Newbie: How to check copied data on set

[Moritz_R]

Hello redusers,

I’m a film student in Germany, and we’re shooting a shortfilm together with other students from abroad (low-budget in European terms).

I’m primarily responsible for backing-up the data. Having gathered some experience with computers over the two decades of my life, I thought I know at least enough to copy data from CF to HDD.
Since today.

Reading about checksums, dropped frames I got a little bit nervous.

Of course I want to be sure, that all the files are properly saved.
Is there any freeware which will check if the copying was successfull (I’m working on a MacBookPro)? There is no money for software like R3D-manager.

As I certainly have to support the (camera)crew on set, the won’t be any time for me to transcode every clip before handing the card back over to the assistant.

Thanks for your replies.

Greets,

Moritz

PS: My previous workflow: copying the contents of CF to HDD1 then to HDD2. Then comparing the size of the files on CF to the ones on HDD1 and HDD2.

PPS: As a passionate photographer I copied hundreds of CF-cards to my computers without failure. Why is there such a hassle with copying RED-material? (besides the aspect that a day of shooting is more expensive than a day of some guy taking pictures in the countryside)

[Martin Weiss]

There are some freeware tools, but with those you'd end up spending your time behind the screen, rather than helping to shoot the film.

I would seriously try to find a way to gather the coins for R3D Data manager - that way you could also set it up to render your footage while away from the screen. It makes checksums and checks that everything is the way it ought to be.

Alternative would be to shoot everything to harddisk and copy and check it at the end of the day. But that would be a) asking for trouble b) give you little sleep. 79 bucks really isn't that much considering what you get in return.

[Conrad Hunziker]

The only foolproof way to ensure that every bit of data made it across safely is to visually verify your footage. So if you make 2 copies of your footage, you need to view both copies.

R3D Data Manager helps to automate the process of copying the footage, and in some cases does it faster than finder. In addition, R3D Data Manager ensures that the content of each copy is the same. So with checksums you know that copy A exactly equals copy B, which exactly equals the original. With this, you could just visually verify one copy, and since you know the checksums are exact, reasonably know the other copy is also fine.

Comparing copying a few photos to copying Red material is a little bit of apples and oranges. Yes, the transferring of zeros and ones may be exactly the same in both worlds. But with Red footage, theres a whole heck of a lot more zeros and ones. To date Ive created over 4Pb of material using R3D Data Manager. I doubt that my entire lifetime of photos, plus all the scans of my entire family took, plus all that of my grandparents will ever add up to that much.

At 2Gb a minute, theres a lot of data to process. And you'd better do it quick, as they are about to roll again....

[Kim Frank]

I never had problems with drag and drop till my last shoot, where suddenly I had corrupt frames. I thought they would just be in the proxies, but that wasn't the case. I would have needed to take the time and create new proxies, or open the R3Ds in RedcineX f.e.
You really need to verify visually. R3D Data manager helps you with checksums but you really need someone spending his time in front of the screen verifying the footage, formatting the cards, handing them ourt to the AC, keeping everything organized what can get fuzzy with a minimum of 4 cards for a fluent shooting.
I'd say you don't have to use an Application (though its faster) but you need to really sit in front of the screen.

[Moritz_R]

Thank you guys for your fast replies.

So I'll check it visually in Redcine-X.

As far as I know, the RED fills an 16GB card in 8 minutes. The download will take around the same time for each HDD.
Watching in realtime (x2) = 16min

So while RED captures everything at lightning speed (8min)
it takes me 32min to do the same before I can return Card1.

Sorry in advance for this question: How can I possibly achieve that task, without going back an forth through time? :001_huh:

Greetings,

Moritz

PS: My idea: I do random checks on set and knock on wood. :confused5:

[Conrad Hunziker]

Thats part of the point with R3D Data Manager, it saves time.

For example, R3D Data Manager's copy time is as fast as your slowest destination. So if all your destinations are isolated and speedy (i.e. NOT firewire or USB), then you can transfer your data using our program faster than it would take to do multiple copies via finder.

Also, since you used checksums you only reasonably need to visually verify one copy, since your other copies are known to have exactly the same content.

So that half hour per card is down to about 15 to 20 minutes. And there are hardware solutions to make the transfer faster. Some of the pros do it in 4 to 5 minutes, with checksums.

[Conrad Hunziker]

One more point- on most shows though it only takes them 8 minutes to fill up a card, they are not doing it in 8 minutes. Theres time between each take where your computer is still downloading, but they are not shooting.

On shows where they are taking 8 minutes to shoot 8 minutes, then you need to scale up your resources to match. Adding multiple computers to process in parallel and more cards to handle the time is what the pros do.

[Moritz_R]

One more point- on most shows though it only takes them 8 minutes to fill up a card, they are not doing it in 8 minutes. Theres time between each take where your computer is still downloading, but they are not shooting.

I certainly hope so. I just took the worst case.


On shows where they are taking 8 minutes to shoot 8 minutes, then you need to scale up your resources to match. Adding multiple computers to process in parallel and more cards to handle the time is what the pros do.

Ok slowly I get where this is going.
Concerning the hardware - I probably got the slowest of all kind although I strongly adviced to not go that way. But money seems to be the most powerful critirion...

As for R3D-Datamanager, today I requested a trial version for me to check it out. Although the chances are not very good, that the production will buy it.

Greetings,

Moritz

[Martin Weiss]

And remember the advice from My Mom bought me a RED camera so now I'm a DP.: "When your 2nd AC is also your DIT, boom op and key grip, always blame him for your fuck ups because he's clearly too busy to defend himself."

[Moritz_R]

And remember the advice from My Mom bought me a RED camera so now I'm a DP.: "When your 2nd AC is also your DIT, boom op and key grip, always blame him for your fuck ups because he's clearly too busy to defend himself."

Where is the half amused half puzzled smiley? ;-)

Greetings,

Moritz

[Martin Weiss]

He's too busy ;)

Alles Gute,

Martin