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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 :)

Backing up data "on the road"...

I think there will always be prices to pay when getting a piece of equipment that is so far ahead of the curve like the red. Oh well at least you get much more of a future proof camera.

I see a simpler answer to this that was talked about in detail on a thread about flash memory. If red makes the flash port to accept non-red specific flash memory cards (Sandisk and others). You could just run with a bunch of these cards and feel confident in them not being easily destroyed in shipping. They are light small and you can buy them all over. Transport and shipping would be much cheaper, you would need quite a few but that cost would be much cheaper from shoot to shoot as you could re-use them. You could probably buy them yourself and rent them to the production and have them paid off in 4-5 shoots. The way memory always continues to get larger and cheaper I think this would be the best option.
 
Flash is pretty rugged, that is true, but just thinking for a moment-

www.taperesources.com sells a single 400 GB AIT-5 tape for about $60.

I think flash ranges around $20 - $50/GB, meaning $8k to $20k for 400 GB. I've had very bad luck with the cheaper flash brands, so I wouldn't trust the cheap stuff for real work.

I'd say having the original material on a tape that you can keep as an archive copy is good. If you use a bunch of flash that's so expensive you have to wipe it and reuse for the next job, that means you still need some other solution for archiving.
 
But the archiving can be done back home by your editor right? Also costs will drop drastically over the next while on flash as memory companys are concentrateing a lot of their effort on flash memory.

If you are looking for a simple answer that will work as easily as tape does and you want that answer right now I think you already know you will not find one. On the other hand how much depreciation of a HD camera are you willing to suffer for the imediate convienience of tape? The rate memory goes down I do not see a huge problem with dealing with the small imediate difficulties of red now for all the benifits and convieniece that will follow.

It was also not mentioned that after 1 or 2 high quality red documentary's you will set yourself in a level high above an HD doc and probably be given the doc's with the bigger budgets.
 
Hi Finner,

Until flash cards have a MUCH larger storage capacity – along with a BIG price drop – they can't compete with the tape drive solution (when you're talking about 50 hours of more of shot data). But, hey.... the flash card solution may not be far away. For example there's the promised HVC from Optware in Japan:

"The Holographic Versatile Card (HVC) is a data storage format by Optware; the projected date for a Japanese launch is 1st half 2007 (pending finalization of the specification). They claim it will hold 30GB of data, have a write speed 3 times faster than Blu-ray, and be approximately the size of a credit card. At release, the media will cost about ¥100 (roughly $1) each, reader devices are set to cost about ¥200,000(roughly $2000) while reader/writer devices are to cost ¥1 000,000 (roughly $8000) each."


I'll put this in the "believe it when I see it" category for the time being. In the meantime, I really need a solution that I know will work NOW if I'm going to consider moving into the RED zone!
 
Brainstorm said:
I think a transfer rate of 24MB/sec is about as good as it's going to get until some totally new type of back-up technology hits the market. It's not ideal, but it's possible... and at least the poor crew member who gets the job can still get SOME sleep!
Click to expand...

LTO3 drives are a fair bit faster than that, and media is about the same price.
 
Thanks Chris... seems you're right! So far, all the LTO3 units I've seen in my quick web hunt are physically much larger and heavier than the Sony however.

Now if I can just find fast, small and light in a single package!

It's time to go hunting...
 
What about Blu-Ray discs? If you can get 40GB on each disk, this would work nicely for a redflash backup, storage option for on-the-road. Each night, take all the footage that you have aquired that day on your external hard drive, burn two blu-ray discs of everything. They are small, they will be cheap, and they are easy to ship anywhere. At 100GB per hour of footage, each disc could get about 24 minutes on it. 200 Blu-ray discs could give you your 40 hours of footage, with a backup. 100 X 40GB = 4TB. Backup copy of another 100 discs.

What do you think?
 
Blu Ray

Blu Ray

LaCie Blu-Ray burners are just coming onto the market at about $1,100 each.

Remember regarding data tape and optical or hard disk, bits are bits. There is no quality gain or loss using any of these formats, whereas with videotape there will be. When in the data domain, just chooose the right balance for your application of initial equipment cost, media cost and capacity, portabiliy and transfer speed.
 
this isn't exactly "on the road," but it's fabulous for "in the field"--it's my new favorite device because it runs off the battery power of my macbook pro, and it's built like a little tiny tank. it's plug-free, unleashed back-up storage. they are super-portable, lightweight and you can use several of these in the field on a given day, then offload the footage to something larger, like a 1TB drive wherever you are based. i'm guessing that since RED is using g-tech products, they may be having some conversations as well.

http://www.g-technology.com/Products/G-RAID-mini.cfm
 
skipdivils said:
What about Blu-Ray discs? If you can get 40GB on each disk, this would work nicely for a redflash backup, storage option for on-the-road. Each night, take all the footage that you have aquired that day on your external hard drive, burn two blu-ray discs of everything. They are small, they will be cheap, and they are easy to ship anywhere. At 100GB per hour of footage, each disc could get about 24 minutes on it. 200 Blu-ray discs could give you your 40 hours of footage, with a backup. 100 X 40GB = 4TB. Backup copy of another 100 discs.

