How to deal with 3 weeks of shootage + laptop + harddrives + backup?

[AndreasOberg]

Me and my partner are going to film in the jungle for 2-3 weeks in Costa Rica. Any advice on how to store the amount of data would be much appreciated.

What storage (harddrives) do you guys bring for longer trips?
We have a MacBook Pro Retina (no rocket) with 756GB and 1x512GB SSD for the camera

A few limitations are:
- weight. Most of the things needs to be carried at all times since the hotels are very simple. We are also only 2 people
- power, do not always have access to power, but most of the time
- Not sure how much we shoot but up to 10TB + backup maybe
- speed of harddrives. Would be nice to edit on the macbook in the evenings, not sure if the external harddrives are fast enough for 5k even in low

Also what compression would you normally use. This is mainly for TV or commercials BUT I hate sacrificing quality if not needed. I was thinking of using 1:5 for the nice shots and 1:8 for interviews.
Any help would be much appreciated!

Best
/Andreas

 

[Andy White]

I'd look at taking another backup SSD with you for the camera... (X1 512 or maybe X2 256). If your SSD goes down, it would be wise to have a a backup

 

[Matthew Love]

not sure how much you're thinking about shooting but the new rugged lacie drives with usb 3.0 might work for you.

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10553

 

[David Kruta]

Earlier this year, I served as DIT on a feature film which was shot in Sri Lanka. We were out there for 2 months, and I learned a lot. Although your production sounds significantly smaller, and you won't be doing things like Rocket-transcodes and such, there are a few things that I would recommend.

First off, Andy makes a great point. I would replace that 512gb SSD with 4 128gb SSDs - this gives you numerous backups should one or more fail. It also gives you flexibility - what if you have that 512gb dumping to a slow drive for 10 hours and you need to go shoot something?

Always carry a battery backup from which you run all of your gear. Not only will this protect you from surges on an unpredictable power grid, it will also give you time to shut things down if power cuts out.

It also sounds like you're going lightweight, which is fantastic. Bus powered drives are really nice, as that gives you another level of power redundancy. However, you will want to make 2 copies each time you dump a card - but the MBP Retina only has 2 USB3 ports, leaving you with some questions about how to attach 2 drives and a reader. You could do 2 USB3 drives and use a Sonnet Echo via Thunderbolt with an eSata card to attach the reader: http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpresscard34thunderbolt.html
You could also look into Thunderbolt drives - a bit more pricey and not great if you have to hand anything off to post, but if you're doing everything yourself, they could actually be really great for you since they are fast enough to edit from (which I assume you would be doing in something like Premiere)

For compression settings, you can easily get away with 10:1 or 12:1 (equivalent to RC42 on the Red One). I would use less compression on items such as water, foliage or dark scenes, but if your shots are properly exposed then a higher compression won't hurt you later.

At 5:1 on narrative features, I typically budget for an average of 400gb/day. Long interviews eat up data a lot quicker, however, travel reduces it - so you might be in that range, but in my extimation, and using 10:1, you could easily fall into the sub-300gb category.

Please feel free to email me at dkruta (at) gmail.com if you have further questions. Good luck!

 

[Jean Bernard]

I have shot in the jungles of Costa Rica and you need to have a local production services fixer on your speed dial in case something goes down or if you need something while on the ground. There are a few epics in San Jose and DP Christian Herrera has a set there which includes extra SSD's & Batteries.
Depending on your shooting ratio... get enough SSD's like X4 256 if you can. and enough bricks to last you a day.

Consider maybe adding a Pix 240 if you plan on doing editing in the evening, extra weight but without a rocket you gona be staring at the retina most of the time.

I think 1:8 is perfectly fine especially if its gona be for TV. and some people think 12:1 is good enough for documentary work!
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?78800-Compression-question&highlight=compression+ratio

Happy shooting and Pura Vida

 

[AndreasOberg]

Thanks a lot for the tips guys!
Great tip about having a service fixer on speed dial. I will look with Herrera or others just to be sure.

< However, you will want to make 2 copies each time you dump a card - but the MBP Retina only has 2 USB3 ports
Yes this is an annoying problem, why couldn't they have 3 usb3 on the laptop or 4. One thing I could do is copy to the internal ssd drive and then copy out to the external drives. I also heard that the 512gb card may need more power so it actually needs 2 usb. Has anyone tried this? One reason I got the 512 was because it was faster than the others.

