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  • 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 :)

Feature Film storage for RC42 RC80 and RC100

Roberto Lequeux

Roberto Lequeux

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Let me just start a little discussion from which I hope to find some answers I need.

How much storage would you say we might need for an "average" feature. Of course the differences from crew to crew director to director can be astronomical, but an example, or an approximation for a set model for an average feature could help all of us gain some valuable perspective. Especially when we are trying to plan our budgets for switching to a Red workflow.

Personally I am planning a feature and building a budget for 32 days one camera. Though it will be cold ant that may play a factor too. :cold:



So for the model let's use the following: 200hs
Shot in LA with good weather, a decent crew, one camera, 28 day shoot, well pre-produced with no major set backs or delays. Giving say 3-4hs of footage to play it on the high end. So 112hs, and for safety call it 200hs.


What's the math?
 
Depends on how you plan to store it but I'd spring for an LTO-4 drive. Not cheap but the best way for long-term storage that's reliable and relatively fool-proof. Dumping it onto a bunch of hard drives might ultimately cost more and be way less effective.

Noah
 
The setup I was looking at was one suggested by Peter, a great buy for a little enclosure for four 7200.10 perpendicular drives and it comes with a supercheap but fast and reliable RAID card that pulls some serious numbers. All for about $2,000 with little drives. Then I'd get 1.5TB Seagates and get 3.0TB with redundancy and speed for about $2,300 last I remember. Also able to edit right out of it... perhaps get two if the project deserves it. Then you would have two editable 3k/5k/6k in RC42/80/100 copies and you are safe as could be...

BUT... how much time could that hold of 3k RC42, how much of 5k RC80, and how much 6k RC100 could you fit in only 3TB? Might not be as much as I'd hope.
 
So I looked at those LTOs you guys were talking about and I have to ask, I this your way to say you do use film? lol... it hurts so much to separate yourself from film that you need to bring magnetic tape back from the days of Comodores? lol... I love it, but it scares me... I like the idea of signal decay in spinning metal discs better than tape rolling through mechanisms. Though I got nothing against magnetic tape... it sounds romantic and they seem to claim real big numbers based on a wiki page I read... are these things for real? If so what would they cost?
 
Since you mention your average LA feature, Ive done a few of them now with similar specs as to what you said. The average at RC36 4k is right around 5Tb, where the highest was over 12Tb. And thats for one copy of every R3D file. Obviously figure in redundancy, backups, offlines, edits, and archives. Id say prepare for at least 50Tb in various forms of hard drives and tapes for an "average" feature, and you'll be happy when its under.
 
Grug said:
I'm sure you'd be fine for active projects with a setup like that Roberto, but I suspect you'd need to move the projects off on to storage once they were done (to free up room for the next ones).

That's where the LTO-4 comes in handy.
Click to expand...

Interesting idea... but couldn't a HDD be fine so long as you read each file once every so often? I really hope that we can keep a long term solution conversation as a secondary subject though. But I guess you bring up a very important point in that, I would have to consider that too before I decided if a second RAID enclosure would be wise.
 
Photocon said:
Since you mention your average LA feature, Ive done a few of them now with similar specs as to what you said. The average at RC36 4k is right around 5Tb, where the highest was over 12Tb. And thats for one copy of every R3D file. Obviously figure in redundancy, backups, offlines, edits, and archives. Id say prepare for at least 50Tb in various forms of hard drives and tapes for an "average" feature, and you'll be happy when its under.
Click to expand...

Do you mean TB? You aren't saying 50TB... can't be. Are you?
 
Think about it. 12Tb is one copy of all the R3D files for one feature I did. They had a raid 0 system for speed, another raid for backup, LTOs for archival and offline downconverts in 1080 ProRes HQ. You'll hit 50Tb of raw unformatted storage pretty fast that way. Even the 5Tb features required right around 25Tb of total storage space (disks & LTO tapes).
 
I am thinking about the same thing. Well we will have to look at the shooting ratio, file size, and storage media capacity. What might be the largest file size that you may shoot? I have very little knowledge of what RedCode 42, 100, etc. mean in terms of file size. You will also take into account the working room you will need for your system and enough room for the final output of your movie, whether it will be 2K, 1080P, or what have you.

Okay here is a theoretical method. Lets say that we will shoot 3K 120fps on each shot. (I know that this is not going to be the case. Just using this formula for a base for the largest possible file size for the 2/3" Scarlet.) Then we would take a look at the size per minute. And then look at the shooting ratio. A good shooting ratio, IMHO, is anywhere from 4:1 to 6:1 of takes per setup. I have been on shoots where the director had a ratio of 15:1 for the majority of the setups. By using the largest file size for each shot would give you a large enough buffer so that you would hav more than enough size of storage.

I could be wrong, but that is my understanding.
 
Oh wow... 12TB was the most for one single movie? Wow... do you know how many days for any of these?

