XDCAM SxS / SDHC Direct Offload to Mac Pro???

[Michael Slowe]

Kellen. If I connect my EX1’s USB outlet to my Mac G5 (I have the Sony Transfer Software installed) I instantly get all the clips from the card as thumbnails and they are ready for playing. How is that “painfully slow and ridiculous”? I agree that it can be a bit longwinded when you want to take the contents of a card to an external drive pending ingest to your edit system because you have to go through a laptop.

Maybe I’ve misunderstood your query, apologies if this is so.

Michael Slowe

[Kellen Dengler]

Hmmmm….

Well maybe I am doing something wrong then. Like I said, first time using this media. I too am able to view/preview the clips via USB, but in terms of actually offloading the media for storage USB is incredibly slow. Am I adding a step to the process that doesn’t even need to happen? I thought using log and transfer in FCP similar to P2 would be the only way to go via USB connection. No?

[Clint Fleckenstein]

I haven’t tried to bring the clips over from the camera via USB, because I like to keep the cameras in the hands of the shooters, but I have to say that the USB card reader from Sony is FAST. Worth the $250 in the time you save, if you ask me. We bought an additional reader so we wouldn’t have to go through the time-consuming process you describe with our second Mac system.

Cf

[Michael Palmer]

If the MBP has the PCI Express slot then the data can transfer to the MBP system drive very quickly. I use my MBP pci express slot but I copy to a USB drive and it takes as long as it takes. Then I copy that to my media drive back at the office. I use the USB drive because it operates from the battery power of the MBP for field use.

I think the biggest time saver is not having to actually capture video from tape as this really requires a person to sit and watch making sure it doesn’t get interrupted, unlike drag and dropping files that we assume are coping, but if you add up the time it takes to final get the files to the place they need to be edited from then tapeless can be as much time or more than tape solutions.

Make sure you copy the entire BPAV folder into a parent folder of its own every time you dump a card, and it is a really good idea to keep the original EX BPAV folder as the archive so you can always convert to any platform.

Good Luck
Michael Palmer

[Kellen Dengler]

Clint, so you are saying Sony makes an actual USB connection device that is separate from the camera?

I’ve been direct connecting which is slow, but I assumed a USB connection to slow anyways, and thought that maybe even a FireWire SDHC card reader would be faster than offloading via direct USB connection. That would however eliminate SxS connecting…

[Olof Ekbergh]

I use a MBP to offload cards to a FW800 drive.

I then hook that drive to my MacPro used for editing. The FW 800 is fast enough to edit with. But at some point I do convert foootage to ProResHQ and that is rendered to my 12TB SAS raid.

I find this quick and convenient. I also back all raw SxS files onto Blueray DVD’s and enter Card descriptions into a FMP database with short clips or stills for searching in the future.

Olof Ekbergh

[Clint Fleckenstein]

Clint, so you are saying Sony makes an actual USB connection device that is separate from the camera?

Yep, it’s the SBAC-US10 reader:

Sony’s site says around $280 but we got ours from B&H – one as part of their EX-1 Accessory Kit, and one for $250 as a separate purchase.

Cf

[Don Greening]

[olof ekbergh] “I also back all raw SxS files onto Blueray DVD’s and enter Card descriptions into a FMP database with short clips or stills for searching in the future.”

Nice, Olof. This is the way it should be done. BTW, I have RAID envy.

– Don

[Andy Nagel]

I’m a new user, and my current workflow is to FIRST create the camera archive, using either my desktop MacG5 to copy the BPAV to an archive HDD, using the camera USB or the Sony Card Reader USB (not much difference in speed, about 2x real time for me), or in the field, using a WindowsXP laptop running Sony XDCam Clip Browser and the USB card reader to a USB HDD. This is much slower than a Express Card/34 transfer would be, but I’m not ready to buy the MacPro or MBP. Then I ingest to FCP 6.0.5 from the archive HDD with either Log & Transfer or XDCAM Transfer plug-ins. I transfer to RAID scratch disk for editing, then delete the ingested clips after approval/delivery. The archive HDD goes on the shelf with a print log when full. I’m more concerned with archiving the camera footage safely than the speed of transfer.

Would appreciate any feedback on this process from more experienced editors…

Andy Nagel
Mirage Productions Inc

[Don Greening]

[Andy Nagel] “I’m more concerned with archiving the camera footage safely than the speed of transfer. “

Agreed. You’re a smart guy. Once the Sony PDW-U1 firmware gets updated to allow any file format to be written to a disc you might consider shifting your archiving strategy to XDCAM Disc. A projected shelf life of 50 years plus and 50 Gbyte capacity for the dual layer disc version. As we all know, all hard drives will eventually fail so the sooner we can stop using them for archiving purposes, myself included, the better.

If you’re not concerned with the relatively slow USB transfer speeds when offloading cards that’s okay. I don’t see anything wrong with the way you’re doing things in that respect. Keep in mind that down the road you may need to start using Express 34 transfer on-site. With my Macbook Pro I can offload a 16 Gbyte card in about five and a half minutes. For myself, this time savings will be critical perhaps as early as this summer when I’ll have 3 EX cameras to worry about on a shoot.

– Don