LTO solution I know of. Look back a ways for a thread on backing up in the field... Tape drives were discussed heavily and while a single-slot, desktop tape unit actually didn't seem too bad (a bit slow, but workable), there is no good way to connect to a Macbook Pro or most any other notebook. In other words, no one and I mean *NO ONE* makes a PCMCIA or ExpressCard version of a Wide Ultra SCSI interface.

One possibility though is that Quantum has a desktop DLT unit that interface via Gigabit Ethernet. It's not all that portable, about 10"x8"x14" and you need a place to plug it in. This just came up in a thread around here the other day. It might be a good possibility for field use in some situations.

I'm hoping that by the end of this year, RED RAM will drop to half or less of its current price and will quadruple in size -- yes, I'm that optimistic! If that happens, I see it becoming the field-recording device of choice and a huge market for renting these units.

...Other Jeff might have a suggestion or two. ???

[Peter Richardson]

Thanks Jeff #1 :) I was just checking out that Quantum DLT drive you referred to -- does seem a bit bulky for field work, though by field I am really talking about backing up at night in a hotel room somewhere. Did you get a chance to check out the Sony AIT drive? Thoughts? The form factor seems right for field work and they will have a SATA interface come May, which I believe could interface with Express Card, correct? Honestly, even if LTO is more cost-effective, if the Sony is better suited for the field I'm happy to go with that. I found 150GB AIT tapes online for about $46. I would love to use one of these in the field instead of lugging around two G-Raids. Let me know what you think of the Sony.

Peter

PS You are indeed optimistic about the Red RAM, but I'm hoping you're right! Do you plan on using that, instead of one of the other solid state storage solutions? BTW, you'll be happy to know that it was your rant about P2 that finally turned me from Panny to the Red. So sad to see them ruin a fairly good product by gouging on the P2 cards. What a shame. Oh well, at least there's Red to keep them honest, I hope.

[Arnaud Paris]

Where did you see the info that Sony was going to make a SATA version of the AIT-5? I checked on their site and they only mention it for the AIT-1 and AIT-2 Turbo which are limited by 80G tape size.
Thanks
Arno

[Jeff Brue]

There is a Ultra 160 SCSI interface to firewire that I had working a while back.

http://www.ratocsystems.com/english/products/FR1SX.html

Its not the fastest thing in the world but I had it working with a macbook 2 years ago with an IBM rebranded Dell LTO-3 single slot tape drive. It would be a little cumbersome but it would work.

Ypu'd definatly be able to backup redcode raw in realtime at least if not faster. All depends though I'd hesitate to tell anyone to undertake a science experiment in regards to their data backups.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

The Ratoc adapter is only Ultra SCSI II. In that other thread I keep mentioning, we discussed a few of these adapters... They should work in most situations, provided the tape drives allow for connection to lower-speed SCSI channels. But you're the first to actually post saying that you tried it and it worked with an LTO-3 tape system. Theoretically, it should work as most SCSI systems are backward compatible provided you keep your terminations and differentials straight. USCSI-II still provides about double the bandwidth to run the fastest LTO-3 and DLT-S4 tape systems.

I'm hoping to see more interface options (eSATA, FW800) on some of the upcoming LTO-4 and SDLT units due this year. Other things to hope for are the UW320 SCSI ExpressCard adapter announced by Adaptec over a year ago, only to become complete vapor.

[Jeff Brue]

I remember I had to do a little trickery on the Ratoc though as far as async options on the ratoc, but yeah it worked on the LTO-3 and the DLT tape drive I had at the time.

I'm also looking around if there are any fibre adaptors for laptops as a lot of the LTO-3 drives come in fibre variants as well. Thats what we use here and the speed is great.

