REDDRIVE offload in the field - practical workflow?

[Michael Hastings]

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.

With my Ikegami Editcam Hard drive recording camcorder I was able to buy 21 of the Fieldpak hard drives government surplus for $80 (thank God for Uncle Sam who paid about 20K for them. They are still normally about $300 each and I replaced the 4 gig drives with 80 - 120 gig drives) so I have plenty of drives - but I can't afford that many REDDRIVES.

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.

 

[DSH]

These are very much the questions that I need to work through. I work in drama, and though I have the relative luxury of a camera truck, its often without mains power, though that can be sorted out with a large battery bank and inverters. Generators end up too noisy near set, and feeds can get dumped at the wrong time, particularly at wrap. I do need to find a way that I can reuse the drives knowing that I have at least a two or three way backup. It has to a field friendly system though.

 

[tj williams]

Soon assistants will remember the good old film days where they may have been the last one off the set, but at least they left the set!!!

Aqua...

2 drives for wildlife in some bumpy truck in Tonga???....no thanks... look to some hard card storage. Better a raid with some kind of redundent situation, so drive failure won't wipe out your shoot. Here I speak as a person who lost my Steadicam monitor in china and finished the shoot by making a sort of sight on top of the camera out of chopsticks. Not great headspace but they used the shots. now I own 3 Steadi. monitors!!!

 

[Nick Shaw]

I was discussing offloading workflows earlier today with my business partner in my RED venture. One thing we wondered about was if you were to take enough RED-DRIVEs that you would not need to re-use them during the course of a shoot, whether it might be possible to daisy-chain two of them on the back of the camera, such that they were both recorded to simultaneously. That way you would have an immediate backup, with no user action needed, and no additional kit (laptop etc) to carry. Then you could send the 'clone' back to the edit suite, and keep the other for safety with you for the remainder of the shoot.

An alternative would be if RED-DRIVEs could 'self clone', by hooking two together with no need for a computer. This would require the ability to configure a RED-DRIVE in clone mode, and connect it to the other via eg Firewire. You would probably also need a power supply.

 

[Trevor Meier]

I've wondered for awhile whether we could use the RED-DRIVE in a RAID-1 stripe at a slightly lower data rate... no official response from the RED team though.

 

[Nick Shaw]

I think Stuart has said before that it will be possible to configure the RED-DRIVE as either RAID 0 or 1. But what I'm talking about is mirroring two completely separate RED-DRIVEs, so that one can be kept on the shoot, and one sent back to the edit suite. Then when the edit assistant has copied, verified and archived his drive, the other one can be re-used.

 

[MikeCurtis]

there will be a zillion solutions for the zillion possibilities. In this conversation, a couple of key points: if you can't afford enough Red Drives, then "some kind of card solution" is going to be waaaaaaay too expensive to implement effectively. If you're in the sticks, keep in mind that ALL external drives that connect to a laptop REQUIRE EXTERNAL POWER AND WON'T RUN OFF THE LAPTOP BATTERY. So Red Drives start making more sense after all. Rent a bunch, or buy then sell extras when you get back is another solution. Shooting 2K would greatly increase your recording capacity as well if you had no other solution, but then that changes your lens choices and depth of field and resolution as well.

-mike

EDIT - apparently I'm wrong about the bus power thing - maybe that was older generation of computers? My bad.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I've wondered for awhile whether we could use the RED-DRIVE in a RAID-1 stripe at a slightly lower data rate... no official response from the RED team though.

I know this has been mentioned.... But, what I'm wondering even more so is if we can mount two RED DRIVEs or RED RAM simultaneously in a RAID-1 or mirrored config. That way you're not sacrificing performance or capacity, but you're getting redundant copies of what you shoot right there. I'm also wondering if we can record out to the RED DRIVE and to the FLASH module simultaneously.

Edit:> Ooops, didn't see it at first, but Nick already made the same comment about dual RED DRIVEs.

 

[Nick Shaw]

ALL external drives that connect to a laptop REQUIRE EXTERNAL POWER AND WON'T RUN OFF THE LAPTOP BATTERY

Not strictly true. The LaCie Little Big Disk comes in a 320GB version, so a good match for a RED-DRIVE, and runs bus powered off Firewire 400/800. I've edited DV50 material using mine with a Powerbook, totally off batteries while traveling from one location to another in the back of a van!

