Ben Edwards

May of just answered my own question. FreeFileSync seems very respecid and does byte compaire (alough you have to click a button to do it after sync.

Hi, I am a freelance camera/film-maker. A job I did recently had some corruption of the files (I did not do the copy but it has got me thinking I need to find most robust way of copying off camera cards). Not sure where it came from but a friend told me an interesting story. He was doing DIT for a project and being over paranoid he did 2 copies using totally different drives/card readers. It turns out it was a good thing. The copy they were using in the edit had corrupted footage. He got the backup to him and tested his hardware. Turned out it was one of the card readers that was introducing the corruption not it turns out he was not being over paranoid. So I to be extra careful I want to do a byte compare after the copy (i.e. check the two files contain exactly the same data on a byte by bit, byte by bit, basis). What software is there that can do this. Be good if it was not too expensive, preferably open source. A simple byte compare utility would be good (did some googling but no joy). Alternatively a suite of utilities that does the copy and compare, and possibly maintain database (but I guess this is specialist software that may not be cheap). Regards, Ben PS I realise doing a byte compare is not instead of using two sets of hardware, it is a extra check.

I am shooting a short drame in a week 'Conversations with and about my Electronic Toothbrush'. There are three locations and two times of day. Here are my thoughts, and advice would be welcome. I am using a set of 3 open faced 650W tungston and a 800W readhead. Location 1 - Bathroom The room is fairly small. I have one light bounced off the ceiling and a key with defusers (coming from the middle of the ceiling, my logic is it is the main bathroom light). No space for backlight but as the wall is plain the actor seems to stand out well. The bathroom does not have a window (but I could pretend is does). The only way I can think of differentiating between day and night is to have a light coming from a imaginary window which is slightly warm (1/4-1/2 OTO) for daytime shots and cold (1/4-1/2 CTB) for night. The other option is to have a 1/4 CTO/BTB on the fill light to give the whole room a slight cast. Location 2 - Lounge This has a windows (so dont have to pretend) but it wont ever be in shot. Was thinking of shooting this without gels in the day and putting a 1/4-1/2 CTB on the fill for the might stuff. I was also thinking of having higher key lighting (think this is the correct terms, basically having stronger key/more stronger shadows). The logic to this is that in the day it will be daylight and there will be lots of it of the same colour (so warmth can be added in the grade). At night people tend to use more practicals so there will be more shadow. Location 3 - Hallway (talking to someone at the door). The issue here is we have to use daylight from outside as we cant light the exterior but we can have a couple of lights inside. Well I think this is the case as we only have a 800 and dont think this will be enough for the backlight. This is just a day shot so was thinking of having a 1/2-3/4 CTB on a interior light bounced off the ceiling as fill and use a key (for both the person outside and the person inside). The logic for this is the light inside would be a little warmer as it would be tungston. I guess for the shot to outside the key could be used for both the back of the head and the person outside, warm light coming from inside. For the reverse shot (into the building) I could use a 1/4-1/2 CTO to represent the daylight. Any thought would be good. Regards, Ben

Hi, I am a student looking for a decent monitor to get started with. From a bit of resurrect the Dell UltraSharp U2410 seems like a good option for those of us who cant afford a HP Dreamcolour. Its about £350/$550. What do people thing, is there anything else I should look at? Ben