[Peter Richardson]

Arno,

The SATA interface was announced only for the 3EX (max. uncompressed capacity: 150GB), so it wouldn't affect the 4 and 5. yet. Here it is:

http://www.sonybiz.net/biz/view/ShowContent.action?site=biz_en_EU&contentId=1168443953888

As Jeff mentions, I hope that more FW and USB options come out in the near future. That being said, what do you guys think of using the SATA-enabled AIT 3EX and one of these adapters:

http://www.barefeats.com/hard71.html

Thanks,

Peter

[Chris Armstrong]

The problem with the duplicators is that they DUPLICATE exactly. If you only shoot 15 minutes of footage on your RED drive that's what you get on your duplicate disc. You can't add more later. You can only clone the source drive.

Yeah I thought of that same problem. I emailed both companies in regards to that and got replies from both. They each have a product that can "append data". (I.e. if you have 2 32GB flash drives that you want to copy to 1 500GB HDD).

The product that I like the best is the "ImageMASSter Solo-3 Forensic" (http://www.icsforensic.com/index.cfm/action/product.show/id_product/e9ee9ade-236e-40fa-97f9-5adaed3b6cfb/id_category/1442ada0-380f-483f-baa7-434305bb26e9) - It can append data to the destination drive from multiple sources, it supports SATA/SCSI/ATA, and has flash drive adapters. It can duplicate to 2 drives at once (one for editor, other for backup), with fancy error checking. It also has Firewire 800 & USB2, so it might be a viable option for getting data off the 2.5" Red Drives while in the field. What I don't like about it is the $2500 price tag.

[Damien Molineaux]

I dont know when these came out, but G-raid have a similar product to the LaCie Little Big Disc, the G-Raid mini but with one major difference, it has a fan !
http://www.g-technology.com/Products/G-RAID-mini.cfm

About tape drives, I was thinking LTO-3 for a while but now I think the best solution is Stuart's proposal, Quantum's SDLT 600A (also available as an autoloader) :
http://www.quantum.com/Products/TapeDrives/DLT/SDLT600A/Index.aspx

It's not too big that it could be taken along and has the advantage of connecting over Gigabit. All macs have Gigabit. Capacity is only 300 GB, but are we really going to be able to fill up the 320 GB of a Red Drive, I doubt it, so 1 drive should fit on 1 tape. It can be connected to a laptop in the field, you do need power, than to your network in the office.

Cheers,
Damien

[Jim Arthurs]

Tape drive rant...

When I started out, I bought a DAT backup, and that 1 gig capacity backed up my biggest drive ten times over. Tape cost 6 bucks or so.

Couple years later, upgraded to an 8mm Exabyte (also used to move my image sequences from the Amiga to A62 disk recorder) and now could still back up a massive gig drive 4 times over for 6 bucks a tape.

Then things went to Hell in a Handbasket. Drives got BIG and tapes remained fairly SMALL and more and more expensive.

I haven't forgiven the tape back up world yet, and am waiting for that same economy of scale that I had back in '95... where are the 2 Terrabyte tape drives with under 10 dollar media? That's where we should be at this point in history...

Rant off...

[Michael Schrengohst]

And the problem with tape drives is the manufacturer usually has poor software support. You have to keep some old legacy computer running just so you can off-load the tape if you need to. I had a Sony AIT and when we went from NT to Win 2000 - good-bye tape drive for Win 2000. They did not have drivers available for Win 2000....I tried installing the software for the
drive - would not work. So I off-loaded what I thought I would need and sold the whole POS on e-bay.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I'm waiting to see what comes of the new LTO-4 and other new tape formats due later this year. Most newer tape systems don't require specific drivers and many are starting to incorporate gigabit ethernet or other connectivity, so use down the road isn't as much of a concern.

Hard drives are becoming more appealing in terms of price, but still are more expensive than tape if you need to back up 30TB or more. And with HDD backups, I would definitely make duplicates. Using RAID-5 arrays for archival doesn't make sense as the cost per GB really shoots up. But if I only needed to make duplicate backups of 8 to 15 TB of data over the next year, I would go for 500GB hard drives. They're $125 now... That's insane. I can buy a 20 pack carton of 500GB Hitachi drives for less than $2200 (plus shipping). And having duplicate drive backups may not be a bad solution for a year or two until something truly better comes along in the form of holographic storage, or $2 300GB BluRay media or high capacity tape or something.

