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Activity Forums Sony Cameras ShotPut Pro v. 5 – worth the upgrade?

  • ShotPut Pro v. 5 – worth the upgrade?

    Posted by Bob Cole on March 12, 2013 at 12:28 am

    If anyone has tried ShotPut Pro’s upgrade, I’d like to know whether it is worth using.

    Bob C

    Trevor Ward replied 11 years, 6 months ago 10 Members · 13 Replies
  • 13 Replies
  • Wolf Austad

    March 12, 2013 at 7:15 am

    I’ve used ShotPut since version 1. Version 5 is imho the best upgrade yet.

    Copy to one destination is faster, copy to two or more destinations is way faster in 5. This has a lot to do with ShotPut 4 becoming very slow on OSX Lion/Mountain Lion, so the difference to 5 when all the good stuff works again is very big.

    More notes:
    CF cards in USB 3.0 readers going to multiple destinations is dramatically much faster. (25 min in v4, 5 min in v5!)

    There’s a new function to combine offloads that should help a lot for those who use Hard Drives.

    Haven’t tested SxS cards yet, but should see a pretty significant speed increase.

    Hope that helps.

    Aasulv Wolf Austad, fnf
    Director of Photography
    Los Angeles based

  • Mark Smith

    March 14, 2013 at 1:46 am

    the way I see it Shot put V5 is definitely worth the upgrade. I have used shot put for some years and the speed gain in 5 is dramatic. I have offloaded CF cards to garden variety portable FW800 drive ( which I consider the limiter in transfer speed) at about 2 gb per minute with MD 5 verification. That’s about double the best previous speed I’ve seen. So if you are wrapping a shoot, the offloads at the end of the shoot might take 50% less time.
    The up grade to SP Pro 5 costs $29.00 and that minor investment keeps repaying in saved minutes every time you use it. Its a no brainer.

  • Siege Shiwasu

    March 19, 2013 at 6:26 am

    The speed in shotput pro 5 is faster but there are some serious niggles that make me wish I had stuck with version 4.
    My workflow is thus
    Set SP to custom name
    Insert media to sonnet Qio multi reader
    Name the offload with the roll number
    offload to three drives

    Now in version 4 I would just change the roll number tab and the next roll would be the roll number so I can easily be offloading 6 cards at once. Now you have to have a custom preset which cannot be altered as it’s being used offloading. This means I have to create multiple presets which are essentially the same so I can switch to the next offload and change the roll number. I can no longer change the roll number on the fly. Having four duplicate presets is way confusing and I have to remember to remember to uncheck the in use preset or else it offloads twice but with the last roll number selected.
    You also can’t duplicate presets which means that every prest you have to reselect all your offload destinations as the last ones are not remembered. In SP 4 you could see your preset offload instructions in V 5 they are hidden away only to be revealed if you click on a preset but you can’t see it if it’s in use.
    I don’t use “same as card’ as you are limited to the amount of letters you can assign some media [FAT 32].

    The other really annoying thing is that version 5 puts the offloads inside a folder where as version 4 didn’t.

    So I say I want the offload to be called 3_130101_AA_10 but the offload is VOLUME/3_130101_AA_10

    My offload is nested within a folder. This means that I then have to go through every offload on every drive and move the roll to the root of my offload folder and then delete the top folder. This is because I need the structure to be immediately available in Avid and not have to go down the next level. A C300 structure is for example 3_130101_AA_10/CONTENTS/CLIPS Shoput pro 5 is VOLUME/ 3_130101_AA_10/CONTENTS/CLIP. This is oproving to be a massive timewaster and I don’t get the logic of it.

    Last but not least you can no longer drag and drop offload destinations or sources into SP5. You have to use the finder. You can drag attached media for offloading from the left finder window so fine but setting offload destinations requires clicking the + sign then navigating to your offload folder each and every time for every prest and every drive. Usually I’d just drag and drop straight into the destination window outside of shotput pro.

    Finally this crashes way more than version 4 probably 10 times an offload period. It could be that I am using eSATA over thunderbolt I don’t know but I have to restart my 10.8 macbook pro to get it working again.

    V5 looks good and it is faster but there are some weird changes then almost makes me have to stick to offloading one card at at time rather than my usual six.