What do you think?
Click to expand...

I thought about blue-ray the whole thread. And Panasonic will soon release (or has already released) 100 GB blue-ray discs. So it will be only about 40 discs.

http://www.hdnumerique.com/actualite/articles/20102006-un-blu-ray-disc-de-100go-chez-panasonic.html

antoine.
 
skipdivils said:
What about Blu-Ray discs? If you can get 40GB on each disk, this would work nicely for a redflash backup, storage option for on-the-road.
Click to expand...

BluRay is still somewhat of an unknown... We don't know how reliable BDRE discs will be for long-term storage or how resiliant they are to scratching under even light/casual use or transit. OTOH, I'll probably be using BluRay myself for smaller backups and whatnot just because I'll be owning a BD writer... I think many of us here will within the next few months so we can start delivering BluRay content anyway.

For a robust, mobile solution I would still consider FLASH cards and tape (probably LTO) to be the best choice. Same for long-term archiving... If you want something you can archive to and place on a shelf, then DLT or data tape is the way to go. LTO has the best price/performance/capacity ratio right now, but some of the most expensive drive units. AIT would be a good choice too, but does have that much slower record time. The cheapest reliable tape solution I've seen and one that I've recommended to others for the HVX200 has been VXA2. It's a solid performer with tapes as cheap as $22 in bulk (160GB tapes). Even with 1TB hard drives trickling into the channel at $395, the VXA2 tape solution becomes cheaper per GB than hard drive at about the 9TB mark.
 
AppliedVisual said:
The cheapest reliable tape solution I've seen and one that I've recommended to others for the HVX200 has been VXA2. It's a solid performer with tapes as cheap as $22 in bulk (160GB tapes). Even with 1TB hard drives trickling into the channel at $395, the VXA2 tape solution becomes cheaper per GB than hard drive at about the 9TB mark.
Click to expand...

That sounds pretty attractive, but I can't seem to find VXA2 tapes near that cheap. Where are you buying?
 
I'll have to pull my invoice, but I bought a 200 VXA2 tapes about last April/May for less than $4000 shipped. I know that they were $50 each when bought individually from most places last year at this time, I don't know what they are now. I want to say I ordered through TapeResources, but it might have been a local supplier as well. I'll see what I can find. I bought the VXA2 tape drive unit from Provantage. The external Firewire VXA2 drive was $1K at the time and that included 1 tape and some junk backup software. There's also an internal ATAPI version for about $725. I'm just about out of tapes now and that's after using them to selectively backup only HVX200 footage and some animation work. I'm not so sure VXA2 would be that economical for RED and I don't plan to buy anymore VXA2 tapes... In fact, I'm hoping to migrate my VXA2 archives to something more dense within the next year or so. I'm currently looking at AIT and LTO options. The tapes are cheaper per GB for those two formats vs. VXA2. I was attracted to VXA2 because the drive was a cheap investment (compared to other tape solutions) so I didn't feel like I was jumping in head first. 160GB was a good size since I was mostly backing up P2 card images and individual project data. For backing up something like RED Drives, I think I would want a tape format that's 320GB natively or better so I can put a full RED Drive on a tape if I needed to.

I have a SAN here built of RAID 5 storage and that's where most everything resides and I have "live" backups of my data on the SAN. I just offload archival data to the tapes, for long-term storage... They sit in my fire-proof vault right next to the boxes of DV tape, CD-R and DVD-R media that I need to start picking through and thinning out. :)

Anyway, I'll see what I can dig up for VXA tape pricing... Depending on how my purchase of RED and new workstations and everything else I need starts to shape up, I may just have to live with VXA tape a bit longer. I have no problems with that other than the 160GB capacity and the transfer rates aren't all that fast compared to some of the LTO options. Some LTO drives offer upwards of 75MB/s!!! ...Uh, expensive though.
 
Thank you all for your suggestions.

The 100GB Blu-ray disks seems like an interesting possibility, depending on the write time. Obviously, their limited storage capacity means somebody has to keep watch as all the transfers go through, so disks can be swapped when needed. The thing I like about tape option is being able to set the copy off and then be able to go off and do other things for a few hours (like sleep!) an entire 320GB RED-Drive is backed up on its own.
 
AIT-5 SCSI cabling ideas?

AIT-5 SCSI cabling ideas?

Thanks Stuart,

The SONY AIT - 5 external drive is SWEET. A great suggestion for field back up this year for my remote shoots and peace of mind. The external drive is small, light and under $3k.

