practical tapeless workflow

[sbaechler]

Hi

I know a few people who have an option for the Red camera and I hope to shoot the first short by the end of this year.
The one thing to consider is that it is not enough if you just rent the camera. You will need a proven solution to get all the footage safe to the editing room. Producers and camera assistants are used to a film and a tape workflow. Only very few have experience in a tapeless workflow. I have worked as a 1st AC on a feature film that was shot in the Panasonic P2 format and we have gained some valuable experience, although there was much less data than you will have with the red one. P2 is 1 GB/min.

I made a list of equipment for a feature length movie where you are on a location that has power and plan to deliver your material to the editor at the end of each day.

On Set:
1 MacBook Pro.
2-3 portable harddrives with 2 HDs each in a RAID-1 configuration. FW-800
1 solution to download footage "in the field". (Compare to P2 store)
Editing room:

1 X-Serve RAID 4TB. Raid 10 or 0+1 (Usable disk space 2TB)
1 Apple RAID emergency packet for immediate repairs
1 Fibre Channel PCI card
1 UPC power station
1 Power Book G4 with SCSI interface card
1 LTO or DLT streamer (alt. with Gigabit interface)

I spent a lot of resources on a redundant storage all the way through. I had discussions with another editor if this wasn't a waste of money. From my experience time is the most precious thing during production.
I think producers who have a due date for their film rather spend a little bit more money on equipment than to reserve an additional two days for emergency recovery and restoring data in case of a HD crash.

Regards
Simon

[vanguy]

I would think that you could do it a lot cheaper and simpler.

On set:

You could get four RedRAIDs, taking two to the set (5-6 hours recording time).

The other two are at the edit suite being transferred/archived/backed up. When the transfer is done, swap with the set drives. If the edit suite is a MacBook and some large RAID drives (as below), it could be portable, as long as you've got a power supply for the drives.

In the Suite:

A MacBook Pro or 24" iMac and a pair of LaCie Bigger Disk Extreme 2 TB drives, mirrored for safety. When you're done, put the drives on the shelf. Buy new drives for each project (they're reasonably cheap ~ $750). After 3 years or so, cycle the media on the drives.

If you really want to go with LTO/DLT, fine, but it's a large initial investment and a lot of work on each project. I'd think the mirrored drives would give you almost bulletproof safety, and they go back online instantly.

[Simon Blackledge]

I'd never use Lacie in a production enviroment.. but thats just me. Had to many fail in the past. If your data is important use enterprise drives in a raid.


s

[vanguy]

I'd never use Lacie in a production enviroment.. but thats just me. Had to many fail in the past. If your data is important use enterprise drives in a raid.

You're probably right. I've had some iffy Lacies. It's never been the media, though, always the firewire connector. They're a lot less iffy with Firewire 800. And you can always pull the drive out and put it in another housing. I've had pretty good luck with G-RAIDs, although I wasn't as tough on them as the Lacies I've had.

But I like the single large drive you can store like a tape. Anybody know any decent, inexpensive modular enterprise RAID systems?

I assume that you mean RED DRIVEs, here.

Yup. Sorry. I was looking at the red.com Accessories page, which is a little unclear. Also, the RED DRIVE is a RAID, which confused me.

[Simon Blackledge]

Have a Seagate FreeAgent Pro 500gig I'm playing with. Also has E-Sata so just waiting for a card. Giving it some grief on FW 400 and ok so far. Also we have MyBookPro's as one of the OSX backup drives and one at home also and there doing ok so far.

Only problem with enterprise class drives is they are meant to be in a raid.


s

[vanguy]

RAID is not that big of a problem, seeing as editing Red footage will require a RAID anyway. But most enterprise solutions cost at least a couple of Gs for 2 TB, and the Lacie is $769 MSRP. And it's RAID 0.

Apart from the firewire 400 whackiness (which can be solved by not moving wires around unless you have to) Lacies have been pretty good to me. Much better than other externals (grrr Maxtor).

I've even had some luck buying empty enclosures and putting Seagates in them. But it's a bit of a crapshoot. Some enclosures are not that great...

[Mark L. Pederson]

I'd never use Lacie in a production enviroment.. but thats just me. Had to many fail in the past. If your data is important use enterprise drives in a raid.


s

I never use Lacie. Period. Wost enclosures on the planet. We run 100% of G-Tech drives and also use Gspeed XL 4 gig raids.

[Cail Young]

I never use Lacie. Period. Wost enclosures on the planet.

You ain't seen nothing, my friend. At least Lacie shells out for Oxford chipsets (right?). Some of the cheaper Prolific-based firewire drives will conflict with each other, so you can only use one at a time. Great!

[Fergus Meiklejohn]

I'm giving up on lacie and going g-tech from now on.
Each to their own of course, but I think one can be ott about data backup on set etc (Just because you can..). You can't backup film on-set, most people filming EFG capture onto tape then put the tapes in the hotel safe and backup when they get back to base.
So why should RED be different?

[Stephen Gentle]

You could get four RedRAIDs, taking two to the set (5-6 hours recording time).

I assume that you mean RED DRIVEs, here. RED RAIDs are supposted to be big raids for recording uncompressed data - although I'm not sure if RED plans to make them, as no details have been released about them yet.