Best way to deliver 45gb of p2 raw data to client

I have recorded 43gb of material on two p2 cards and the client would like to have a disk with just those raw files. Is it possible to compress this to fit onto a disk without changing the nature of the files.
Jim Ellis

DVCPRO HD footage is already heavily compressed. You might be able to figure out some clever way to make it slightly smaller, but there's no way to squeeze it down to the 9 GB or whatever can fit on a DVD.

Just fedex a Firewire.

Buy a 60GB bus powered USB drive...bill it to the client...send that. The ORIGINAL MXF files in the ORIGINAL file structure. Because you have no idea what editing system they will be using.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

Ok,
That is not a bad idea. Maybe even putting it up on an ftp service somewhere, probably take a heck of a long time to download.

Thanks guys
Jim

FTP...god no...will take forever to transfer. Shane's way is best and not very expensive at all. Doesn't necessarily have to be bus powered either. Being that it's just for transport, I would suggest a G-Drive mini at around $149.00 for 160 GB:

[www.g-technology.com]

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

I'd second Joe's point. If you or your client has use for a good bus-powered portable drive then by all means. I have a 40GB SmartDisk FireLite that I use frequently. But if you don't need the small size and fewer cables, then you should get a regular old r FireWire drive. You pay a premium for the portability of those tiny drives. A 250GB G-Drive Mini is around $180; a 500GB G-Drive is $170. Do the math. Plus, those small bus-powered drives are a lot more fragile, and heat up like nobody's business.


www.derekmok.com

Send a drive--inside a portable cabinet. We had a client send a drive once, just a naked drive, no cabinet, no power supply, no nothing. We had a cabinet we used for the work, so as weird as that was, the job succeeded.

And do not leave any of those folders out. Replicate the structured exactly like it is on the chips. P2 uses XML supervisory files in addition to the picture and other files.

Koz

Client brought in his western digital 3200, nice drive. I copied and pasted into his drive from my desktop. Worked great. I checked the transfer by doing a log and transfer off of his drive and everything showed up fine.
thanks guys,
Jim

You did check the drive's formatting, right? Western Digitals aren't great drives, but for this short-term purpose it should do. Just make sure you don't dump the originals until he's got all the files safely on his computer. Scratch that, actually -- keep the originals until the project is over. 43GB isn't that much and you'll all sleep better.


www.derekmok.com

Quote

Client brought in his western digital 3200, nice drive

Do you mean nice LOOKING drive? Shows you what clients know about drives. It never ceases to amaze me about people pinching pennies. They will spend a fortune renting a nice camera package / hiring a shooter / DP / etc...and ship their precious data on sub-par hard drives (IMHO). At my former studio, the Grafix Dept. would get huge graphics packages shipped to us from a major Design Boutique on LaCie drives. Sometime they would mount...sometimes they wouldn't. It's terrifying when working with on-air deadlines. They started switching to G-RAID2s.

My favorite shooter used to bring Varicam footage in on a WD MyBook (what a P.O.S.):



Getting that to mount was hysterical. His assistant would say "turn it on & off until it grabs". You would have to do some kind of ritualistic dance like "rub your belly & pat your head...jump up & down on one foot...light some candles...turn your hat around and pray".

These are true stories. Don't short change your clients and ship their data on garbage drives just because they give them to you. They will respect you more if you step up and WARN THEM that they are putting their precious work in peril by using garbage drives. Suggest a better drive. If they pass and something happens, you are covered and come out smelling like a rose.

You had better hold on to the originals like D says...his drive may not mount (50 / 50).

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Derek, what did you mean by check the drives formatting?
He had stuff on it when he brought it over so I just added the footage.
Thanks for the advice Joey, lots to keep abreast of when it comes to this new solid state workflow. I must say I still don't miss tape.
Jim

> Derek, what did you mean by check the drives formatting?

Yipes. Dangerous. Before you use any drive on a Mac, especially any drive not purchased from an Apple source, you have to select it in OS and press APPLE-I to make sure it's formatted Mac OS Extended. Otherwise your files may be broken up as they copy, and that wreaks havoc with media reconnection.

Do it now. If they already have stuff on it and it's a PC-format drive, you should backup their files somehow, re-format their drive (which will wipe all data from it), and then re-copy your files. Yes, it's a lot more work, but it's the only way to go if you want safe.


www.derekmok.com

The P2 mxf uses a FAT32 file structure, so no individual file is above 4 gigs. Any clips above 4 gigs will be spanned. Transferring a single file larger than 4 gigs may prompt an error code 0 (if i remember this one correctly), or funny stuff like what Derek mentioned about splitting clips. Not sure about what may happen on transferring a folder..

But yea, to be safe, get that "nice looking" drive back and reformat the darn thing! And send them a copy of this, if they work on pcs:

[www.mediafour.com]



www.strypesinpost.com

My bad. I missed the fact that P2 files tended to be short enough to avoid the formatting issue.


www.derekmok.com

Strypes,
Didn't see any error codes come up on the cut and paste nor did I see any when I double checked the copied info on his drive. Everything showed up fine in my log and transfer window. But your saying he may have problems on his end with his pc editing software?
I will make sure I keep the data until I hear he has it on his computer.
Jim

> But your saying he may have problems on his end with his pc editing software?

Oh...he's using a PC. In which case a PC-formatted hard drive was your only option -- because PC-format drives can be read by Macs, but not vice versa. At least, last I checked. So I guess you also had to convert to a different codec? I don't think the DVCPro HD codec is available on PCs.


www.derekmok.com

Just gave him raw files off the p2cards. Should work in any system.

>But your saying he may have problems on his end with his pc editing software?

Not necessarily... I'm not too familiar with FAT32 workflows. I assume it only affects solitary files above 4 gigs (FAT32 can't handle them at all). I keep everything associated with mac machines formatted in HFS+. You may run into issues like directory/file corruption along the road (especially if you're doing file transfers, so it's always better to have a copy.

It's my practice to manually check all .MXF files and verify them with the DOP or director right after I transfer the P2 data onto the drives. You can never be too careful when you're talking about losing half a day's shoot just because a file transfer went bad.

>Just gave him raw files off the p2cards.

Some softwares (hmmm.. Avid...) are happier taking in .mxfs than .mov. So yes, do that, and copy the entire directory structure.

>I will make sure I keep the data until I hear he has it on his computer.

Keep it for a while longer, just in case he has issues (and he'll be one happy returning customer if you have the files when he needs it)... Also, he's running a WD...



www.strypesinpost.com

derekmok Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So I
> guess you also had to convert to a different
> codec? I don't think the DVCPro HD codec is
> available on PCs.


Well, with Raylight they'd be good to go.

--
Eric Harnden
Quintessential Studios
---------------------------------
[wordpress.quintessentialstudios.net]
[twitter.com]

strypes Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It's my practice to manually check all .MXF files
> and verify them with the DOP or director right
> after I transfer the P2 data onto the drives. You
> can never be too careful when you're talking about
> losing half a day's shoot just because a file
> transfer went bad.

Shotput for P2 is good for dealing with this issue. Shane has a review of it on his blog.

--
Eric Harnden
Quintessential Studios
---------------------------------
[wordpress.quintessentialstudios.net]
[twitter.com]