HD Video Workflow in a Tapeless, Digital Domain Larry Engel, F 2010

This is a brief description of how to approach location production using tapeless cameras. This applies to the Sony EX-1 and Panasonic HPX-170, Canon 5D and 7D, all HD cameras, but also may be applied to other cameras. Whatever you do with tapeless media, this is about as simple as I can state two things not to do: 1. DONT USE FCP TO BRING MEDIA FROM YOUR CAMERAS OR CARDS ONTO A HARD DRIVE AS A FIRST STEP. 2. DONT DRAG AND DROP THE MEDIA FOLDERS ONTO A HARD DRIVE, EVER. Okay, why these warnings? Background and Workflows: 3. Tapeless workflows are significantly different from those involving tape. With tape, the master tape is constant and unless theres an accident, it remains viable as a backup for several years. Normally in the tapeless world once a card (SxS, SDHC, Compact Flash [CF], or P2) is cloned or copied to another drive, it is erased or reformatted in the camera or on the computer for reuse. That means that your original is gone. With tape, after you digitize the media (in the field or back in post-production), you still have the original media on the tape. 4. Often the single most overlooked element is that of creating a backup of the media on location or at the studio. Often only one copy is made during production and a backup to it is done later. This is risky. It is important to make two copies of all media downloaded or cloned during production. DONT WAIT TO BACKUP! DO IT ON THE SPOT! 5. This means that you need double the space for storage, and either two drives or a RAID 1 Array. You should determine how many gigabytes or terabytes you will need during production before you can copy the field drives onto another set of drives (or if the field drives will become your editing drives, but more on this later). 6. Drives. There are some choices to make here. a. I have used two systems that are described next but now prefer the RAID 1 ARRAY with sleds (removable hard drives in a small housing). i. Using two mini-portable, bus-powered USB or Firewire drives. I usually am going out with 500 GB drives. They are still the most reliable ones available but 650 and 1 TB are out there now too. I have been a big fan of G-tech drives over La Cie. La Cie produces a rugged drive that many use. It is a tripleinterface drive (USB, Firewire 800 and Firewire 400). G-tech also has the triple interface, although I believe both need external power supplies to drive the USB port. Whatever you do, avoid dragging and dropping media from the camera cards to the hard drives. I am now using a less expensive drive for this kind of field use. There are several heavy-duty hard drives that are USB only. There is no real reason to spend the money on Firewire, unless you wish to have higher data-copy speeds, in which case you should consider a Firewire 800/400 triple interface hard drive that runs at 7200rpm rather than 5400rpm. (You should use this suggestion for editing in particular.) This is true if you are only using these field drives for media acquisition.
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FCP does require Firewire connectivity. (Remember too that you will be using a lot of space on the hard drive when you ingest the raw media into FCP and you will then have both your original and your Capture Scratch on the same drive, which is not a good thing to do.) I use A-Data drives (with the software program noted below, Shotput Pro), 500 GB for under $100. They are shock resistant and waterproof when not plugged in. They also have a very small footprint. Some other good, small, reliable drives that I have used include the G-tech series of bus-powered drives, La Cie Rugged (although I am not a big fan), and On-the-Go Pro drives. 500 GB drives are tried and true while 1 TB drives are coming up in reliability. The costs are constantly coming down. Before buying you should analyze your memory needs in two domains: One is field acquisition and backing up of media; two is post-production. In post-production there are also different sets of requirements, sorry. The first is for backing up the field media (original media files) and the second is the consideration for the editing hard drive(s) that will hold the QuickTime Capture Scratch files with which you edit in FCP. But we will leave post-production for the moment and get back to field work. b. Using Disk Utility (Apple), you create a .dmg (under New Image in the bar menu of Disk Utility). This creates a verified copy of the original card and is considered a mountable disk rather than a folder. This is extremely important when working with Canon media, otherwise you will lose free-run time code when ingesting into FCP and all clips will have 00:00:00:00 TC. (For Canon media, please download a free plug-in for FCP that can be found at Apples website.) Make sure to change the name of the .dmg every time so that you do not inadvertently replace a previously created .dmg. The only problem is that when the .dmg is mounted the original file