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XDCAM Discs + Reuse
I’m working on a series thats using a PDW-F800 and XDCAM discs.
We’ve shot about 70 discs for our 1st 2 episodes and will now need to reuse the stock for the rest of the series.
Neither myself or the production team have ever reused the XDCAM discs before & so I’m looking in to the Pro’s and Cons of recycling the disks for the forthcoming shoots.
Just wondering if anyone has ever encountered issues with reusing the disks
I would appreciate any info you could send my way.
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4 Replies
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The short answer is just reformat and you are off and re-running. You can reformat in either the camera of your deck. Ive been using xd for about 3 years and have not had a problem. Especially after the tsunami in Japan when there was a shortage of disks we had to reuse a bunch of disks. It’s not the most comfortable feeling but there have been no technical problems I can think of. The bigger issue is erasing all of your field masters. Once its gone its gone. If you must then you must but I hope there is an opportunity to at least copy some of the images that you feel might be used in other episodes. Keeping just the show won’t give you much creative ability in a re-edit or the like. If you can keep a few disks worth of stock footage that might take away some of the feeling of loss.
Good luck with your show
dw
Dale West Video
North Miami, FL
305-588-2683
dale@dalewestvideo.tv -
thanks very much for the reply. We’re backing up the rushes to LTO and then will be sending out the disks in to the field for re use. I just needed to know if anyone had experienced them flaking out, but having read your response, it’s quite reassuring.
Many Thanks
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Shibbir, I’m currently reusing XDCAM discs by backing them up to LTO-5 tapes as well. Do you have a good workflow for getting them back OFF the LTO-5 when you, for example, need to start onlining/up-res’ing a show later? The workflow I have right now is extremely time-consuming to pull of each disc as needed one at a time. I’m going to experiment with using the LTO-5 to create a sort of virtual meta-ProDisc, if you will, where I pull each of the clips needed for a given show and re-create the XDCAM file structure to online with one mega-disc, if that makes any sense at all.
Thanks for any advice or tips you’ve come across in backing up and restoring ProDiscs from LTO-5.
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Hey Sean
Good to hear from you.
I have to admit that I’ve never attempted to rebuild the XDCAM disk as a new volume/Meta Pro disc.
The workflow on my series is Pro Res HQ/XDCAM native. I ingested all the XDCAM material natively and left it at the 1920×1080 422 XDCAM codec. I have no real reason to conform. I use the LTO-5 purely to back up the disks in their native state which allows me to recycle the disks. I would only ever need to go back to the LTO-5 if I ever lost media or it became corrupted.
What is your current workflow/Why are you having to conform the XDCAM footage again?
Sorry I know my answer doesn’t help you, but I’d be interested to see if I could help advise you on a better workflow.
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