Conrad Hunziker III

Sorry for the late reply, Ive just noticed this thread. I wrote R3D Data Manager for this very situation. It copies your files to multiple destinations with a single click. It will then verify each and evry copy is a valid copy by using checksums. And it will store those checksums in a way so that at any point in the future you will know that the copied data exactly matches your camera original. R3D Data Manager also does batch quicktime dwonconverts and a variety of other tasks. I wrote R3D Data Manager to make it easy to use on set, but it can be used in every stage of production. Id encourage you to visit the website for more info : http://www.r3ddata.com

Ok - lets follow your theory for a bit. 9 machines working to convert roughly 200Gb of RAW footage per day. Hardware costs: 9x Apple Mac Pro, Quad 3.2, 32Gb ram: $14,500ea = $130,500 9x Apple monitors, keyboards, mice = $10,000 2x Promise Vtrack, 12Tb RAID storage: $15,000ea = $30,000 2x LTO-3 decks: $1200ea = $3000 2x APC 5000VA UPS, $5150ea = $11,000 1x cisco fiber channel switch, = $14,700 2x 1500BTU AC, $1500ea = $3000 Misc cables & add'l hardware = $3000 So you are looking at $205,000 plus taxes and shipping, before you have processed one frame. Then in addition you will need the space to run it all (some large cube truck, with union driver) and a tow generator (with operator) to meet the power requirements, and of course a couple of people to run it all. BTW, IT guys are the most expensive, fetching $95 per hour for the low-ballers, which is more than the union scale for camera operators. And in addition, you'd need to make it all extremely mobile. On Stay Cool, as David has mentioned, we have had several location moves - sometimes 3 times per day. So you'll need to set it all up, make it go, and tear it all down again. As it is, right now, we are having quite an issue with the mobile darkroom. The big issue is where to put it. Not all of our locations have been generator-friendly, especially since it takes an average of 2 to 3 hours after wrap just to backup and confirm the days work (on one 3 camera day, it took 5 hours after wrap). We have resorted to, at some locations, putting the IT truck over a mile away from base camp and the working trucks, mostly because of the un-friendly atmosphere and location rules regarding the current generator we have running (1500 watt honda generator). So I know you said you were being a bit blunt, but I just wanted to inject a little reality into this thought process.

This is getting into the realm of the current debate between locals 600 & 700. The second DIT type person you are speaking of is really an assistant editor at that point. Its literally just a mouse-click difference between doing the color conversion and the additional step of setting up for the editor. Local 700 wants to establish a new job for the data wrangling, whereas local 600 wants to include that into the loader position. Ive done a couple of other shows where the on-set assistant editor was doing color correction and outputs for the editor. Of course, he was not 'on-set', but rather at the post house. As for what we are doing on "Stay cool", we are making 2 copies of the footage on-set, one of which is shuttled to PlasterCity who then does a LTO and downconverts. On set, we are also watching every take looking for those dreaded codec-errors, and exporting TIFFs for Davids approval. Ironically, we setup the computers and RAIDs in a darkroom on the camera truck - where the loader would be.

The RED camera outputs a Rec709 signal to begin with, so its default is not the muted RAW that its recording, but some sort of LUT is applied to the image and then sent to the viewfinder and HD outputs. In camera, you can choose to view the Raw, or Rec709 or Red's new RedSpace LUT. In addition, you can make changes to the output that will be recorded in the metadata of the RAW file and set as the defaults when opened in RedAlert. For example, we have a saturation boost in camera. Thats shown in the viewfinder and HD outputs, and recorded as metadata in the RAW file. In theory, it should also be applied to the downstream quicktimes - but that isnt quite working yet.

I hadnt been following this discussion group, so sorry if this reply comes a bit late. We decided not to use the hot swap adapters for the following reasons: - The design of the hot swap adapter and the red batteries make it impossible to see the charge status of one of the batteries. - The current version of the Red Camera software still does not have a battery charge indicator for batteries other than a single Red battery. This is because the Red Camera uses a 2 way communication with the battery to determine the percentage of battery life remaining. The camera cannot talk to 2 batteries at once (at least in the way its wired with these hot swap adapters). - It seems that the design of the hot-swap adapter is setup to use both batteries at once, in series. So if you pull one battery and the other battery doesnt have enough charge to hold the camera - the camera will abnormally power off. So if the camera does not power down gracefully, there is the significant chance that the red could loose all the shot data currently on the drive. Loosing any data is not an option. We never had more than 10% of the drive full, which equates to about 15 to 20 minutes of shooting - so we never would have lost much. But anything is too much. For the record, even with the one Red Drive failure, we did not loose one bit of data on the show.