What are the options for shipping XDCAM footage…

[Brian Moore]

Assuming you are both using FCP, bring the clips into a timeline, export the the timeline using the XDCAM codec and burn it to a DVD (or BluRay)…..unless you want to spend several hundred dollars on SXS cards just to mail back and forth

[Blake Porter]

Sorry, the client has a PC …no Final Cut.
PS But if he did… bring all the footage into the time-line and burn to disk? Seems a lot of work, no?

[Mark Bloomfield]

I anticipate having similar issues as I am about to give up tape completely as I hope to get my PMW-350 next week, I have been using an EX1 for nearly two years but have rarely needed to ship footage. On occasions I have burnt the data to a dual layer dvd, but this is a bit slow.

Have you considered using SD cards to transfer the data between you and your client. Cheaper than SxS cards and as you would only be using them for data transfer you would not necessarily need the most expensive option. Easy to transfer to an SD card and hard drive simultaneously using Shot Put Pro so everything would be backed up safely prior to shipping.

Mark

London Stock Footage

High Definition stock video shots of the United Kingdom’s capital city

[Craig Seeman]

It’s to know the “best” way without knowing all the details.

Here’s a list of things to think about

Hard Drives
+Large capacity
+Fast transfer speed
+Low cost per GB
-Damage risk during shipping
-Heavier, more costly to ship than other storage

Blue-ray
Large but not as large as HD
Relatively slow transfer speed
Higher cost per GB than HD
Lighter, less expensive to ship than HD
Low risk of damage during shipping

SDHC cards
Slightly less GB storage than Blue-ray (32GB vs 50GB)
Very fast transfer speed
High cost per GB but reusable increases long term value
Very light and therefore inexpensive to ship
Very low risk of damage during shipping
Low risk of damage during shipping
Damage risk is lower than HD and Blue-ray

Alternately you might consider buying the highest capacity SSD (Solid State) hard drive you can afford and ship that back and forth. It’s going to be pricey but it might give you at least small hard drive sizes with SDHC speed and security.

BTW you should be shipping the BPAV folders (backups of course) so each can wrap to the extension needed (MOV, MXF, MP4) for the given NLE, Otherwise you’re probably going to need to purchase plugins such as from Calibrated Software.

[Denis O’keefe]

Another possibility to consider is getting a Nanoflash. The CF cards are cheaper than SxS and it will allow you redundancy, recording to both SxS and CF. Send the CF cards back and forth – you can edit right off them or copy to your drive as needed.

It is an investment but saves spending on multiple drives, Sxs cards, bluray burners, saves you time. You also get better picture quality.

[John Sharaf]

Blake,

Sony’s scheme for this and other “archival” purposes is to use the XDCAM Professional Disc. It is very cheap (@ $20/45 minutes of 50Mb bandwidth), robust and long lasting (50 years!). You would need the PDW-U1 Reader/Writer at both ends, but again, this is a relatively inexpensive device, with a street price of about $2750. This may sound like a lot, but will provide a long term mastering and archival method.

JS

[Blake Porter]

Would burning to BluRay be super slow? I’m only familiar with data transfer between Hard drives…

[Craig Seeman]

[Blake Porter] “Would burning to BluRay be super slow? I’m only familiar with data transfer between Hard drives… “
Yes, certainly compared to hard drives. Although the drives are getting faster but the 50GB disks are slower to burn than the 25GB disks.

That’s why 32GB SDHC may be attractive for shipping (NOT for data backup though).

BTW there’s also 128GB USB Flash drives but they are expensive.

What you do may depend how much data you’re shipping. If it’s info from two 32GB SXS cards than SDHC might be good. If it’s a terabyte of data every few days, your back to looking at hard drives.