[Damien Molineaux]

Ah, what a dilemma,
Hard drives are really coming down in price. 320 GB 3.5" SATA drives cost barely more than LTO-3 tapes (400 GB). Drives are faster, although tapes are pretty fast now, but access to, and use of the content is immediat from a drive. The real question now is about durability. Are tapes sturdier than drives ?

To convince producers to go with Red, I need to be able to offer them a reliable storage solution for their footage. I've been looking into LTO-3 and SDLT, but tapes are quite expensive, as are drives. SDLT drives have the advantage of being available in Gigabit connections, which I haven't seen with LTO-3 (Ultra 160 SCSI only). Now I'm kinda leaning towards copying Red Drives on the set to a RAID 1 (mirror), then I keep a disc and the production keeps one.

But what about long term archival ?

Cheers,
Damien

[Sean Michael Johnston]

Yeah I thought of that same problem. I emailed both companies in regards to that and got replies from both. They each have a product that can "append data". (I.e. if you have 2 32GB flash drives that you want to copy to 1 500GB HDD).

The product that I like the best is the "ImageMASSter Solo-3 Forensic" (http://www.icsforensic.com/index.cfm/action/product.show/id_product/e9ee9ade-236e-40fa-97f9-5adaed3b6cfb/id_category/1442ada0-380f-483f-baa7-434305bb26e9) - It can append data to the destination drive from multiple sources, it supports SATA/SCSI/ATA, and has flash drive adapters. It can duplicate to 2 drives at once (one for editor, other for backup), with fancy error checking. It also has Firewire 800 & USB2, so it might be a viable option for getting data off the 2.5" Red Drives while in the field. What I don't like about it is the $2500 price tag.
I just noticed this post. That product looks like a great idea for field use, except like you said, for the price. I'm hoping to find something similar at NAB. If someone was to create a high speed - lower cost - ruggedized - battery powered version of this with a film/video specifc touchscreen interface then they could rake in a lot of business. All the camera manufacturers will be digital and tapeless very soon.

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Archive: HDD for now, 2 copies stored at different locations, move it all to another storage media in a few years. Wash rinse and repeat. The value proposition for tape archive is just not compelling.

Field: When portability and available mains power are issues I would just rent a bunch of RedDrives and babysit them until you can archive.

Now who wants to bond my project using the protocol I propose? Hmmm.

RED built the camera system in a little over a year, anybody wanna bet changing the "culture" of our business will be as quick? Sorry, being in Vegas makes me want to wager on everything.

[Ken Corben]

We shoot underwater and nature where we are in the "field" i.e. Fiji, or Bonaire, or for topside wildlife say Kenya, where we are limited in what we can get locally and limited in what we can bring with us for a week to 2 weeks shooting. We want to be brave and shoot 4k REDCODE RAW.

Assume I have two REDDRIVES and our Mac Laptop. Practically speaking what's our work flow? I assume I will bring a suitcase of small 2 drive raids with 320 or 500 gig drives in them, or a Raid with removable drives. When we offload from the REDDRIVE do we have to go through the computer? Do we have the ability to choose the clips to offload or do we just have to dump the whole drive. Can we see the clips in the viewfinder or LCD of the RED and we erase clips easily?

I would like to do raid 1 where we automatically have a backup but maybe is better to just dump it off twice to 2 separate drives - maybe just a bunch of off the shelf 320 or greater Firewire/USB external drives which are getting pretty cheap these days.

I'd say that by the time we 4 digit+ reservation holders get our cameras the reduser community, like Gibby and Mike, will have tested existing technologies to the max and have some great solutions for field back up.

My concern is the CLIENT and the transition to HDD deliverables from the tape mindset. It reminds me of the switch from 16mm to DV days...

