Eliminating need to erase rushes on location?

[Michael Brennan]

Answers will depend on shooting ratio and willingness of crew to work after wrap

Given the falling price of cards, at at what point will the cost of backing up data on location be more troublesome and expensive than simply production buying more cards and owning them as they do tape?

Consider following costs of backing up on location;
Day rate of data wrangler his hotel expenses and transport.
Computer kit purchase or rental.
Cost of drives.
Increased cost of transporting drives to production.
Cost Risk of accidental erasure of rushes on set or location.
Potential savings in the reuse cards after final edit.
Time saved on set (depends on crewing levels)


Indie freebee and some personal projects to one side, I reckon if CF cards dropped to US $175 per 60 minutes the concept of wrangling data on location (purely as a means of recycling camera media) will be consigned to the history books.

How long before CF reach this price/performance?

Mike Brennan

 

[Blue]

96gb CF cards for 175 greenbacks? Couple of years.

 

[Blue]

..and yes I agree completely with your prediction. An hour of secure storage on something the size of Anthony Robbins' thumbnail. Storage problem sorted.

 

[Greg M]

cost of DIT on location.....priceless

 

[number6]

But (I think it was Finner, who had used the RED on location, pointed out) you need some way to view your footage to ensure you got your shot, before you strike your scene setup. That will be my concern, anyway.

edit: That is why 16 GB or possibly 32 GB cards will be as large as I will want to use for feature work.

So you may az well dounload on set?

 

[Matthew Verkler]

Working with the P2 workflow has really helped me get ready for Red. I like to work light and fast while shooting, so ideally I would have enough camera media to comfortably last a full day. Then backup can happen off the set, with less time pressure and greater care.

I back up to two hard drives immediately, so I'm already redundant. Later (sometimes MUCH later if too many things are going), when I get a chance, I back up to two SDLT tapes, which are way more robust than hard drives and are a proven long-term storage solution.

Compared to tape or film, I have greatly enhanced peace of mind once it's onto two drives. If flash media becomes cheap enough to treat like tape or film, I still want redundancy and long-term protection, so I'm going to back up to something, whether it is doing copies on flash media, SDLT/LTO, holographic storage, whatever is proven. I have gotten used to the idea of redundant backup, which I never did with tape or film, and for me there's no turning back.

Right now, SDLT or LTO tape is the only data media I trust for the long term. I'm thinking about holographic storage disks, but in the beginning I would be redundant with tape backup.

EDIT: of course on-set review and backup is a good idea if you have the time in the schedule and room in the budget. On a tight schedule excessive review can really bog things down. I don't like the overuse of the digital village either. An on-set data wrangler is nice, but only if it is someone I REALLY REALLY trust.

2nd EDIT: I agree with number6 about the size of the camera media. I have ordered two Red drives and can certainly see a need for long running times, but for much of what I shoot, I think it's better to have more smaller units of media, so if there is any kind of malfunction or problem with a single unit, you are not losing a full day's work. 30 minutes of record time is a nice increment.

 

[Dylan Macleod CSC]

CF "negative"

CF "negative"

I think it is wise to treat your CF cards as "negative". At least until the project is complete. The cost of "holding" these cards as a back up is something you build in to your rental.

Still copy to drives, then pack them away until the project is done.

I know a couple of RED users that have adopted this approach.

If it is a music video or commercial...your cards will be back in service within weeks. Longer on a feature...but I think it should be seen as the cost of doing business in a new media.

What we don't need is for word to get around that tapeless media is unreliable.

Dylan Macleod, CSC
Cinematographer
Toronto, Canada
www.dylanmacleod.com

 

[Matthew Verkler]

I think it is wise to treat your CF cards as "negative". At least until the project is complete. The cost of "holding" these cards as a back up is something you build in to your rental.

Still copy to drives, then pack them away until the project is done.

I know a couple of RED users that have adopted this approach.

If it is a music video or commercial...your cards will be back in service within weeks. Longer on a feature...but I think it should be seen as the cost of doing business in a new media.

What we don't need is for word to get around that tapeless media is unreliable.

Dylan Macleod, CSC
Cinematographer
Toronto, Canada
www.dylanmacleod.com

If you are referring to my comments, it definitely wasn't my intention to imply that tapeless media is unreliable. I use SDLT tape for LONG TERM archiving; DISK media is less reliable over the long term, which I define as more than 10 months. Discs need to be spun up regularly to keep reliable, and even then discs sometimes fail.