 

[Scott Webster]

Nice find Nick. Ruling out a straight Red-Drive to clone drive connection, what will be the best portable set-up? (let's assume no access to mains power)

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Nice find Nick. Ruling out a straight Red-Drive to clone drive connection, what will be the best portable set-up? (let's assume no access to mains power)

There are quite a few 2.5" HDD enclosures that can run bus-powered via Firewire or USB2. Be sure your notebook does supply bus power for Firewire as many do not. There's some portable HDD units out there that can run off battery power too, but I haven't looked them up recently.

Either way, if you're working for extended periods away from power all I can say is that portable generators have become very compact and efficient over the last few years. Start here --> www.honda.com

 

[Scott Webster]

There are quite a few 2.5" HDD enclosures that can run bus-powered via Firewire or USB2. Be sure your notebook does supply bus power for Firewire as many do not. There's some portable HDD units out there that can run off battery power too, but I haven't looked them up recently.

Either way, if you're working for extended periods away from power all I can say is that portable generators have become very compact and efficient over the last few years. Start here --> www.honda.com

Yes we carry a 1k Honda.

Are there issues running 2 FW800 bus powered drives from a laptop? is this a common feature?

 

[MDP16]

Yes we carry a 1k Honda.

Are there issues running 2 FW800 bus powered drives from a laptop? is this a common feature?

I run 2 FW 800 bus powered drives from my MacBook Pro all the time. No issues here.

 

[Sean Michael Johnston]

I've found a nice solution for my own needs.

This is @ $200 plus $20 for each hot swap tray.
Hard drives are @ $100 for 400GB now. They'll be cheaper next month. And by the time I get my RED, even cheaper.

This unit is cool because you don't have to deal with a power brick - the power supply is built in - and, having a steel enclosure, it can handle a little abuse in the field.
Still needs a laptop, though.

http://www.macgurus.com/productpages/firewire/Burly1FirewireHS.php

 

[Scott Webster]

Thanks Sean. Those may even be rental proof!

 

[Nick Shaw]

You need to be a bit careful running multiple bus powered devices on the same bus. The instruction manuals for most such devices say "Don't do it". I suspect the LaCie LBD is pushing the limit for power that can be drawn from a single bus. I certainly wouldn't want to put a RED-DRIVE on the same bus as one.

I don't know if the FireWire 400 and 800 ports on a MacBook Pro share a power bus. If they don't, it might be worth taking the speed hit in order to put one on each bus.

We don't of course have definite confirmation that RED-DRIVEs can be bus powered.

 

[planet e]

i posted this before but it bears repeating....

G-Tech also has amazing high performance hard drives that run off laptop batteries.

http://www.g-technology.com/Products/G-DRIVE-mini.cfm

you'd probably need several, but they are highly portable and very stable. and they will undoubtedly be increasing in size and performance in the near future.

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

i posted this before but it bears repeating....

G-Tech also has amazing high performance hard drives that run off laptop batteries.

http://www.g-technology.com/Products/G-DRIVE-mini.cfm

you'd probably need several, but they are highly portable and very stable. and they will undoubtedly be increasing in size and performance in the near future.

we use them all day long - great product!

 

[Scott Webster]

You need to be a bit careful running multiple bus powered devices on the same bus. The instruction manuals for most such devices say "Don't do it". I suspect the LaCie LBD is pushing the limit for power that can be drawn from a single bus. I certainly wouldn't want to put a RED-DRIVE on the same bus as one.

I don't know if the FireWire 400 and 800 ports on a MacBook Pro share a power bus. If they don't, it might be worth taking the speed hit in order to put one on each bus.

We don't of course have definite confirmation that RED-DRIVEs can be bus powered.

That was my understanding when researching HVX laptop field options. I was interested to see if anything had changed in recent laptop design to provide a dual FW800 bus option.

If the RED-DRIVE isn't bus powered then it's back to battery, mains or gennie options.

 

[Chris Armstrong]

Just stumbled across this: "ImageMASSter Solo-3 IT" It's a bit pricey, but would probably be perfect for duplicating data off the 1/8" flash drive an onto 2 backup HDD without a computer. It also does error checks so you know the data was copied correctly.

Supports SATA, SCSI, PATA, and Flash. Portable in size, but from what I can tell still uses a cord to power it.