ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

12 years, 8 months ago - Jason Porthouse

When you say take your own drives in, do you mean for backup or to use during the edit? If the latter then make sure the production company pays for it, spec the best you need for the purpose and also include a backup - remembering that this needs to be off site, and ideally twice... if it's drives for this purpose, well they still should be paying but I'd use bog-standard Samsung or Hitachi bare drives and use a desktop dock to back up onto. But I have to say I'd be worried if any production I was working on didn't have a secure backup plan in place, bought and paid for...

12 years, 8 months ago - Felix Gill

If you have a thunderbolt connector I would suggest the "Western Digital My Book Thunderbolt Duo 6TB Desktop External Dual Drive Storage System with RAID" . I have one and it is very fast, it is also RAID so you can "stripe" it for data protection or speed. It's a bit pricey but has a lot of storage with hot swappable drives should anything fail.

12 years, 8 months ago - Jason Porthouse

Yes Karel, be careful on this one. If you supply the drives, and they go wrong - lets say worst case scenario and they loose all data. Even if backed up, it'll take a few days to get back on line again - who pays? I bet they'd hold you responsible. Personally unless they're hiring my kit (whole suite, with commensurate insurance) I'd not be providing any kit to them at all. Happy to advise and source, but not supply. You open yourself up to all sorts of problems if you provide half of the kit, certainly in terms of liability

As to the Drobo idea - they're good but not really cut out for editing. If they're sensible about the production I'd be looking at something like a G-Speed or CalDigit raid 5 setup. 3D might be a bit of a resource hog. Will you have all media online? Are you grading on the same setup or moving to a different suite for finishing? All considerations that should be made beforehand. And as to backups - remember unless it's in a seperate location on seperate drives (ideally 2 locations) it isn't a backup. They skimp on this at their peril.

Oh and don't worry about doing a series - it'll be fine, and as you say a pattern will emerge. One thing I will say - if time seems to be creeping away, with each episode taking longer than anticipated to finish - don't let it slide. If you feel that there's too little time allotted say early and make them aware - otherwise the last few shows will either be all night specials (and usually lower quality as a result) or you'll overrun with little hope of extra money. Neither is a good place to be in, so if they're trying to fit a quart into a pint pot then flag it up sooner rather than later!!

Have fun

12 years, 8 months ago - Karel Bata

Thanks guys. Very useful advice there. I wasn't sure what the convention with drives was - whether I billed with the job, or should expect them paid for up-front. Clearly it's the latter, as it should be.

No Thunderbolt connection, just FW800 sadly.

This is a bit of a leap for me, doing a whole series, and it is a bit scary! But there's little there I haven't done before in some form or another, and once I've done two a pattern will have set in. Just have to make sure it doesn't stress me out!

Cheers!

12 years, 8 months ago - Tony Oldham

Lacie Rugged Firewire800. They're fast and robust and come in various GB & TB sizes with the option of 400Firewire and USB input. They're between £120 & £200 on amazon. Lacie Quadra is also a really good option with several high speed inputs and storage sizes available.

12 years, 8 months ago - Winfield Edson

In case you want a cheaper option, I used a LaCie 2tb FireWire drive to edit my feature with. It was certainly fast enough, and I had plenty of space. It's now 3 years old, and still works great.

12 years, 8 months ago - Karel Bata

Thanks again. That's really useful. In fact, you've made me realise something. I'll be using FCP to do the main edit, but will likely finish on a Mistika http://www.sgo.es/ so I need to check out what drives formats are appropriate for working on both. The last time I plugged a Mac formatted drive into a Mistika it chewed it up. It's a Linux based system. I need to research this.

12 years, 8 months ago - Richard Stow

Have a look at the new Drobo mini - it's a more expensive option but is going to last a long time as you can swap new drives in & out if / when you need more space, and with disk redundancy you are not going to be worrying about a failed drive.