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Suggestions for Data Managment / Checksum Software

Jonathan Petts

Jonathan Petts

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Hello All!

I am posting today to see what suggestions many of you have for Checksum software for Windows based machines.
For my portable DIT Station on a Mac I have ShotPut Pro - but I thought I would check to see what many of you may suggest if there are any better alternatives out there at the moment?

DoubleData
RedGiant Offload
Shotput Pro
Velarium

Or maybe some that I have not seen yet!


Any suggestions would be amazing!

Jonny
 
Is there anything, for Mac, which is not specific for Media files, but more for general use, all files backup, with checksum ? Something like a Finder/Explorer stuff, without transcoding options, etc... ?
 
Kristin Stewart said:
Is there anything, for Mac, which is not specific for Media files, but more for general use, all files backup, with checksum ? Something like a Finder/Explorer stuff, without transcoding options, etc... ?
Click to expand...

Yeah. Shotput Pro. Doesn't care what files you throw at it. Transfer, checksum (can even chose the flavor of checksum in the preferences), party. No tools for viewing media, and it takes quite a while on formats that are a single file per frame, like Arri Raw. Imagine Products also make tools for the video industry, but Shotput really has nothing in it that is useful to only video people. For $99, it's the cheapest, reliable thing you're going to get.

You can also just run commands in terminal. That's the absolute cheapest you can go. But if something goes wrong, the error logging won't be as neat and if you're not really good at terminal commands, you're just shooting yourself in the foot if there's the slightest hiccup. And hiccups will happen.

As for Silverstack, I've been using it myself for about the past year. It's great; unlike Shotput, I can easily generate PDF reports from it, which is a HUGE time saver for me. But, I think it's OSX only? So not going to help on Windows. DaVinci Resolve, including the Lite version, has transfer and Checksum validation built in since version 11, but I actually have yet to test it. Mostly because I know Silverstack generates PDF reports, and DaVinci does not. Silverstack, on the other hand, has no options for syncing sound (which is SO DUMB) and has very limited options for transcoding (which is also SO DUMB) so I need to use something like DaVinci in tandem.

The next step up is Scratch, which I might step up to if the right project comes along. And then above that are all-in systems like LightIron's Outpost and Fotokem's nextLab.

I used to use DoubleData, but a while back it became unreliable (kept crashing) and when it worked, it was slower than ShotPut. I tried out RedGiant's (Bulletproof? Is that the name?) when it first came out, and demoed it again about a year later. It's nice that it has some image manipulation and LUT tools built in, and transcoding, but when I tried it, it only had CRC32 Checksums (and I've had producers ask specifically for MD5. From a technical standpoint, for any formats that are *not* individually frame based [like Arri Raw, or any other image sequence] CRC32 is perfectly adequate. But that doesn't matter, if the client asks for MD5. As I told RedGiant when the product was in Beta, and they acknowledged, but seemingly did nothing about.) And the transcoding options are also limited, in terms of format and watermarks.

There is also Adobe Prelude, which I'm going to be re-testing today, ironically. But I found it wonky and limiting the last time I tried it. I believe it doesn't have checksumming built in? It utilizes the same transcoding options that Adobe Media Encoding does, which, oddly enough, is a little constricting with watermarking. Just like Apple Compressor: I love Compressor (maybe Stockholm syndrome from the 3 years I used it constantly at my desk job), but watermarking through it is a pain in the ass.

This is all pretty rambly. Personally, I've found that Silverstack + DaVinci is the best option for under a grand. Before I stepped up to Silverstack, though, it was Shotput and DaVinci and writing a Text document as the day progressed with info about the media to be passed on to post. If Silverstack is OSX only, and you're looking for a Windows option, well, nothing else that I've tried compares to Silverstack and costs less than Scratch.
 
As a programmer in my past life now turned filmmaker, I had started work on my own data-off loading software. It works on MAC's and PCs. My beta version was bare bones. It worked and it was very fast, using MD5 for verification. I initially wrote for Red users, wanted it incorporate a proxy transcode option as well. And yes, it will copy/verify any data, not just red files.