One thing I'm a bit concerned about regarding bus powered 2.5" drives is that they are slower, usually about 80MB/sec while the external can be around 160MB/sec. How fast harddrive do I actually need if I'm going to do basic editing in lower resolution mode? I haven't recieved my Epic yet so haven't had time to test yet all the speed. And yes we will be doing all edits and grading ourselves. We plan on using Premiere or Final Cut for basic editing on site. In the future I will probably add a Rocket but right now, I can't quite afford it. As I understand I should be able to edit in Premiere/Final Cut pretty good even without it.

I plan on bringing 4 Red Volts and probably 2 PagLink batteries, should be able to power the camera for up to 6 hours (which should be more than I need)

After looking a bit it feels like maybe 2x4tb external 7200 harddrives or 4x4 would be a good way to go. Would need power though so would only work in the hotel.

Once again thanks for the help. Any more ideas are much welcome!
/Andreas

 

[Sam Edwards]

Here's my favorite device for portable backup.
Amazon.com: Seagate Backup Plus Portable Thunderbolt Adapter (STAE128): Computers & Accessories
You can plug in any kind of bare 2.5" sata drive you want and backup very quickly. It's bus powered.
Nicely these come with USB adapters so you can send the drives to people who don't have thunderbolt.
Amazon.com: Seagate Backup Plus 1 TB USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive STBU1000100 (Black): Computers & Accessories
I usually buy raw SSD's and plug them in, two for each RED mag that I'm backing up.
Good luck.

 

[joe hedge]

One thing I'm a bit concerned about regarding bus powered 2.5" drives is that they are slower, usually about 80MB/sec while the external can be around 160MB/sec.
/Andreas

Bus-powered drives drain the batteries of the MBP that much faster, in addition to being slower - I was never really sure what the point of those drives are.

A solution to the USB3 problem might be Sonnet Thunderbolt adapters with Express34 2-port eSata cards

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpresscard34thunderbolt.html

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/temposataproexpress34.html

Using this combo on my 17" MBP actually downloads the cards to 2 G-Raids faster than the Atto H680/fanout cable set-up on my tower

 

[Robert Andriessen]

if you can get a usb3 hub + a little plug to convert power from a d-tap to the hub pin, you should be able to hook up at least 5 usb3 devices

 

[Björn Benckert]

I would rent a whole stack of SSD's so you can shoot without moving much data. And kind of have them for backup. Then just make a nice pellicase with multiple rugged Lacie FW 1-1,5 TB drives. If you shoot 10tb that would need you need a pelli holding about 15 of these drives. I like those because they run without extternal power and since they are small you split the risks.

Renting multiple SSD's is the easiest and smallest way to go.

 

[AndreasOberg]

- I'm still investigating. But I think I will get 4x4TB drives. Remember I will still be in a hotel in the night between going out in the forest. This will give me 8TB with a backup.
It's a bit of a problem that the batteries actually weight 1kg each so 4kg in total. Ouch.

- I will probably bring the Retina Laptop with me since it can hold a whole 512GB card.
For backup I could bring a smaller 2TB SSD with me if I need to offload my 512GB card.
I think I will contact some Epic users in Costa Rica that I can ask for help in case my card goes bust. Renting ssd drives for 3.5 weeks will cost more than buying new I'm afraid.

All other ideas are welcome.
/Andreas

 

[AndreasOberg]

Another question. How fast harddrives do you actually need to work on a Laptop?
Right now I don't have a Rocket, but at a time I will probably have an external Rocket.

To me the data speeds doesn't seem that insane of Red data. For example 1:5 has 87MB/sec which most 7200 can handle. The seagate barracuda 3.5" has an average of 160MB/sec.

Of course when you edit you would normally have 2 movies at once which will double the rate. With HDRx it will be even tougher.
I dont have my Epic yet so just trying to plan ahead with storage.
/Andreas

 

[Scott Brown]

Consider the G-Raid Mini - we used one recently on a trip to Dubai and India and it worked really well. It has 2 x 750GB 2.5" drives inside and we had it set to raid 1 so when we copied our footage over it backed up to each drive simultaneously. This is perfect for daytime backups but I would also take 4 TB hard drives and use something like a voyager unit to do overnight backups.

