• Twann Hudson’s -Report on Larry Jordan’s PowerUp 2008 Tour

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      21st Sep 08
      Rodney
    DCFCPUG member at PowerUp 2008 class in DC        Larry Jordan at the PowerUP 2008 seminar in DC
      

    I enjoyed attending the Larry Jordan’s  Tapeless Workflow seminar it was very informative. the scheduled topics where :

    - The  New Workflows of HD and Tapeless Acquisition
    - Selecting and Future -Proofing Your Hardware
    - Video Format Update with Real-World HD Workflows
    - Using Log & Transfer in Final Cut Pro
    - Organizing,Optimizing, and Trouble-Shooting
    - What you need to Know about Final Cut Server

     Although there were many subcategories in each topic , the discussion on the hard drive storage problems really hit home.  The very thing many different people have written about doing or planning to do had me breathing a sigh of relief that I had not implemented the same problematic storage solution. 
           
    STORAGE PROBLEM 

    If your getting into the tapeless workflow which at the beginning seems great because it cuts time down from real-time digitizing tape to the computer.
    Think about it , you have just shot 8 hours on tape; to get this stuff in to your computer ,it’s going to take 8 hours plus to digitize. Now, on the other hand, if you were recording your 8 hours of video directly to a hard drive , it will take about 60-30 minutes depending on your file size to transfer to your computer for editing.

     

    With this in mind, tapeless workflow sounds like a dream come true, or is it.
    As you look more at the tapeless work flow, a major problem of archiving arises. Lets focus on DV footage.

     

    DV footage takes up 13 Gigabytes of hard drive space an hour. If you go tapeless, how will you archive your footage? A few items come to mind but they are all more expensive than tape.

     

    Keep in mind that you’re going to want to have more than one copy of your file, in case of corruption problems. So with that in mind, you need a least 26 GB of storage space for 1 hour of DV footage. Flash drives, RAID systems, cost thousands of dollars and get more expensive as the need to upgrade space becomes apparent.

     

    Tapeless has been promoted as a cheap and easy solution using hard drives for archiving and shelving them for long periods of time to save money. I even look at doing the same thing  because of the amount of tape I have and the ease of access to footage , but there is a problem with this plan of storage.
    Over time, the hard drive does go bad. It typically last 4 years. If you are archiving to hard drive and removing it to shelf it , the hard drive will last less than 1 year, if it does not have power going to it.

     

    I was like everyone else who is using this method or thought about it—- WHAT was I thinking!!!!

     

    It turns out that if a hard drive is unplugged for over six months it starts to lose it’s magnetic properties which is how your data is written to it. The hard drive industry has always known about this, so why isn’t everyone promoting the tapeless workflow informing us about this. This little bit of information for me was worth more to than everything else discussed.

     

    Don’t get me wrong; the event as a whole was total worth the DC, VA traffic (smile) but by far, the storage problem is growing and  thousands of editors and producers are shelving hard drives for future needs are potentially walking into a archival ticking time bomb.   I’ve avoided this method of tapeless archival for now.

     

     I think tapeless is great , but don’t get rid of your tape storage yet; it’s going to be around a long, long time (smile).

    Thanks again for the opportunity to attend the seminar.

    Twann~

     Editor’s comment: Twann, thanks for attending on our behalf and glad you got something out of the experience!

     

    Rodney – DCFCPUG

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