Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Register Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Location Back Up - Doco. Small Crew

K

Kevin White

Member
Joined
Apr 23, 2007
Messages
17
Reaction score
0
Points
0
Just wondering how Smaller Doco. crews are backing up the Data on location.
I have a 10-14 day trip planned and won't have a DIT or the like. It's a smallish doco. crew of Camera, Sound, Camera Assistant / PA, Dir. and someone from Production occasionally.
I'll have 3-4 Red Drives and 10 CF Cards, and could end up shooting up to 20 hours of footage over the 10-14 period. Possibly more depending on the subject.

Ideally, I would like to be able to get back to the hotel at the end of the day and attach the Drives that I have shot that day to another device that will copy and check the data onto one big drive while I'm downing a beer at the bar. When I stagger back it would all be copied and I could then reuse the Drives from that day for the next.
Is this doable at the moment. Does such a device exist? I suspect not as this would be what I want.
What's the best plan at the moment.
I'd like to here what other crews are doing/planning in the real world with tested methods.

The other way would be to double up on the drives and treat them as tapes I guess. But then still I guess a back up like I mentioned above would be needed.
Many thanks
Kevin White
#637
 
Kevin,

If your using a Mac G-Technology is the way to go with raided storage.

If your on a PC there are many raid storage units to choose from.

I have a few ideas about work-flows, PM me if you would like to talk more.

Dave
 
If storing to hard drive then make sure it's at least a RAID-1 set up (mirrored drives provide piece of mind!)

Ideally if I were you, I'd look at the tape storage systems that are out there at the moment. Quantum offer a reasonably portable LTO-3A system that could be very useful.

I'm looking at such systems for the same kind of shooting scenario.

FWIW I'd go with transfer to RAID-1 and copy to LTO. That way if the tape system fails (unlikely) for whatever reason your REDDRIVE's will be clear for the following days shoot. (it's more expensive but you'll be thoroughly backed up)

JohnF
 
Kevin White said:
Just wondering how Smaller Doco. crews are backing up the Data on location.
I have a 10-14 day trip planned and won't have a DIT or the like. It's a smallish doco. crew of Camera, Sound, Camera Assistant / PA, Dir. and someone from Production occasionally.
I'll have 3-4 Red Drives and 10 CF Cards, and could end up shooting up to 20 hours of footage over the 10-14 period. Possibly more depending on the subject.

Ideally, I would like to be able to get back to the hotel at the end of the day and attach the Drives that I have shot that day to another device that will copy and check the data onto one big drive while I'm downing a beer at the bar. When I stagger back it would all be copied and I could then reuse the Drives from that day for the next.
Is this doable at the moment. Does such a device exist? I suspect not as this would be what I want.
What's the best plan at the moment.
I'd like to here what other crews are doing/planning in the real world with tested methods.

The other way would be to double up on the drives and treat them as tapes I guess. But then still I guess a back up like I mentioned above would be needed.
Many thanks
Kevin White
#637
Click to expand...

I am doing a similar style shoot and here is the plan we have come up with at the moment.

We are taking 24 flash cards with us. Plus one RED DRIVE. We are planning on shooting about 30mins. of footage per day - roughly 8 cards per day.

We will back up to a 160gb portable drive and FEDEX it home to the editor once we fill it.

On set we will carry 2 - 2TB B/U drives. We will back up all the footage to each drive so there is a total of three separate sources for the footage.

Still have to find a "verification" utility, but I am sure that exists.

This is a work in progress! I'll keep you posted.

Dylan Macleod
Cinematographer
Toronto, Canada
www.dylanmacleod.com
 
I've been shooting a Doc with the Red out of country (Paraguay) and what we did was just what you mentioned Kevin- we shot majority of our footage each day to a Red Drive and downloaded to 2 different 1TB G-Tech Drives (non raid drives- ESATA) each evening in the hotel. Worked fantastic. We were shooting 2k 16:9 which also helped on drive space. Never got the Red drive below 50% capacity actually which was easily 90+ minutes of footage.

Best of luck...
 
Backup regime depends on DIT/DAM support crew as well as risk/value of shot....blah blah...nothin new there.

firstly, i hate the idea of going all day without backing up a Reddrive.

second.....as Dylan suggests...I'd get more than enough CF cards for your daily shooting schedule/backup regime and back them up to 3 sources!...It's so easy and cheap to do this....well depends on how many there are of you.

Next I'd buy two portable Nexto (or other) CF backup units and backup your CF cards to both and finally to a laptop for visual verification as frequently as practical.

Nexto's can also backup Reddrives so swapping Reddrives on a regular basis may be okay if this doesn't screw up your naming conventions.

I really like the look of these drives for when the laptop is full or you want to send footage back to editor..etc.
http://www.addonics.com/products/enclosures/25snap.asp (thank Zak)

.....and maybe one of this for the office:
http://www.vantecusa.com/p_nst-d100su.html (thanks Steve)


Cheers,
 
We are using a couple of these:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer Technology/GM8U2KIT0GB/

It's a mirrored raid, in our two units we've installed pairs of 750gb seagates. Being mirrored of course you are stuck with 750gb from two like 750gb drives but data security/redundancy is why we use these units. We use firewire 800 and data transfers to/from the macbook pro are stellar.
 
What you want is a SolidStore. Sadly it doesn't exist yet.

I suggested that Addonics drive to Zak (http://www.addonics.com/products/enclosures/25snap.asp)..

What I might be inclined to do is use that on location and then have one of these in the PC back at base: http://www.addonics.com/products/raid_system/ae4rcs25nsa.asp

The bare 2.5" drives can then be easily mounted directly in the home-system for use.

In OSX I've been using RsyncX which is an OS X implementation of rsync which provides a simple and reliable copy without the worries of the drag-and-drop style of copy.
 
What you want is a SolidStore. Sadly it doesn't exist yet.
Click to expand...

How is the SolidStore coming?

Last I read was a couple of months ago you were building some test boxes.

I love the concept, as this is exactly what I - and many others - will need.

Do you have a hint as to when you might be starting shipping? And an approximate price?

In OSX I've been using RsyncX which is an OS X implementation of rsync which provides a simple and reliable copy without the worries of the drag-and-drop style of copy.
Click to expand...
Great tip. Thanks.

Here's the link for others (it is even freeware): http://archive.macosxlabs.org/rsyncx/rsyncx.html
 
I am going to try the new Synology 508, got one and loaded 5 500gb drives in it. for a total of about 2TB of raid 5 space. the coolest thing about it is the fact that it's a backup drive and a NAS all in one, connect the RED drive on the back side of it to dump and then when shoot is all done connect it with the screaming fast GIGABIT connection to your gigabit network and edit off the bad boy till the project is finished.....no need for a data server at all. need more space? buy a 2nd unit! etc and so forth...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top