First Feature as Data Manager - Need Advice

[sbrookens]

Hey All,

Next week I will be on my first feature film as the data manager. I have been doing this for almost a year on commercial shoots but I know a feature is a whole new ball game. Normally I get two 1TB eSATA external drives and hook them up to a Macbook Pro with an eSATA express card and download the data through R3D Data Manager (I mirror the data). This works great and we have never had a problem. However, we never need more than 1 TB because our shoots are usually between 1-3 days and we just don't fill up drives that fast. That being the case, I was wondering if I could get some advice/help as I prep for this feature. I have a few questions:

1. How much drive space should the production have for me? We are shooting for 15 days and it is a 2 camera shoot.

2. I don't know anything about RAID setups but I know a lot of data managers use them. Is this a good route to go or is my express card option on my Macbook pro good enough?

3. For my setup: I am planning on having two Macbook pros, one for each camera, and hooking up two hard drives to each of them and dumping the footage on there. Does this sound like a good enough solution?

3. I am planning on making 2 copies of the data. I know on feature sets normally 3 would be better, but I just don't know the most efficient way to make that happen with the setup I am planning... Ideas?

4. Hard drive brands - what are people using out there? What is the best? What should we stay away from? I have used seagate and western digital. Are there better options?

5. More questions to come I am sure.

Thanks in advance!

Scott

[Ryan Dean]

HEY MAN!

1. How much drive space should the production have for me? We are shooting for 15 days and it is a 2 camera shoot.

-I'm on a 2 camera show now and I average about 75-100G per camera.

2. I don't know anything about RAID setups but I know a lot of data managers use them. Is this a good route to go or is my express card option on my Macbook pro good enough?

-Express - Esata - option the way to go. I can usually download 4-5 gigs a minute.

3. For my setup: I am planning on having two Macbook pros, one for each camera, and hooking up two hard drives to each of them and dumping the footage on there. Does this sound like a good enough solution?

-good

3. I am planning on making 2 copies of the data. I know on feature sets normally 3 would be better, but I just don't know the most efficient way to make that happen with the setup I am planning... Ideas?

-I make 3 copies (a little much) but one copy is on a Lacie rugged that goes back and forth to the studio for Transcoding.

4. Hard drive brands - what are people using out there? What is the best? What should we stay away from? I have used seagate and western digital. Are there better options?

-I only use GTech Raid 3 or higher. Very robust drives.

5. More questions to come I am sure.

Keep them coming. I'm sure others will chime in.



Scott

Good Luck!
-r

[sander kamp]

Some thoughts:

- Two hard disks is okay for on the set but you need to do at least one daily backup to another drive too that you keep in a secure location - for instance the hotel and the producers office. You don't want to keep all your backups on the set.

- It's a good idea to make dailies on the set, even if just the smallest size, to check if your footage is okay.

- Keep a log of how many GB is shot each day and what is copied to what. In that way, if there is a problem you can quickly check if for instance the post house has all the files it should have.

[AaronPicot]

I worked on a 1 cam show; it was only a 8 day shoot and we filled up 2 1TB WDs. By filled up I mean about 85-90%, which I think is putting too much on a drive anyway.

One of our drives was a 2TB mirrored, which means 2 1TB drives mirroring each other. This, along with our other 1TB drive, was our means of a 3x backup. Only thing I didn't like was that the 2TB mirrored drive was USB only! Made for a slower transfer.

Out of curiosity, are the cameras shooting to Red drives or CF cards? Two totally different workflows I imagine. We shot on CF and with just 1 camera I was pretty dang busy all day as I had cards coming from the cam dept almost constantly. 2 cams (and 2 macs) would have been crazy.

Good luck amigo

[Mike Thorn]

For most features I've been on (as AC), we'll usually burn between 2-4TB for a single copy. Depends on the shooting ratio.

[willg]

I would backup to another type of media as well (if possible).
We do Bluray for spots, but obviously that will take some time.
You may want to look into renting/borrowing a DLT.

If it is just you doing the DIT AND dallies then I would suggest
recording a live monitor feed from the camera somehow and
avoid the long render times. It will also allow you see the file number
on the screen for shot selection.

