The curious case of the missing files...

[Chris Santucci]

A fellow DIT told me of a job on which he copied over the media and could not find the files in the destination folders. Yet the HDD displayed the correct amount of space less. He with the help of a friend managed to get into the hidden files on his Mac all the "lost" files were there. Not sure how to access the hidden files or what they are there for. But may be worth while checking those next time or there equivalent on a PC as this sounds like an OS or operator error to me.

Don't let one incident put you off Red. Nothing is for sure except tax and death this rule applies to data as well. Like with all types of media it has a certain risk involved and part of our job is to manage that risk and bring it down to a bare minimum.

I'll save you the details of my work flow and checking stages. But basically have a GOOD work flow and thorough procedure to follow to ensure all data is safely backed up follow it and that risk drops tremendously. Perhaps even have yourself a checklist for the first few times of using a new procedure and make sure all boxes are ticked before formatting media.

Good luck.

Like I said - "Anomaly". It happens, I guess. And, I'd have a hard time believing that a major commercial production company would ban (outright) use of a particular camera system without at least a good reason.

One thing I do know the crew was doing on the job I mentioned is they'd only put about 10 minutes worth of footage on the Red drives before offloading them, which sounds reasonable to me.

Without doing the math, I'd expect that you could offload that much footage and have time to verify the clips were actually on the backup drives by actually opening enough of them to be reasonably sure they were actually there.

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[jimhare]

Can't agree with your logic here. This appeared to be a Macintosh copy problem, not a Red issue.

It's like saying Macintosh isn't reliable, don't use it.

As for me, I never erase Red drives on set. I copy them but keep the original until the next shoot. That way if anything is funny with my copy, I can go back to the original.

As for banning the camera, they all have good reasons. Sometimes it's because Red doesn't fit in their tape-based workflow. Maybe it was a "1 strike and you're out" deal. Sometimes it's because they need instant results and aren't willing to commit to the additional steps, like you do with Red or film.

Others may have made the decision 18 months ago when the workflow and reliability were in their infancy.

If you look you will find people who dislike and have had trouble with film, Genesis, Red, Sony, Canon and pretty much everyone else. I don't think generalizations apply.

 

[Greg M]

Like I said - "Anomaly". It happens, I guess.

nothing happens w/o a reason and footage does not just mysteriously evaporate from a drive. If the DIT did his job and verified the footage after it was copied, it wouldnt be missing. Either someone deleted it, it was stolen by the Ninjas or the DIT is full of shit. Furthermore, if he knew what he was doing he would have copied it to two locations.

This is either a case of operator error or its a tall tale. I vote for the later.