If there is enough interest, I could revive this project, beef it up to allow proxy transcode, or maybe get/set data from Redlink to generate reports... What features would be beneficial for those interested?
 
There is also Yoyotta which you can build a workflow between ID and Transcode. There are some things I don't love about it but it's relatively affordable.
 
Nick Pasquariello said:
Yeah. Shotput Pro. Doesn't care what files you throw at it. Transfer, checksum (can even chose the flavor of checksum in the preferences), party. No tools for viewing media, and it takes quite a while on formats that are a single file per frame, like Arri Raw. Imagine Products also make tools for the video industry, but Shotput really has nothing in it that is useful to only video people. For $99, it's the cheapest, reliable thing you're going to get.

You can also just run commands in terminal. That's the absolute cheapest you can go. But if something goes wrong, the error logging won't be as neat and if you're not really good at terminal commands, you're just shooting yourself in the foot if there's the slightest hiccup. And hiccups will happen.

As for Silverstack, I've been using it myself for about the past year. It's great; unlike Shotput, I can easily generate PDF reports from it, which is a HUGE time saver for me. But, I think it's OSX only? So not going to help on Windows. DaVinci Resolve, including the Lite version, has transfer and Checksum validation built in since version 11, but I actually have yet to test it. Mostly because I know Silverstack generates PDF reports, and DaVinci does not. Silverstack, on the other hand, has no options for syncing sound (which is SO DUMB) and has very limited options for transcoding (which is also SO DUMB) so I need to use something like DaVinci in tandem.

The next step up is Scratch, which I might step up to if the right project comes along. And then above that are all-in systems like LightIron's Outpost and Fotokem's nextLab.

I used to use DoubleData, but a while back it became unreliable (kept crashing) and when it worked, it was slower than ShotPut. I tried out RedGiant's (Bulletproof? Is that the name?) when it first came out, and demoed it again about a year later. It's nice that it has some image manipulation and LUT tools built in, and transcoding, but when I tried it, it only had CRC32 Checksums (and I've had producers ask specifically for MD5. From a technical standpoint, for any formats that are *not* individually frame based [like Arri Raw, or any other image sequence] CRC32 is perfectly adequate. But that doesn't matter, if the client asks for MD5. As I told RedGiant when the product was in Beta, and they acknowledged, but seemingly did nothing about.) And the transcoding options are also limited, in terms of format and watermarks.

There is also Adobe Prelude, which I'm going to be re-testing today, ironically. But I found it wonky and limiting the last time I tried it. I believe it doesn't have checksumming built in? It utilizes the same transcoding options that Adobe Media Encoding does, which, oddly enough, is a little constricting with watermarking. Just like Apple Compressor: I love Compressor (maybe Stockholm syndrome from the 3 years I used it constantly at my desk job), but watermarking through it is a pain in the ass.

This is all pretty rambly. Personally, I've found that Silverstack + DaVinci is the best option for under a grand. Before I stepped up to Silverstack, though, it was Shotput and DaVinci and writing a Text document as the day progressed with info about the media to be passed on to post. If Silverstack is OSX only, and you're looking for a Windows option, well, nothing else that I've tried compares to Silverstack and costs less than Scratch.
Click to expand...

Hey one question, how do you Export your files from Silverstack to DaVinci?

DaVinci doesn't seem to read any XML file exported from Silverstack.
 
Piero Sgarbi said:
Hey one question, how do you Export your files from Silverstack to DaVinci?

DaVinci doesn't seem to read any XML file exported from Silverstack.
Click to expand...

I don't. At least, I've never tried. I just open up DaVinci and import the media directly. I then manage all metadata additions within DaVinci, and export an ALE or AAFs from there. That's where Scene/Shot/Take gets added.

If I'm not transcoding dailies, then I do the Scene/Shot/Take metadata in Silverstack and include the information just in the reports.

In other words, I put that info in one, or the other, but have never had to do both.
 
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