[laguun]

My concern is the CLIENT and the transition to HDD deliverables from the tape
mindset. It reminds me of the switch from 16mm to DV days...

for the q3/q4 2007 bookings so far, many customers here who already plan their workflow with red here, want to have HDCAM & HDCAM SR tapes as dubs/archive.

the same method begun with 2K some years ago, btw.

also, it perfectly makes sense to have a synced hdcam running in the studio, connected to the soundguy and to the hd-sdi out of the red.

so, you can´t send the tapes straight to editroom. syncing redcine with this workflow however might be tricky in the early days.

also, don´t underestimate the broadcasters. for a longer time, they will certainly demand D5HD, HDCAM (SR) or in the lower ranges DVCPRO HD (tape&p2) and XDCAM HD, so many folks will have to make a tape/classic hd/braodcast medium anyhow.

finally, i know there are many sonybasher here, but i have to say that with the collection of sony vtrs here - the sony vtrs are -really- built to last and they will certainly not disappear overnight, as they don´t have any real competition yet.

that, once more, brings me to "my" productrequest.

red could (easily with the already done r&d) built a VTR, to be precise, a VDR or VFlashR. simple device to add HD-SDI i/o and a VTR emulation to reddrive or flash etc media.

this would, of course, not deliver redcode or raw quality, but it would bring the speed & integration in given workflows which certainly many broadcaster will see as #1 reason to not buy red.


yorick von krogh

[Ken Corben]

Apple's announcement today provides some great options. Running FCP 6 in July on a macbook pro using Apple Prores codec. You plug in RED drive on one side and output prores on the other.

Client can preview and even edit clips right there with out the hazards of playing the master tape on the field camera - WOW!

Digital footage with no "batch capture" is gonna' have to be appealing to clients, NO?

How will you apply this newsflash to your workflow?

[C.H.Haskell]

RED needs to come up with a its own robust "P2store" like device that can serve as both a location off loader and archive. Perhaps it will have disk trays so you can hot swap your data and duplicate etc.

I have been using a p2 store for a days shoot and then offload to a firmtek dual HD enclosure via exress/34 slot on my mac book pro and so far so good. The enclosure requires power but it super small and super fast.

http://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/sata2ensm2e.html

You can raid this set up for mini 1-T raid editing on the go or I suppose you could mirror 2x 500gb drives for archving on the go.

So what do you think "REDstore" ??? Wishful thinking,

good luck everyone.

[Stuart English]

"SDLT drives have the advantage of being available in Gigabit connections, which I haven't seen with LTO-3 (Ultra 160 SCSI only)"

Was true, but Quantum announced that their 600A series will be available with LTO-3 drives in July.
The 600A series are Gigabit Ethernet network drives that operate from the desktop under OSX and Win XP.

[Trevor Meier]

They were mentioning in the $7000 range for the 600A LTO-3 drive at the FCP supermeet... that makes it really out of the price ballpark in terms of the rest of the workflow.

[tj williams]

I really enjoy reading all this a Data Management is not in my skill set!

I'm not an editor or producer. I'm primarily a contract camera person.

I think I'm leaning toward Earthlings solution of mirrored drives. I'm looking at a small enclosure with two 750g drives.

http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-2en2/ so I could download 2 mags to it. Or use other sizes if we are shooting less footage. I'd be using a laptop in the field, with their connetion to the card slot for sata speed.
This depends of course on getting a sata adapter cable? Then give the producer a choice of borrowing one drive to get back to his system while I keep the other until he releases it. Or making a firewire dub overnight and sending him a cheap firewire drive while I keep both my drives. I don't have a long term storage problem as I only keep framestores and downconverted footage used in sending out reels.

It seems to me that currently producers are keeping their long term storage as digital masters on some form of tape. (for TV) and negatives (for film) Although eventually digital storage will give many advantages. I'm not sure why they will need more high tech storage than they currently use. It looks to me like producers can output the edit to HD or SD digital tapes that will have no worse life than his current programs.