Can someone explain the cabling and adaptor issues in the field with a mac laptop, red drive on the left and AIT-5 on the right:

1) SCSI firewire adaptors like this will work on the AIT drive side?

http://www.macgurus.com/productpages/scsi/FR1SX.php

2) Will adaptors slow the transfer speed?

3) Do we know the tentative connections off the red drives?

TKS
 
sharkguy, which mac laptop are we talking about?

If it's a MacbookPro I would recommend, if you're going for a SCSI unit like that Sony AIT, to get an ExpressCard SCSI adapter. If it's an older Powerbook, get a PCMCIA SCSI adapter. If you're using just a Macbook (dare I ask why?), then yeah, the firewire to SCSI adapters do work OK, but I know they're not 100% reliable at all times, plus they clog up your firewire interface that you'll want for your RED Drive - presumably. Although, you may be able to connect the tape drive via Firewire and the RED Drive via USB2.

I think we'll know more as RED gets closer... I'd also see if someone makes an AIT or LTO drive with a firewire interface. I'm sure someone does. I saw an LTO3 drive somewhere with firewire - it was about $5K and I can't remember the specifics.
 
Brainstorm,

After all these great suggestions I'm starting to realize the biggest problem is time rather than storage options.

For someone shooting a documentary in remote locations you're going to have to devote a lot of time at the end of your day to making and checking backups, which you just don't want to do.

Already with the HVX we've found that backing up adds a good hour at day's end. It's a lot less than capture time would be, but you have to do it right then and there making it a production issue, rather than a post production issue.

It seems to me that a new crew position needs to be created, somebody specifically responsible for carefully backing everything up. I'd want two copies of everything, (especially if it's going to blu ray) so that person is going to have to work late.

This could work for a regular shoot, but it doesn't help the small doc crew who have to squeeze in a minivan and don't have the manpower to make somebody do what essentially is a night shift.

I think if you're shooting 4K you wouldn't have any choice but to hire an extra person to take care of this.

It's a quandry for sure.
 
Hi Samscad,

Time is the biggest issue for the crew on the road. Weight & volume of equipment are the BIG issues when your ass is being whipped by a hardline production manager who stresses (for valid reason) about excess baggage costs and won't allow you to hire two mini-vans instead of one!

:-)
 
jbeale said:
The Sony AIT-5 drive use68s an Ultra 160 SCSI connector with 68 pins. Is that compatible with a 50-pin SCSI-firewire adaptor?
Click to expand...

68pin UW SCSI[3] (even UW320) can sometimes be connected to a 50pin SCSI[II] connector. ...Provided the SCSI interface on the device itself allows it and provides proper termination for the high-byte portion of the interface. Most current external SCSI devices have built-in termination so you don't need a 68pin terminator for the out-stream port. But you may need a terminator with a low byte / 50-pin SCSI pass-through. Or you may need a cable that provides the proper termination... If anyone is interested, I have a couple 1M SCSI cables that are HD-50 SCSI-II on one end with active termination for the high portion of an UW SCSI connection... They have a VHDCI micro 68pin connector on the other end. I was using them to connect from an external 68pin UWSCSI-3 interface on a server to an external SCSI-II 50pin enclosure with a ZIP drive and CD-RW. Parted out and sold the external enclosures and drives, but nobody wanted the cables... Such a cable might be useful here.

SCSI can be a real PITA sometimes, but if it's all properly terminated and connected with the right cables and you don't mix LVD with non LVD (Low Voltage Differential) on the same channel, and use active termination when you should... Then it works great! ;)

Most current UW SCSI adapters allow for connecting 50-pin legacy devices, but it's usually problematic going the other way, trying to connect 68-pin devices to a 50-pin host adapter. I could swear someone out there has a UWSCSI3 68pin host adapter that fits an ExpressCard interface. But trying my luck on Google proved futile. Everyone in the world is making eSATA adapters, but SCSI cards are few and far between and I'm finding that Adaptec, Buslink, Mylex, etc.. and most of the big names have discontinued their PCMCIA SCSI cards and all their offerings for ExpressCard slots are eSATA only. Hmmm... Maybe we need to wait it out a few more months and see if some of those tape drives start migrating to eSATA, then it will be a simple solution.

FWIW, those USB2 to USCSI adapters (I can find the Adaptec one for $75), are getting mixed reviews. Basically, it's a cheap way to keep using your old junk SCSI peripherals, but it doesn't work with a lot of non-storage devices like scanners. Not that it's an issue here, but I don't know how well such an adapter would work going to a modern tape system... Assuming you could get the termination and communication to work between the UWSCSI/UW320 interface and the older 50pin USCSI/SCSI-II interface to begin with.

OK, I'm rambling...
 
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