Data Wrangling Kit

[Raico Rosenberg]

Whats in a Data Wranglers Kit?

Ive recently delved into DW, got a MacBook Pro M1 with Hedge and a Caldigit Element HUB on the way that i ordered. My question is what else do i need?

Software-wise, Do i need EditReady / Foolcat for example or any other software? (Silverstack i'll use on my eventual transition as DIT. Its great but out of budget for sole data wrangling).

I heard that when the camera gets rented so do the card readers.. Is this true or do i need some of my own card readers?

Would an external SDD help me to offload files quicker if client brings the dreaded slow LaCie HDD drives?

Any other input to Software or Hardware items would be greatly appreciated! Thank you ?

[Steve Woronko]

Once you get your kit, find a workflow that works for you, do it the same way every time, it lessens the chance of making a mistake. Don't let people rush you, that's when mistakes happen. Always have extra cables for everything. I was an early Hedge adopter, but know that Hedge is writing the checksum as it's copying the footage. If you are going the DIT route and don't want to spend the money on Silverstack, you can get Offloader which is also from Pomfort, costs about the same as all the others, and can transition to Silverstack easier since it's in the same family. 

Rented cameras generally come with readers. Pre large format, Loaders would have their own readers, which were affordable, like CFast, SXS, SD, which you should have just in case. 

Drive wise, that's a personal call on how much you want to spend. If you have a connection to get deals on drives, then maybe buy some to sell to clients. Because if production brings the drives, you're still going to have to download to their drives.

I've veered away from Loading, so not sure what other current software others are using, like Disk Drill. If the camera has software to view their raw files is good to have. Resolve is good for checking video. Parashoot is good to have on hand. 

Hope some of this helps.

[Raico Rosenberg]

Thank you so much Steve! very much appreciated!
on a small island theres no film schools etc so a bit limited on information.. picking up bits off the internet can be tedious and not much whole information regarding to DW

[Josh Engel]

Going to revive to follow up the DiskDrill recommendation!  It's an under-rated tool that you'll hopefully never need.  I recently had a clip get corrupted out of a Sony Venice and since AXSM media doesn't allow write-access to anything other than the Venice, the clip was stuck on the mag. Mac kept giving me errors and refused to copy the clip using Silverstack, Finder, Shotput and Hedge. Disk-Drill was something I found and it had no problems recovering the clip and was able to get it properly verified.  

 

Took almost 2 days of sifting through the troubleshooting before I stumbled on Disk-Drill.