So, what's YOUR on-set workflow?

[Chris Parker]

As the ship date of Red comes closer and closer, does anyone have a system ready to go for workflow? Does anyone have a solid plan?

It really will be the workflow that ultimately will be the make or break of this thing in a big budget environment.

The question is, what do you do with the hard drives/flash drives when they are full on set? How does this footage get copied, verified, backed up and to the editor (who could very well be in another city/country)?

I know there are lots of threads that touch on this subject, but I am looking for very specific on-set workflow solutions. Start with the camera assistant walking around set with a full drive and looking for the RED tech to pass him an empty drive. Where do you go from there?

(Note: I am thinking of a dump to a RAID that automatically creates two copies. Then, once this transfer is complete, the RED drive/flash gets cleared to give back to camera dept. Then, the files on the drive are backed up to LTO-3 tapes. Only question in all this, can this process be done quick enough to keep up with a shoot that now wants to roll lots and lots of footage each day because they can.)

 

[Evan Owen]

My budget is somewhat restricting, so I'll probably go with archiving on hard drives.

When the RED-Drive comes from the camera, it would be a straightforward process to clone to two off-the-shelf SATA drives, one of which can then be used as the archived master. The RED-Drive can be sent back to the camera and any footage that will be edited immediately can be taken off the second clone on-set. The second clone will then be the main drive to work from during the edit later on. The archived master will be taken off the shelf only if absolutely necessary.

Good cloning software checks the data for integrity, so that shouldn't be an issue, and hard drives on the shelf (if stored properly), have a very, very long life. Using hard drives also has the added benefit of giving instant access to any of the footage on the drive. No waiting for tape...

I like the idea of getting the footage on a RAID right away though, and that would be the next addition to my workflow once I can afford a fast, reliable system.

 

[Chris Parker]

So how long would it take to offload a Red Drive (300GB say) to your mirrored RAID?

Also, how long would it take to offload a RedFlash (60GB) to a mirrored RAID?

 

[Steve Freebairn]

As the ship date of Red comes closer and closer, does anyone have a system ready to go for workflow? Does anyone have a solid plan?

It really will be the workflow that ultimately will be the make or break of this thing in a big budget environment.

The question is, what do you do with the hard drives/flash drives when they are full on set? How does this footage get copied, verified, backed up and to the editor (who could very well be in another city/country)?

I know there are lots of threads that touch on this subject, but I am looking for very specific on-set workflow solutions. Start with the camera assistant walking around set with a full drive and looking for the RED tech to pass him an empty drive. Where do you go from there?

(Note: I am thinking of a dump to a RAID that automatically creates two copies. Then, once this transfer is complete, the RED drive/flash gets cleared to give back to camera dept. Then, the files on the drive are backed up to LTO-3 tapes. Only question in all this, can this process be done quick enough to keep up with a shoot that now wants to roll lots and lots of footage each day because they can.)

PM me and I'll show you our workflow. Our plan is very similar to yours. We'll not have any time after the initial recording that the data only exists in one place.

Transferring time will not be an issue, unless you know of a shoot that can't have a mag/tape change after several hours. Although I'm going to encourage CF with 16gb or 8gb (at first) card sizes. You can transfer data faster than you can record it with the camera so it won't be a big deal. The other thing is we'll have several red drives and a bunch of CF cards.

 

[Chris Parker]

PM me and I'll show you our workflow.

I emailed you so I look forward to hearing from you, and sharing ideas to get the perfect workflow setup dialled in.

 

[Paul Hazlett]

as the price of CF cards drops and capacity increases I am more tempted
to have a whole boat load of them with me, possibly even charging the client
for them and letting them take them if they like.