name, not the saved name comes up, which means that you have a lot of EOS Media drives mounted. You then repeat the process on your other drive. To save time, but at some risk, you can drag and drop the .dmg to the second drive. c. Using the camera manufacturers software. Both Sony and Panasonic provide free drivers and media management software from their websites. Make sure that you download and install drivers (for FCP and your OS) as well as the management software. Sonys is called XDCam EX Clip Browser, while Panasonics is P2CMS. Here you open the appropriate camera card and create a destination on the first hard drive (usually a folder that clearly identifies the project and/or date). Always double-check youre destination folders name and location! There are a variety of preferences that you can use to create folder names (date, time, etc.), so please look that over before you start cloning to be consistent down the road and so that you can avoid renaming folders, which only leads to confusion. You select all the clips or those that you want to clone and start the cloning. Both of these programs verify the copy and announce any errors. After cloning is complete, you will have to change your location disk and create a same-named folder on the second hard drive to create your backup. (See below for RAID 1 procedures that avoid this step.)
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d. Using third-party software with verification. The only program that I use and like when using two independent hard drives is Shotput Pro (around $100 for two installs, one for your laptop, another for your tower if you use one). The great thing about Shotput Pro is that, once you set up your two destination hard drives, the program automatically clones your camera card media to both drives. And the program verifies the cloning. 7. Using RAID 1 Array drives in the field. Instead of using two portable drives for cloning and backing up your camera media, here you use a 2-sled Raid Array set up for mirroring or whats called RAID 1. When you use any of the above software (except with the RAID you dont use Shotput Pro) the media is written to both drives at once. This doesnt necessarily save you time, but it does guarantee that you are correctly creating two copies that are identical for future use without having to double the labor and to constantly question your workflow. a. I use CalDigit VR-Mini RAID Arrays (1 TB in RAID 0, 500 GB in RAID 1). They are a bit pricey, a bit over $600 dollars each. This includes the housing and two 500 GB sleds. The Mini uses bus power so there are no power supplies. It is also has a very small footprint, about the same size as the G-tech or La Cie Rugged and is a little more than twice as high. There are other such RAIDs out there but I am not familiar with them. The good news is that the sleds are only around $125 each for extras ( you buy them in pairs). b. In the professional world where youre out on location for an extended period, you would fill up the RAIDs, then send one sled back to the office and keep the other one on location. Post-production would then clone (with verification) the media from the sled to a new, larger hard drive/RAID. This then means that the office has to have another VR-Mini or housing. After the media is cloned onto a new drive, the media is finally ingested into FCP (on yet another hard drive, this one dedicated to editing and not to storage or backup). Some companies and broadcasters will ask that you have a second hard drive copy of the original media, but for thesis and general use, if you have one hard drive with the original media and one drive with the ingested media as QuickTimes you should be okay. However for real safety, a second drive that houses the original media is a good idea. c. After cloning and ingesting, the original field-sled can be sent back or used in the field and all media erased on both drives. d. Finally, make sure that your backups are stored separately from your working drives! You dont want to keep the backup in the editing room or where the other working drives are stored, such as your house or apartment. And keep a log of the media, and label everything (including the housings and sleds) clearly and well. 8. Do not use FCP or another editing program when taking media off original cards. FCP will strip the metadata and replace it with a QuickTime shell. Further the program will re-compress the media with another codec (at least in certain instances, such as AVCHD, or the Canon media). This creates two basic problems. One, it can lead to errors and corruption that will not be noted until its too late. Two, it will take a long time, longer than cloning will take. 9. By using cloning software that allows for verification, you will be assured that the clone is viable and that your files are in good shape for later ingesting into FCP or AVID, or other editing software. Verification is a critical component of field work!

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