Something like this would be great to set in "proxy" mode for video
assist and record 7 strait hours on 2 32gb CF cards and play back on a
HDSDI production monitor, etc. if it is compatible with the Red 720 60p
http://www.convergent-design.com/CD_Products_nanoFlash.htm

[sbrookens]

Thank you all for your input! I really appreciate it. Here is a bit more information. We are shooting two cameras and both will be shooting to drives. We will have 4 red drives, 2 per camera - so the plan is to download at lunch and at the end of the day. That being the case, it shouldn't be too strenuous for me (just late nights!). Also, the producers do not want dailies made, which is great for me because that can get pretty crazy shooting two cameras. Also, I always check the clips using Clipfinder- its generally been a great tool for me and has been really helpful on past projects. Anyone else support this?

Finally, if I tell the production to get 6 TB worth of drive space per camera (so a total of 12 TB for both cameras) should that be enough? My thought is 3 TB per camera should do it, but I will need to mirror that 3 TB which = 6TB total. I checked on the G-RAID and if we get 4 G-RAID3 drives @ 3TB each it will be $2400 total - does that sound about right for a budget for drives (the film about $1 million feature)

Thanks for the input

scott

[Brad Crawford]

these cases are great (the link only shows a firewire version but there is an eSata version as well) http://ncix.com/products/?sku=23197&vpn=DS-2320DBK&manufacture=American%20Media%20Systems

compact, space for 2 drives for either mirroring or speed and great price.

just search for AMS Venus.

[Mike Thorn]

Scott, I think 3TB each should hold it quite nicely.

Of course, if it gets a little dodgy towards the end you can always order another drive just to cover any excess. Plus that way they will have a little elbow room in post for extra stuff.

Personally I think $2400 for storage isn't unreasonable - but if they get antsy about it, just remind them that your paltry $2400 is protecting their $1m. It's a steal at thrice the price.

[tcordier]

I have worked on a 2 Red feature, it was 20 days of shooting, my set up:

1 mb pro with an esata card with two connexion
1 20" dvi monitor
shotput red and clipfinder
2 esata drive dock

process:
i've told to the production to buy 6 bare sata HDD of 1to and 6 pellicase 1060 with foam to hold them for the transfert to the post production facilities.

I was transferring approximately 200-250 Gb per day for the 2 Red

Each day I was sending on HDD with R3D files / daillies with tc burn low res / a pdf log files done in Numbers with all the informations of each clip (file name, seq name, shot name) / sound files / reference tiff files of the Dop DI intentions / copy of the script report
I've installed a rotation with the the 6 HDD and I was keeping a back up of each day and was waiting for the "ok" of the Postproduction when they had backuped the files everyday before to deleting my back up. The moving HDD was never erased, so i have fill 5 disks at the end of the shoot. The production kept this 5 disk as an another back up.

You must have a log of all the files you transfert, name each disk, split every days in folders and inside put all your data.

hope this help, have a good shooting!

[sander kamp]

Just a thought:

In Clipfinder you can export a XML file with thumbnails and data of each shot. I used to make a custom sheet with the data that I wanted and print each day to a digital PDF file. Producers love that. They get a visual overview of all the shots of that day and if in the first frame you have the slate with the scene and shot than you have a way to look up which shot belongs to which scene.

If you have time between doing backups anyway then you can easily do that for the previous day. Find a way to add notes from the script supervisor and a lot of people will be very happy.

[Luca Immesi]

Use clipfinder, it's an amazing tool especially for film workflow. 30 hours of footage at 4k with a bit of slow motions at 3 and 2k are pretty much 4 tera of space. Take at lest 4 hard drives of 2 tera each. If you want to know how much storage you need I know 2 nice applications for iphone: clifton pocket dit and isee4k.
Hope this helps.

[Cail Young]

WiebeTech RTX DriveDocks are your saviour if you are shuttling bare drives around. The cheapo SJ version hasn't been too bad, I had some problems with one of the latches after a few weeks of non-stop use - so I recommend the all-metal versions that cost a bit more.

[Ed Watkins]

You might want to test using R3D data manager if you plan to download only over lunchtime.

I just got back from a shoot using the software on a MacBook Pro, FW800 for the RED Drive, and eSATA to the two 1TB backup Drives (using a sonnet express card) and the transfer times were killing us.

Using the MD5 checksum feature (to ensure a perfect copy) the process was taking 4-5hrs to make two copies from the RED Drive (75% full).