how do you backup your footage from capture scratch?

[Walter Biscardi]

I don’t back up raw media at all unless the client requests it. I make a Quicktime Movie or lay off the project to a stack reel. Then I delete all media associated with it. If the project ever needs to come back, I simply re-digitize from the original tapes.

If the client wants to pay for a hard drive to store everything on to, fine, but otherwise the media is tossed. Makes it much easier to maintain the drives that way.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Kent Kajino]

I’ve used media manager to gather those untitled files, which gets renamed to the clip names in the process.

[Will Salley]

I have a few Wiebetech Traydocks ($169) which accept SATA drives and use a Firewire800 or USB2 interface. I buy the SATA drives locally at an IT specialty retailer for about .37 per GB, which means a 400GB drive will cost around $150. The cost of the drive is written in to most of my projects or re-couped when the media is re-used.

I then use Media Manager to copy the final project, plus other work footage and renders including the original Photoshop, C4D, and After Effects files.

This has just become cost-effective within the last couple of years – and only with SD or short projects (I mainly do broadcast spots so even with uncompressed HD source footage it would still be more efficent). For longer HD projects, you could do the same thing except trash the captured camera footage that can be re-captured easily. The problem is that many source tapes have discontinuous timecode or are logged incorrectly, so it is time intensive to re-capture.

System Info – G5/Dual 2 – 10.4.8 – QT v7.1.3 – 8GB ram – Radeon 9800Pro – External SATA Raid – Decklink Extreme – Wacom 6×8

[Chris Borjis]

everything is in a clients named folder (including the capture scratch)
at the beginning we ask them if they want their project archived.
If they do, it all goes onto fw external drives. an average of 5-10 projects will fit on a 500gb drive (we mostly do commercials) by the 3-4 project is on the disk its paid for itself. any more fitting and its gravy. when there is just under 100gb free, we start a new one.

[13]

you should start creating a new folder for each project you are working on. eery time you move to a different project set your scrach disk to to folder for your current project. That way you never have to go searching around to figure what to keep and what not to keep, all you have to deo is delete the project folder that you want to get rid of (after it is masted of course)

[Arnie Schlissel]

[specguy] “im looking in capture scratch and it’s full of untitled folders and they’re full of random footage files i have shot in the last year. i have no idea how to organise or back this stuff up!”

First, you should start with how you capture your footage & name your project files. You should save & name your project file before you actually log any tapes or capture any footage. That way, FCP will create a folder with the project name & you’ll be able to locate that folder much more easily. And you should log your footage before capturing, & use meaningful names for each clip. If you capture whole tape rolls & subclip them, then the files on disk are still named after the master clip, not the sublicps.

The better organized you are when you start a project the better the chance you have later of finding something when you need to!

Arnie
Now in post: Peristroika, a film by Slava Tsukerman
https://www.arniepix.com/blog

[Specguy]

these are all great ideas guys, thanks so much!