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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 :)

REDDRIVE offload in the field - practical workflow?

Ah, what a dilemma,
Hard drives are really coming down in price. 320 GB 3.5" SATA drives cost barely more than LTO-3 tapes (400 GB). Drives are faster, although tapes are pretty fast now, but access to, and use of the content is immediat from a drive. The real question now is about durability. Are tapes sturdier than drives ?

To convince producers to go with Red, I need to be able to offer them a reliable storage solution for their footage. I've been looking into LTO-3 and SDLT, but tapes are quite expensive, as are drives. SDLT drives have the advantage of being available in Gigabit connections, which I haven't seen with LTO-3 (Ultra 160 SCSI only). Now I'm kinda leaning towards copying Red Drives on the set to a RAID 1 (mirror), then I keep a disc and the production keeps one.

But what about long term archival ?

Cheers,
Damien
 
ElysianChris said:
Yeah I thought of that same problem. I emailed both companies in regards to that and got replies from both. They each have a product that can "append data". (I.e. if you have 2 32GB flash drives that you want to copy to 1 500GB HDD).

The product that I like the best is the "ImageMASSter Solo-3 Forensic" - It can append data to the destination drive from multiple sources, it supports SATA/SCSI/ATA, and has flash drive adapters. It can duplicate to 2 drives at once (one for editor, other for backup), with fancy error checking. It also has Firewire 800 & USB2, so it might be a viable option for getting data off the 2.5" Red Drives while in the field. What I don't like about it is the $2500 price tag.
Click to expand...
I just noticed this post. That product looks like a great idea for field use, except like you said, for the price. I'm hoping to find something similar at NAB. If someone was to create a high speed - lower cost - ruggedized - battery powered version of this with a film/video specifc touchscreen interface then they could rake in a lot of business. All the camera manufacturers will be digital and tapeless very soon.
 
Hard choice

Hard choice

Archive: HDD for now, 2 copies stored at different locations, move it all to another storage media in a few years. Wash rinse and repeat. The value proposition for tape archive is just not compelling.

Field: When portability and available mains power are issues I would just rent a bunch of RedDrives and babysit them until you can archive.

Now who wants to bond my project using the protocol I propose? Hmmm.

RED built the camera system in a little over a year, anybody wanna bet changing the "culture" of our business will be as quick? Sorry, being in Vegas makes me want to wager on everything.
 
The $64K ?

The $64K ?

AquaVideoRed206 said:
We shoot underwater and nature where we are in the "field" i.e. Fiji, or Bonaire, or for topside wildlife say Kenya, where we are limited in what we can get locally and limited in what we can bring with us for a week to 2 weeks shooting. We want to be brave and shoot 4k REDCODE RAW.

Assume I have two REDDRIVES and our Mac Laptop. Practically speaking what's our work flow? I assume I will bring a suitcase of small 2 drive raids with 320 or 500 gig drives in them, or a Raid with removable drives. When we offload from the REDDRIVE do we have to go through the computer? Do we have the ability to choose the clips to offload or do we just have to dump the whole drive. Can we see the clips in the viewfinder or LCD of the RED and we erase clips easily?

I would like to do raid 1 where we automatically have a backup but maybe is better to just dump it off twice to 2 separate drives - maybe just a bunch of off the shelf 320 or greater Firewire/USB external drives which are getting pretty cheap these days.
Click to expand...

I'd say that by the time we 4 digit+ reservation holders get our cameras the reduser community, like Gibby and Mike, will have tested existing technologies to the max and have some great solutions for field back up.

My concern is the CLIENT and the transition to HDD deliverables from the tape mindset. It reminds me of the switch from 16mm to DV days...
 
sharkguy said:

My concern is the CLIENT and the transition to HDD deliverables from the tape
mindset. It reminds me of the switch from 16mm to DV days...
Click to expand...

for the q3/q4 2007 bookings so far, many customers here who already plan their workflow with red here, want to have HDCAM & HDCAM SR tapes as dubs/archive.

the same method begun with 2K some years ago, btw.

also, it perfectly makes sense to have a synced hdcam running in the studio, connected to the soundguy and to the hd-sdi out of the red.

so, you can´t send the tapes straight to editroom. syncing redcine with this workflow however might be tricky in the early days.

also, don´t underestimate the broadcasters. for a longer time, they will certainly demand D5HD, HDCAM (SR) or in the lower ranges DVCPRO HD (tape&p2) and XDCAM HD, so many folks will have to make a tape/classic hd/braodcast medium anyhow.

finally, i know there are many sonybasher here, but i have to say that with the collection of sony vtrs here - the sony vtrs are -really- built to last and they will certainly not disappear overnight, as they don´t have any real competition yet.

that, once more, brings me to "my" productrequest.

red could (easily with the already done r&d) built a VTR, to be precise, a VDR or VFlashR. simple device to add HD-SDI i/o and a VTR emulation to reddrive or flash etc media.

this would, of course, not deliver redcode or raw quality, but it would bring the speed & integration in given workflows which certainly many broadcaster will see as #1 reason to not buy red.


yorick von krogh
 
Fcp 6

Fcp 6

Apple's announcement today provides some great options. Running FCP 6 in July on a macbook pro using Apple Prores codec. You plug in RED drive on one side and output prores on the other.

Client can preview and even edit clips right there with out the hazards of playing the master tape on the field camera - WOW!

Digital footage with no "batch capture" is gonna' have to be appealing to clients, NO?

