Media Management workflow & Wireless video playback question...

[Kyle Osburn]

Hi RED heads!

I will be working on a big commercial campaign in April and need some advice.

We will be shooting for 16 days over the course of 3 weeks. Possibly 1 Epic and 2 Scarlets for A-Unit, and 1 Scarlet for B-Unit. We will be filming interviews and also documentary style shooting following around people. Obviously we will be shooting a lot of footage and downloading a lot of data and will be in a foreign country and wanted to know a good and efficient workflow for media management, transcoding, and archival (We are looking into RAID storage, and possibly an LTO backup)

My initial thoughts are to look into having 2-3 Thunderbolt 2TB drives on set to download the day's footage and then back it up to a RAID storage back at our base camp and then reformat and re-use the Thunderbolt drives the next day. Does this sound like a feasible and efficient workflow for backups?

The producer also wants me to look into options for wireless playback for the director and also possibly the client monitor. He mentioned it would be great if the director could watch playback from an iPad, but I'm not sure if the technology is there yet. I was thinking of using a TVLogic 5.6" on-board monitor with SDI as the director's monitor and attach some sort of wireless transmitter from the RED cameras.

If anyone has any advice or good ideas for this, I would GREATLY appreciate it. Thanks!

[Brian F Kobylarz]

Immediate thoughts:
With possibly 4 cameras, it would be a real challenge to download every day's footage to a couple of external drives, then move to a RAID. If you are planning on reformatting the 2TB externals each evening anyhow, why even use them? You are adding an intermediate step = more risk.
Your RED Stations are not Thunderbolt anyhow - just go direct to RAID. Then, produce two copies on separate LTO cartridges. Once those are verified - and physically separated (different hotels, one shipped to your post house or other location) with verified receipt - ONLY THEN do you reformat your camera original SSD's.

Depending on where you are - consider that the electrical grid may be suspect. Add a UPS matched to the current available. Prepare for different voltages, phase and connectors. Your transfer / verification schedule can evolve beyond your capability to keep up.

Strongly recommend traveling with a minimum of two days worth of SSD's. Any other approach means choosing which failure is more likely - losing a days worth of footage - or shutting down for a day - all due to circumstances outside of your control.

Personally, I would factor in sending backup LTO's back home as often as the budget will handle it.

Bottom line - reduce your risk as much as possible and look into insurance.

[Matthew Mann]

Check out Live Play by Light Iron. Great for iPad dailies. Just be aware your DIT will need to transcode everything to H264 which will take a while with all the footage you have. Definitely get AT LEAST one RED Rocket if you want to do this.


http://lightiron.com/services/live-play

[Drew Baird]

Kyle, Brian is correct. I am finishing up on a scarlet shot documentary and our methods have been very similar. Build your workflow around the computers you will be using. For dailies we have been using FCP7's share feature. This has worked very well For us. Stick with esata RAID drives for storage while traveling. No need to go thunderbolt at this point, as the red station can't exceed esata speeds, but if it is available on your system (mbp?) it will help you avoid any bottle necks.

[Brian F Kobylarz]

The producer also wants me to look into options for wireless playback for the director and also possibly the client monitor. He mentioned it would be great if the director could watch playback from an iPad, but I'm not sure if the technology is there yet. I was thinking of using a TVLogic 5.6" on-board monitor with SDI as the director's monitor and attach some sort of wireless transmitter from the RED cameras.

If anyone has any advice or good ideas for this, I would GREATLY appreciate it. Thanks!

Kyle,

Meant to respond to this part of your post too. Suggestions:
For wireless, look at using a Teradek. That will WiFi a HDSDI signal to an iPad (some latency on the original - am looking forward to see the change with the iPad 3).
The Teradek can also send the signal to a MBP - and their software can generate proxy files. You can playback right from the MBP without interrupting the shoot just to play back a take.

It gets better from there - here is something really cool (but not wireless): Check out the Sound Devices PIX240 (the HDSDI version). Very well designed portable recorder with a monitor built in. Takes SSD drives in a cradle and/or CF cards. Can power off a D-Tap.

Here is the beauty of this unit: All of the RED metadata (such as file name) is captured through the HDSDI feed. Plus it triggers off of the flag - so when you start and stop recording on the EPIC or Scarlet, it starts and stops with it. Can record ProRes or DNxHD.

What does this mean for your shoot? Pairing the PIX240 with the camera can provide a working set of proxy or high quality editable files that match the metadata on the 4K or 5K files on the camera SSD's. Switching out the PIX SSD's or CF cards between takes and you can have a production assistant logging, reviewing, even editing a sequence offline and on location. That equals client smiles. They can be working with the footage and stay out of your way. Also, you can be reviewing takes over dinner that evening while the camera original is being copied at a different location. Since the metadata is a match, no time is wasted - and you don't need to exercise the camera SSD's for client playback - that can really be disruptive to the crew and talent.
The unit is intuitive - easy to learn and hard to screw up. Plus, Sound Devices has a great reputation for their audio gear - this recorder has exceptional audio capture capabilities - including full sized XLR's (analog or AES/EBU), pre-amps designed for professional mics, Ambient Time Code electronics, the list goes on...
Worth taking a look at.

[Marc Wielage]

For wireless, look at using a Teradek. That will WiFi a HDSDI signal to an iPad (some latency on the original - am looking forward to see the change with the iPad 3).

The Teradek is a terrific system, but you're still limited by the inherent latency in Wi-Fi. Last time I was on a set that used such a system, I believe there was 3 seconds of latency looking at QuickTime. They claim .3 seconds of latency using RTSP QuickView, but that's at 480P. There's a huge difference between that and 1080p.

More here:

http://forum.teradek.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7

My prediction is that we're rapidly getting to the point where SMPTE will establish open source standards for encrypted audio/video transmission, scene & take metadata, and timecode, so that the sound department, the DIT, the video assist, the camera operator, the DP, the script supervisor, the AC running the slate, and the director all receive the exact same information at the exact same time. I'll be very impressed when they can even do this at 2K. Eventually, 4K is possible. Again, the issues are cost and latency, but I think they're going to have to go to something beyond straight Wi-Fi. Maybe the forthcoming 802.11ac (almost 6Gbps) will do it, provided they can figure out super high-speed encoding and decoding.

I'm not convinced proprietary standards are the answer, given the need for so many different departments, using equipment made by many different companies, have to work together in total harmony.

[John Reinert]

For playback it's hard to beat the combination of the Cube from Teradek and LivePlay from LightIron. Personally I would not focus on realtime wireless monitoring because the latency in the transmission is annoying. For realtime, just use HD-SDI to a monitor or a HD-SDI to HDMI mini-converter if you want an inexpensive large screen display.

The Cube & LivePlay combination gives you the ability to view the shot after the Stop button has been pressed on the camera. The useful part of that combination is that using LivePlay you can add metadata to the clip, select your circle takes, make comments, etc... and in the end export a report for the project with all of the clip information. Teradek already has a pre-configured product called the "Case" that is a build of a "Cube" WiFi Router and Mac Mini all configured in a Pelican case that can mount on a C-Stand. Of course you can build all those components yourself and save a few bucks but Teradek makes it easy.

LivePlay is just downloaded from the Apple App Store and is something like $35. Adding LivePlay to the "Case" makes all the magic happen. Depending on the Mac you use as a server, you can easily support 10 iPads. The clips are streamed to the iPads so that none of your media leaves the set. the iPad users can be configured to allow specific duties such as commenting, tagging, or just viewing.