Cedric_Akins said:
I am thinking about the same thing. Well we will have to look at the shooting ratio, file size, and storage media capacity. What might be the largest file size that you may shoot? I have very little knowledge of what RedCode 42, 100, etc. mean in terms of file size. You will also take into account the working room you will need for your system and enough room for the final output of your movie, whether it will be 2K, 1080P, or what have you.

Okay here is a theoretical method. Lets say that we will shoot 3K 120fps on each shot. (I know that this is not going to be the case. Just using this formula for a base for the largest possible file size for the 2/3" Scarlet.) Then we would take a look at the size per minute. And then look at the shooting ratio. A good shooting ratio, IMHO, is anywhere from 4:1 to 6:1 of takes per setup. I have been on shoots where the director had a ratio of 15:1 for the majority of the setups. By using the largest file size for each shot would give you a large enough buffer so that you would have more than enough size of storage.

I could be wrong, but that is my understanding.
Click to expand...

That sounds like enough room for me. The renders would go to my internal RAIDs so personally I am hoping to figure out a good ballpark for a single full redundant copy... I would love to be able to just use that 3TB enclosure but it might need a twin brother just for a single redundant copy.
 
USlatin said:
Oh wow... 12TB was the most for one single movie? Wow... do you know how many days for any of these?
Click to expand...

Like I said - they are were comparable to the specs you gave +/- 30 days. Think about it - RC36 @ 4k is a little over 2Gb per shot minute. So just for a 90 minute feature you will have 180Gb, let alone ratios, backups, downconverts and the like.
 
Hey maybe we could get some theoretical help from the workflow wizard, Stuart English? Please?
 
Okay 4K @ 2GB per minute x 120min= 240GB x 6 takes= 1440GB x 2= 2880GB/1024= 2.8125TB roughly 3TB. That is just for archiving the footage on one raid multipy that by 2 for a working raid then 6TB. Then add an additional 500GB to 1TB drive for final output and backup. The extra 2 at 1440GB x 2 is for a 50% ratio of available space empty on the drive.

That equals up to (2) 3TB drives plus (2) 500GB or 1TB drives. I would assume this to be an optimum minimal storage setup. Some may go for a more conservative approach with singal drives for each. Whereas others may opt for additional backup drives. Either way it will be more of a budgetary choice for most producers/directors/dps. If you have funding for a project you will want to take extra precausions so that you don't loose any of your footage and require more shooting days which means more money..
 
Well it seems you get 4TB out of the setup I was looking at. So perhaps this will help me shoot efficient which will help me in post.

How many hours of 4k RC36 footage in 4TB then? Photocon said a little over 2GB per minute so id I used 2.25GB/m it would be about 30hs of footage? And I just shot a 15min short and got 4 and 1/2 hours of footage cause we rushed into it and had to try to get as much options as possible. So my worst case scenario would be needing about 25hs for my 85min feature. Minus how the stars align when we actually shoot I think I might be "ok" with 4TB... for RC36!

Internally I have two RAID0 setups each of a total of 600GB actual capacity and they give me 130MB/s and 120MB/s sustained average read. Write isn't too bad either and that's what I'd need them for. Also have two more single 320GB drives for the OS and project file. But I might put my OS in the fast RAID and render to the other, put the project file on a single drive... who knows... I'll check it out.
 
USlatin said:
And I just shot a 15min short and got 4 and 1/2 hours of footage cause we rushed into it and had to try to get as much options as possible.
Click to expand...

Wow, that is an 18:1 sooting ratio. At that type of shooting ratio you will need much larger archive and editing drives. That would mean at least a 9TB archive drive.
 
If the 4TB enclosure worked out, as it should, and I got away with shooting only 4TB of RC42 which "ties" you the 2/3" Sensor... as if that were a bad thing... but you have about 30hs of film with the ability to delete at least a few of the bad takes as they happen when you are not in a hustle.

What worries me is that RC80 sounds like it would be 2 times the size than 42... right? Anyway, I don't think there has been any solid word on their actual sizes, have we?
 
Cedric_Akins said:
Wow, that is an 18:1 sooting ratio. At that type of shooting ratio you will need much larger archive and editing drives. That would mean at least a 9TB archive drive.
Click to expand...

Yea, but that was an underfunded project we did with $5k total. Give me a break please, I kept it rolling the whole time.

And it was DVCproHD 1080p, so it didn't matter much.
 
The other thing to remember guys is the difference between the stated space on the drives and the formatting. Your 4Tb raid may be 3.2Tb once formatted. In addition, 1080 proreshq roughly equals the data rate of 4k RC36, meaning a 4 minute shot will be a 8Gb R3D file and a 8Gb quicktime 1080 proreshq file.

BTW - I have a hard time with the term backup that you guys are throwing around. The archive should be something that is completely separate from your systems, preferably at a geographically distant location and should not be susceptible to easy human error. And you will want to make backups of your renders, because it just takes so long to render them to begin with - having to do it again would be horrible.
 
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