  • Enrique Del rio

    April 8, 2013 at 4:44 am

    I tried using it during a prep, not sure why the process changed, but being close to embark on a 19 week project I’m not sure I will gamble on a new GUI that breaks a workflow that already worked flawlessly before (v4), so, good luck to the pathfinders and my dear Imagine friends, you can keep my $29.00 and please use the money to make the system faster but as friendly as version 4 or before.

  • Enrique Del rio

    April 8, 2013 at 4:46 am

    I tried using it during a prep, not sure why the process changed, but being close to embark on a 19 week project I’m not sure I will gamble on a new GUI that breaks a workflow that already worked flawlessly before (v4), so, good luck to the pathfinders and my dear Imagine friends, you can keep my $29.00 and please use the money to make the system faster but as friendly as version 4 or before.

  • Enrique Del rio

    April 14, 2013 at 6:33 am

    After playing more with V.5 on an Alexa gig I can tell you:
    a) The new version 5 IS WAY FASTER than v.4, when it comes to S x S cards, if you can get your hands on 64Gb cards specially due to the newer trf technology (dis-proportionally faster than 32Gb cards)
    b) My show uses Alexa and PL modified Canon 7D, the footage from the CF cards fly as well, although the v.5 warns you that there are no video files on the card, at least it allows you to download it anyway.
    c) The big boo boo comes when trying to download sound files from CF cards, the system starts and almost at the end it stops with the dreaded error big red X. I unchecked the box that refers to video files on card, changed the verification, still crashes 🙁
    d) I separate the files on A Camera, B Camera folders witha prefix and roll number that I change depending on the destination, all this to make sense to editorial, the checking and un-checking preset destinations render problems when trying to change back to A camera after trf’ing B cam. Making me re do the destination route loosing time.
    Now I have to juggle v4 and 5 to get the best from both, if anyone has a suggestion….plese!

  • Marc Dantzker

    April 15, 2013 at 7:23 pm

    Have you found a solution to the crashing? I am also using using eSATA over thunderbolt with a new macbook pro and 10.8.3. Also Qio Sonnet readers. My cards are 128 GB with Canon 1DC footage. When I copy one card it usually, but not always, makes it through. When I copy two cards, either started one at a time or at the same time, it almost always crashes. Super frustrating! Not happening, at least not as much, with SxS cards over thunderbolt.

    I had very little trouble on our last shoot. The differences were minimal. Here’s what changed. I went from a Lexar USB 3 reader to the Sonnet Qios. I put an OWC Raid in as one of the two esata locations. The other is the same Voyager toaster I was using last time. Otherwise, I don’t think I’ve changed anything, but I can’t see how these could have done it.

    I do believe we had one bad chip that was hanging up over and over, even just in the finder. We’ve taken that out of circulation but I wonder if it could have had lasting impacts in some sort of bit-karma world within.

    Thoughts?

  • Dan Montgomery

    April 19, 2013 at 7:30 pm

    Just wanted to let you know the problems detailed in this thread with ShotPutPro v5 have all been addressed and available in the V5.0.3 patch. Including: drag & drop destination paths, MD5 failures on zero byte and empty files & folders, eject problems with certain card types and readers (e.g. TB connections) and more…

    The comment about an added VOLUMES folder in the path was previously corrected in v5.0.2 — that had to do with combining volumes into a single offload.

    With V5, copy settings are inside Presets instead of global. This gives added flexibility when dealing with multiple cam shoots and where you offload to. However, just like in the older versions, the attributes of a particular offload are set at the moment you drop anything into the queue. So you must select these items before adding volumes to copy.

    To see the full list of changes we’ve added, click the Versions link under the Support menu on our website.

    Video logging is just the beginning…

  • Filip Dobosz

    April 22, 2013 at 3:34 pm

    Enrique! Hope all is well. I just switched to V5. I am doing a series on Epics. I do about 1.5Tb/day. The offload speed is about 40% faster. I couldn’t believe that software could speed me up so much. Although the trade off seems to be it eats the RAM and makes the computer pretty slow while dumping. I don’t think i’d need the speed boost for alexa or even 4k footage. But with 5k and HDR it is a huge difference. I got used to the GUI in 1 day of use and would never go back now.

  • Enrique Del rio

    May 13, 2013 at 3:00 pm

    We have incorporated a C 300, working on a MacBook Pro 10.7.5 over thunderbolt trough a Lacie Hub e-Sata to drives. After doing the software update SPP 5.0.2, still CF footage from the C300 and sound makes it crash. Not sure if it has anything to do with the fact that both files originate from CF cards or what but, it’s very frustrating

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