Our file transfer field unit

[Sean Michael Johnston]

This is our low-cost solution to file transfers in the field. It is basically a mini Shuttle PC in a box with a touchscreen monitor.
It has a PCIe firewire 800 card in back and a multi format USB card reader in a 3.5" bay for input from RED drives and RED CF cards.
It has an Icy Dock 5.25" hot swap bay in front for the media.

[Sean Michael Johnston]

We have been using a file copy utility called Y-copy.
The only issue right now is not being able to view the QT proxies for lack of a Windows version of the RED QT codec.

I'm not crazy about PCs anyway. I'd have built a Mac if I could have found a small enough form factor to allow for the hot swap drives. But the PC route was pretty cheap. This whole system was around $1,000 for the hardware. The box I made for about $150.

It's worked well so far with CF cards on one shoot. I'm hoping I can get my hands on a RED drive for an upcoming shoot.

[redrum]

Check this box -- battery-powered CF offloader that does a binary file comparison to verify copies. Not in the same league as what you're talking about but for a little handheld solution its probably not bad. Claims faster than one gigabyte per minute for copy speed of an Extreme III.
http://www.mobile-save.com/product_detail.php?id=6

[Sean Michael Johnston]

Check this box -- battery-powered CF offloader that does a binary file comparison to verify copies. Not in the same league as what you're talking about but for a little handheld solution its probably not bad. Claims faster than one gigabyte per minute for copy speed of an Extreme III.
http://www.mobile-save.com/product_detail.php?id=6

Yeah I was looking at that too at first, you'd have to back that up onto something else or be swapping drives, which would take tools and time in the field.

I was also thinking of this:
http://tmcscsi.com/diskjockey.shtml
or something similar, but it just seems like such a mess of wires(I wanted something completely self-contained) and there is no way to actually "see"your data.

With my unit, all I have to plug in is power and the hard drive I want to copy from. Everything else is in the box.

[Sean Michael Johnston]

When we're ready to spend a bit more money we'll go for something like this:
http://www.theportablepc.com/zeusm2.htm
My box is the beta version.

[redrum]

No doubt you're livin' large with the box, I was just pointing out a no-budget solution for someone who wanted to plug in the CF card. That Nexto is less than ideal because you can't view footage or anything but even if it was just for your own personal copy of the footage vs. the big ol' production box copy it still seems like a handy freebie field CompactFlash offload unit too.

[Bachman]

We currently use a Mac Book Pro with ex SATA2 drives for all our field work. We often have to travel by Air so we need to keep the kit as small as possible.


Considering buying a Panasonic Toughbook this year

http://panasonic.com.au/products/details.cfm?objectID=3708

[Chris Nuzzaco]

When we're ready to spend a bit more money we'll go for something like this:
http://www.theportablepc.com/zeusm2.htm
My box is the beta version.

That reminds me of the very first Avid Meridian system I ever worked on years ago. It was a "Luggable" system and used a similar PC in a box, but much older... I thought those PCs were extinct. Guess not!

[Videoteque73]

It's not low-cost, it's wood finished!!! ;-DDD