I have no idea as to the long term reliability of flash media; short term for me, P2 has never had a failure.

I like your idea of the CF cards as negative, but once I am redundant onto two disks and have checked each clip head to tail, I am pretty comfortable with erasing the cards. It took me a long time to get comfortable with that, though, and I put the utmost care in the backup process.

To keep CF cards as negative for a two-hour feature with a shooting ratio of 7 to 1, you would need 168 8GB cards, so at $199 per card, that's $33,432 worth of cards. Plus tax. (if my calculations are correct) And you really need enough media for two at a time so you can start the next one while the first is in post. Something to budget for! Of course commercials, music videos, etc. are a different order of magnitude.

 

[Tom Lowe]

I lost a 1 P2 card's worth of really great shots on a P2 shoot. Our workflow was not as well organized as it could have been. And it truly sucks to totally lose really great shots.

What about just backing up your cards to two separate external drives, which are stored in separate places? You would have to get your HD tech to double check that the copies on both drives are working.

Holding on to CF cards without dumping them seems very expensive at this point, so it's probably just better to come up with an iron-clad system for getting the footage onto externals and triple checking to make sure the copies are good before dumping. You have to transfer them anyway to make sure the footage on the CF cards is actually good in the first place.

 

[Brent J. Craig]

To keep CF cards as negative for a two-hour feature with a shooting ratio of 7 to 1, you would need 168 8GB cards, so at $199 per card, that's $33,432 worth of cards

840 minutes worth of 35mm film and processing on that same 7:1 feature would cost you about $250,000.

 

[Brent J. Craig]

Dylan, the guys you are talking about get their cards back in service within a few days - they wait until the footage has been delivered to, copied by and approved by the editor. At that point the 'neg' becomes the post house's responsibility.

Although ongoing rental of the CF cards until the job is finished could be quite lucrative. One Toronto stills company rents their CF cards for 20% of their retail price per day! In other words, every 5 rental days pays for another card. It's the gift that keeps on giving.

 

[Matthew Verkler]

840 minutes worth of 35mm film and processing on that same 7:1 feature would cost you about $250,000.

Certainly. I was just pointing out the cost in the current Red CF world. Compared to film, it's cheap, but it's significant by other measures. And Tom makes a good point - you're going to have to transfer anyway; the question is at what point are you comfortable erasing the cards.

My condolences on your loss, Tom!

 

[Matthew Verkler]

Dylan, the guys you are talking about get their cards back in service within a few days - they wait until the footage has been delivered to, copied by and approved by the editor. At that point the 'neg' becomes the post house's responsibility.

Although ongoing rental of the CF cards until the job is finished could be quite lucrative. One Toronto stills company rents their CF cards for 20% of their retail price per day! In other words, every 5 rental days pays for another card. It's the gift that keeps on giving.

Whatever the market will bear!

 

[I Bloom]

Interestingly to me, the current cost of the Red drive is roughly $3 per GB. Add a second drive for backup ($200) and the price goes up to about $4.

The cost per RED CF is roughly $25 per GB.

So it seems like if you are considering a 100% CF negative because you don't want to wipe cards, you might also consider buying RED drives for all of your footage, backing them up to a sister hard drive, and then keeping both intact. I think that might be a good way to go for indy features.

Add LTO-3 into that equation as well.

The hard part about this is explaining the cost structures and risks to producers.

IBloom

 

[redicule]

There seems to be a lot of weight being put on creating on-set backups. Consider that with video tape or or film this is never done. Of course it's a great opportunity that we didn't have before with the other formats and of course the ability to preview material on set but....

A question for all you that are more familar with CF media than me:

Disregarding all other issues, if I was to run a shoot recording on CF cards, and had enough that I never erased, and instead of having a DIT, just packed them in a safe case and sent them off at the end of the day to post, just like normal rushes in another format, HOW MUCH OF A RISK IS THIS???. From what I have seen in person, and read on this forum, CF cards seem bloody robust, probably more so than tape or film. I would have though that there is more risk in loosing your data in the transfer process than anywhere else. (operator error, hardware failure, etc)

On film there is always the risk that the person handling the film stock will fog it, drop it, whatever. Video tape risks getting chewed by the machine, glitches in the tape, digital dropout... These are risks we accept and of course do everything we can to avoid, but they are still there.

On film you are basically trusting that the AC had all the settings correct on the camera, which are part of the checks at the end (and before) the take. But you cant exactly playback the film to see that it exposed OK.