Best wishes

Scott

 

[joe hedge]

Consider the G-Raid Mini - we used one recently on a trip to Dubai and India and it worked really well. It has 2 x 750GB 2.5" drives inside and we had it set to raid 1 so when we copied our footage over it backed up to each drive simultaneously. This is perfect for daytime backups but I would also take 4 TB hard drives and use something like a voyager unit to do overnight backups.

Best wishes

Scott

The whole idea of backing up, though, is having the media on 2 different drives in 2 different locations. Had that Mini been dropped or lost, having 2 copies on it wouldn't have mattered.

And again, I don't understand the point of recommending bus-powered drives. They drain the MBP batteries - then what? Plus they're slower, so they need to be plugged into the MBP longer...it makes no sense.

 

[AndreasOberg]

Joe, interesting point about backup to have them in 2 places. How do you normally store the backups?
I was just looking at G Tech 8TB ( so 2x4tb) in each case.
And have 2 of them so in total 16TB of storage.

http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-raid.cfm


Some benefits I see are:
+ You can do Raid 1 which is convenient because it instantly does backup.
+ It uses only ONE usb cable or thunderbolt. Great since Apple has only 2 usb3. Bit of a paint to transfer from the mini usb 3 Red station since it seems to require 2 usb to power it.
+ Later I may not need as much storage because I wont be in the jungle, however I would need speed more. Still don't understand how fast drives I need to actually edit so red raw. Then I can switch to Raid 0 and use the other raid as backup.
+ the case looked pretty good at cooling and protecting.
+ It also looks impressive which seems to matter to some clients

Disadvantages
- 300 dollars more than 2x4tb harddrives
- heavy. 3.5kg when 2x external is 2kg
- Raid is always messy. Raid 0 is very risky. Not sure I even trust Raid 1
- You cannot have the backup in another place. I guess splitting the harddrives between people would be even more safe.

Alternatives
- Buy internal harddrives and store them in some safe shell
- Have external case or similar to connect them to the computer.
- 4TB external harddrives
- 3TB cost half of the 4TB however they are so expensive
- 2.5" is not a very good alternative backup they are just too small. I need about 16TB or so after all. Ugh

Question. Does thunderbolt even exist for the pc? Would be nice to have thunderbolt for the MacBook Pro, but connecting to PC seems less than fun.

Any ideas are always welcome.
/Andreas

 

[D Fuller]

Andreas,

You should seriously consider what some of the posters here have said: use smaller drives. Drives fail. And a 4 TB drive will take a lot of your footage with it if it does. Additionally, larger drives draw more power, and that is likely to be important to you.

 

[Randall Brown]

Hey Andreas,

we do this type of shoot often for our work. Here is our workflow. Me and a buddy each take 7-10 seagate USB3 1TB drives and 1 GRAID Mini 1TB RAID 1 (2x1TB drives inside) each. This can all fit into a backpack pretty easy and we each have a red mini station and thunderbolt to firewire adapter (to connect red mini station to mabcook) and a MacBook retina. We name each of the Seagate drives after a friend, and have a mirrored set. So I have a drive named Andy and my buddy also has a drive named Andy. Each day we shoot and then we dump footage to 2 drives which are named the same, simultaneously using R3D Data Manager. This takes about 20-30 minutes per 128 gig drive. At the end of that transfer we now have 2 sets of our footage, kept seperately by myself and my buddy.

Since, we also have to work in the field with us splitting up editing for different pieces of projects. We then take our drive mirrors and will transcode from our Seagate into ProRes LT to the GRaid Mini. This creates our editing material. This typically runs overnight and we wake up with the footage from the day transcoded and ready to edit.

we explored and tried many different workflows, from bringing red rockets to the field, desktop arrays. Etc. and in the end this is what we have honed down to. This gives us 7 - 10TB of backed up storage in the field and fast editing capabilities. To catastrophically lose footage, both of us have the break or lose the same Seagate drive and our GRAID Mini's. And we can do all of our work with just one electric plug. Even though you will be in a hotel, don't bank on ample plugs and desk space. Small and contained is where you want to be.

When the job can allow we take even more drives to the field and send one back of the raw footage and when that's confirmed good and transferred to the SAN and backed up to tape, we reuse its twin in the field. This is a bit trickier because you need to bring an odd number of drives as you are constantly losing one by sending it back and you want to maintain multiples of two in the field.

Sounds like a fun shoot