How will you apply this newsflash to your workflow?
 
RED needs to come up with a its own robust "P2store" like device that can serve as both a location off loader and archive. Perhaps it will have disk trays so you can hot swap your data and duplicate etc.

I have been using a p2 store for a days shoot and then offload to a firmtek dual HD enclosure via exress/34 slot on my mac book pro and so far so good. The enclosure requires power but it super small and super fast.

http://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/sata2ensm2e.html

You can raid this set up for mini 1-T raid editing on the go or I suppose you could mirror 2x 500gb drives for archving on the go.

So what do you think "REDstore" ??? Wishful thinking,

good luck everyone.
 
Networked LTO-3

Networked LTO-3

"SDLT drives have the advantage of being available in Gigabit connections, which I haven't seen with LTO-3 (Ultra 160 SCSI only)"

Was true, but Quantum announced that their 600A series will be available with LTO-3 drives in July.
The 600A series are Gigabit Ethernet network drives that operate from the desktop under OSX and Win XP.
 
They were mentioning in the $7000 range for the 600A LTO-3 drive at the FCP supermeet... that makes it really out of the price ballpark in terms of the rest of the workflow.
 
I really enjoy reading all this a Data Management is not in my skill set!

I'm not an editor or producer. I'm primarily a contract camera person.

I think I'm leaning toward Earthlings solution of mirrored drives. I'm looking at a small enclosure with two 750g drives.
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-2en2/
Click to expand...
so I could download 2 mags to it. Or use other sizes if we are shooting less footage. I'd be using a laptop in the field, with their connetion to the card slot for sata speed.
This depends of course on getting a sata adapter cable? Then give the producer a choice of borrowing one drive to get back to his system while I keep the other until he releases it. Or making a firewire dub overnight and sending him a cheap firewire drive while I keep both my drives. I don't have a long term storage problem as I only keep framestores and downconverted footage used in sending out reels.

It seems to me that currently producers are keeping their long term storage as digital masters on some form of tape. (for TV) and negatives (for film) Although eventually digital storage will give many advantages. I'm not sure why they will need more high tech storage than they currently use. It looks to me like producers can output the edit to HD or SD digital tapes that will have no worse life than his current programs.

Regarding saving the list (on hard drive?) and the original tape or film... If the master is lost degraded or destroyed they will have the expense of building over all the effects, transfers, edits and then re-mastering..... additional backup storage of master material and original which has value as stock footage etc. can always be done on multiple mirrored harddrives and just transferred every couple of years.

I'd like to hear from other shooters (only) who don't edit and find out what you plan to do?
 
Bachman said:
Excuse me for being a Dummy Editor, but why does shooting in 2k change my lens choices?

Tony
Click to expand...

2K means you can use a smaller sensor area - 1/4 of the area This means that you can use lenses with a smaller coverage, so you may use 16mm format lenses in PL if you wish. Obviously you can still use 35mm PL lenses, but 16mm ones are readliy available and usually cheaper. Check for any vignetting though.

see:

http://www.red.com/formatoptions.shtml

james
 
jamesedwelland said:
2K means you can use a smaller sensor area - 1/4 of the area This means that you can use lenses with a smaller coverage, so you may use 16mm format lenses in PL if you wish. Obviously you can still use 35mm PL lenses, but 16mm ones are readliy available and usually cheaper. Check for any vignetting though.

see:

http://www.red.com/formatoptions.shtml

james
Click to expand...

Thanks James, I knew all about the smaller sensor area, bla bla. Just that when he said it changes my lens choices it made me panic... shit do I need a set for 2k and another set for 4k!
 
offhollywood said:
TJ -
If you are using a MAC - make sure you use SOFTRAID for Raid 1 -
http://www.softraid.com/features.html
Click to expand...

Great link, for one reason only.

The lynchpin in my backup reasoning was being able to split RAID 1 sets - i.e. dump from RED DRIVE to a RAID 1 pair of standard drives and split them up, essentially halving my copying time. 'SOFTRAID' is the only package I've seen actually advertising that they support that.

offhollywood; do you use this in-house? If so, that's enough for me...
 
Actually, you can split Raid1 under os x 10.4. I've done it, but don't have any spare drives to test it again (I stay away from RAID 1 and 0 now).

I feel a rant coming on, too, Jim. But this is more on the software side. Back a few years, there was a simple little software solution called DeskTapePro, that would let you mount a tape drive on your Mac Desktop, and treat it like another drive. Drag and Drop. Catalog with your favorite cataloging software. Search through the contents with the same speed as any other drive. Fantastic. Nothing else I've seen comes close. Now, I hate tape.

You'd have to back up 27.5 TB of data before you break even with the more expensive start-up costs of tape. And with LTO's write-once, you might need a few extra when data doesn't copy perfectly, etc. Shooting a RedDrive (3 hours recorded) a day, making double backups on tape or drive, you would have to work 38 days straight before you simply broke even. Then consider that you are locked into that backup solution until a new tape drive comes along :) With drives, well, the prices just keep dropping. (Assume a tape drive is $5000, and a 400GB tape costs $50. Assume a dual HD enclosure is $120, and 750GB drives cost $230 (http://www.muotitek.com/estore/cont...text=SEAGATE+ST3750640AS&id=53558&srccode=PW).)

Maybe Red could design a moisture-free freezer for harddrives, to eliminate the effects of time for archiving.
"Red introduces the latest in archiving data -- FreezeDrive your 4K memories today!"
 
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