There seems to be a tendency on pro-video shoots to playback the last section of the video tape on camera to "check" that the tape got recorded properly. I question how wise that is.

If there is something drastically wrong with the record mechanism, it would come up with an error. If there was something wrong with the video tape, well, with rec-review you are only playing back the last few seconds of the take, so what if there was a glitch in the first few seconds - you would never know until transfer anyway. With video tape, the more it is moved through the transport, the more wear it gets.... so you record, rewind, playback, recue, to "check" = 3 times more physical wear on the tape than just recording. If it makes people happy to know that the last few seconds of tape after the action cut is OK, I'll do it, but why???

On these cameras-come-computers it makes sense to me to check that all the settings are OK (although on the Red they are not baked in anyway) and to check there is no dust on the low-pass filter.

So in the context of data safety, is on-set DIT really that important?

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

The hard part about this is explaining the cost structures and risks to producers.

IBloom

Ibloom - we are not finding that hard at all. What we are finding, is MUCH mis-information and MASSIVE FEAR of the post workflow.

example: producer for VERY BIG company "I heard the PL mounts are no good and you need to get one from anonther company before you shoot".

Backing up media, making redundent copies that live in two separate locations is easier, safer than running 35mm through a wet bath and leaving it stored at the lab.

I am finding that producers get that.

 

[I Bloom]

Ibloom - we are not finding that hard at all. What we are finding, is MUCH mis-information and MASSIVE FEAR of the post workflow.

example: producer for VERY BIG company "I heard the PL mounts are no good and you need to get one from anonther company before you shoot".

Backing up media, making redundent copies that live in two separate locations is easier, safer than running 35mm through a wet bath and leaving it stored at the lab.

I am finding that producers get that.

I guess what I mean is getting them to choose one onset workflow based on cost vs risk. People don't like options like that.

 

[David Battistella]

Two Key words:
Planning and Redundancy.

These two things will keep clients happy and put producers at ease.

1.SHOOT CF
2 BACK UP CF to Hard Drive
3.BACK UP CF to Another hard drive
4.BACK UP ONE OF THOSE DRIVES TO LTO 3 tape.

Without this kind of DATA redundancy in place you will have a hard time insuring productions.

The other option is to never erase CF cards, back them up to drives and store them in separate places.

Mark is right about misinformation. You have to be prepared and confident and that will reflect on how confident people are in the NEW way of working.

David

 

[dino g]

IMHO loading your cards onto a drive on set and making them available to the director, dp, client, executive producer, talent is extremely important.

people want to SEE what the images look like coming off of these very new and revolutionary cameras. they are amazed when they see the size and quality. maybe in a year, when everyone that is either an owner or a person that rents the camera has been on 10 shoots and the newness has worn off, it will it be alright to off load the footage the next day.

but that gets into one aspect of the revolution, being able to watch your footage in a non-destructible manner. their is no degradation when playing back this footage, so why not watch it.

the other thing that has not been discussed is the time between setups, this is a perfect time for the keys to look at what they have done in case they want to re-adjust.

we put everything on 4 separate g tech drives on set and in real time, and rarely do we have to stay more than an extra 1/2 hour on set after a shoot is over. it is not easy and it takes at least one person dedicated per camera to do this, but in the end it is worth it because everyone walks away ready to cut. which is one of the benefits, right.

p.s. i would love to see that poll broken out into current owners/operators/people that used the camera versus those that WANT or WILL use the camera, because my inclination is that those with the camera are voting for onset backup.

p.s.s. data wrangling is a full time job, you can't data wrangle and be the AC, or DP, or Director, or producer for that matter. again that is in my experience with this camera with 8 gig CF cards and 800 or eStata drives...when something bigger, stronger , faster comes along, i may change my tune.

companies/clients that can afford to have CF cards as their backup media, can also afford to have the editor on set with an 8 core loading the footage directly into the project via some new tools coming down the line. again, no need to wait till tomorrow.

 

[Tom Lowe]

Certainly. I was just pointing out the cost in the current Red CF world. Compared to film, it's cheap, but it's significant by other measures. And Tom makes a good point - you're going to have to transfer anyway; the question is at what point are you comfortable erasing the cards.

My condolences on your loss, Tom!

Yeah. One of the shots on that card was of this beautiful girl swimming in an alpine lake in the sierras during a gorgeous sunset...

It's kind of like when fishermen tell you about that big one that got away...

Don't let it happen to you, folks.