Regarding saving the list (on hard drive?) and the original tape or film... If the master is lost degraded or destroyed they will have the expense of building over all the effects, transfers, edits and then re-mastering..... additional backup storage of master material and original which has value as stock footage etc. can always be done on multiple mirrored harddrives and just transferred every couple of years.

I'd like to hear from other shooters (only) who don't edit and find out what you plan to do?

[Mark L. Pederson]

TJ -
If you are using a MAC - make sure you use SOFTRAID for Raid 1 -
http://www.softraid.com/features.html

[tj williams]

thanks OH I bookmarked it. why is this better than other ways?

[Trevor Meier]

I'm curious as well...

[Bachman]

Shooting 2K would greatly increase your recording capacity as well if you had no other solution, but then that changes your lens choices and depth of field and resolution as well.


Excuse me for being a Dummy Editor, but why does shooting in 2k change my lens choices?

Tony

[jamesedwelland]

Excuse me for being a Dummy Editor, but why does shooting in 2k change my lens choices?

Tony

2K means you can use a smaller sensor area - 1/4 of the area This means that you can use lenses with a smaller coverage, so you may use 16mm format lenses in PL if you wish. Obviously you can still use 35mm PL lenses, but 16mm ones are readliy available and usually cheaper. Check for any vignetting though.

see:

http://www.red.com/formatoptions.shtml

james

[Bachman]

2K means you can use a smaller sensor area - 1/4 of the area This means that you can use lenses with a smaller coverage, so you may use 16mm format lenses in PL if you wish. Obviously you can still use 35mm PL lenses, but 16mm ones are readliy available and usually cheaper. Check for any vignetting though.

see:

http://www.red.com/formatoptions.shtml

james

Thanks James, I knew all about the smaller sensor area, bla bla. Just that when he said it changes my lens choices it made me panic... shit do I need a set for 2k and another set for 4k!

[Simon Blackledge]

Quantum 600A $8k!!! :-0

[Bachman]

Quantum 600A $8k!!! :-0

Ouch! Whats the media worth?

[Cail Young]

TJ -
If you are using a MAC - make sure you use SOFTRAID for Raid 1 -
http://www.softraid.com/features.html

Great link, for one reason only.

The lynchpin in my backup reasoning was being able to split RAID 1 sets - i.e. dump from RED DRIVE to a RAID 1 pair of standard drives and split them up, essentially halving my copying time. 'SOFTRAID' is the only package I've seen actually advertising that they support that.

offhollywood; do you use this in-house? If so, that's enough for me...

[McDiver]

Actually, you can split Raid1 under os x 10.4. I've done it, but don't have any spare drives to test it again (I stay away from RAID 1 and 0 now).

I feel a rant coming on, too, Jim. But this is more on the software side. Back a few years, there was a simple little software solution called DeskTapePro, that would let you mount a tape drive on your Mac Desktop, and treat it like another drive. Drag and Drop. Catalog with your favorite cataloging software. Search through the contents with the same speed as any other drive. Fantastic. Nothing else I've seen comes close. Now, I hate tape.

You'd have to back up 27.5 TB of data before you break even with the more expensive start-up costs of tape. And with LTO's write-once, you might need a few extra when data doesn't copy perfectly, etc. Shooting a RedDrive (3 hours recorded) a day, making double backups on tape or drive, you would have to work 38 days straight before you simply broke even. Then consider that you are locked into that backup solution until a new tape drive comes along :) With drives, well, the prices just keep dropping. (Assume a tape drive is $5000, and a 400GB tape costs $50. Assume a dual HD enclosure is $120, and 750GB drives cost $230 (http://www.muotitek.com/estore/control/Muotitek/search?search_text=SEAGATE+ST3750640AS&id=53558&srccode=PW).)

Maybe Red could design a moisture-free freezer for harddrives, to eliminate the effects of time for archiving.
"Red introduces the latest in archiving data -- FreezeDrive your 4K memories today!"