[Bob Cole]

The last time I spayed someone, she was not only anti-reflective – she was pretty indignant.

[Bob Cole]

Mark, you are very kind to offer the tutorial. So please don’t take this as any kind of criticism, because you gave great advice.

But Heather, another way to handle it is to edit in a shot of splashy water action just before this shot, and leave this one as is. It’s like audio of a dog barking during an interview – if you don’t see the dog, it’s distracting; if you have “established” the dog beforehand, it’s good atmosphere.

Maybe the best way, if you have that splashy shot, is to ADD some waterdrops to the “damaged” shot! Is there a plug-in for that?

Bob C

[Bob Cole]

[John Heaney] “Right now I have about 8 terrabytes of HD projects that have been back-up on a slew of multiple drives”

John, if knowing what is where is part of your concern, you may want to check out a marvelous program called CD Finder. It will index a hard drive (or a CD) and provide a way to search for folders or files, even when the hard drive is not connected to your computer.

Bob C

[Bob Cole]

Tom, it should have taken me forever, because I am not an expert. But my Retrospect software (which I already owned) recognized the drive, works across the network, and can find and restore any file or folder quite rapidly. I admit that I did waste a lot of time at first, transferring files to the PC’s hard drive, before I realized that the software worked across the network.

As for what my time is worth, thank you for the compliment! I’d like you to take that up with my clients. Maybe you could make a better case than I have, lately!

I absolutely lust after your company’s solutions. If I were paying an assistant to manage data, I would be a customer, because it would pay off very rapidly.

[Bob Cole]

Just discovered this forum, and am so glad the COW has created it.

As for a lower-budget solution: if you have a fast network & an old (SCSI-capable) PC lying around, you can get a far-less-expensive LTO drive, add it to the PC, hook into your Mac via the network, and you’re done – for a fraction of the price of the “right way to do it.” Mine is an HP LTO3 external drive, current cost about $2k (US).

I would love to have the Cache-A, LTO5, and hope to have it some day. But if I had the choice between no LTO backup and LTO3, I’d take the LTO3.

Good luck. Those hard drives are NOT an archive, just a disappointment waiting to happen.

Bob C

[Bob Cole]

[Bob Tompkins] ” I am considering LTO back-up for each drive but have not found a system that works with Mac.”

My LTO3 is attached to a PC on the (1gb) network. Works fine – even does verification. I’m up to almost 30 FW hard drives, and have had a couple failures. I copy to FW so I can get an immediate restore (if the FW works) and to LTO so I can get a sure-thing restore (if the FW does not work). On occasion, I have to run the LTO backup a couple times, because one or more files haven’t “compared” successfully. (btw – I’ve tested the non-comparing files, and found that they worked just fine.)

If you haven’t bought an LTO yet, you’re lucky, because the new ones (LTO5) are much faster and have a lot greater capacity.

Tape is good.

[Bob Cole]

Thanks Rick. Actually I wouldn’t have the duplicated MOV’s ordinarily – I said “Transfer” when I meant “Browser.” In practice, though, when I have time I backup everything – BPAV’s and MOV’s – to LTO3.

I never bothered with verification until recently, and had no problems. So, all of this CRC-checking is relatively new to me. But I don’t understand why you’d say that it is vital to do it for SxS->Copy #1, and not vital for Copy #1->Copy #2. Or am I not getting the point — i.e. do you encounter more errors in going from SxS->hard drive than hard drive->hard drive?

[Bob Cole]

[Brent Dunn] “You don’t need to use the transfer tool for this.”

That used to be my SOP, and I never had a problem, but having read some cautionary advice here, I am now trying to use software that copies and verifies the copy.

[Bob Cole]

Thanks. That sounds great. The dragging behavior is a bit dicey, but I’m working through another problem right now so I can’t prove that the software itself is at fault.

The workflow I’ve developed is:

1. In field: SxS card into MacBook Pro, and usingClip Browser, make copy with verification to a small, bus-powered external firewire drive
2. In editing room: move firewire drive to MacPro (main editing platform)
3. Using Clip Browser on MacPro, make copies from firewire drive to RAID (RAID5)
4. Sometimes – Clip Browser on MacPro copies from RAID to a second external firewire drive
5. Always – From a networked PC with an LTO3 drive, copy from RAID to LTO3 tape.

Pretty cumbersome, but if I don’t have at least three copies, I just can’t bring myself to format that SxS card.

I’ve had recurrent problems with Step 4. The CRC verification reports an error at some point in the middle, and the copy is aborted. This may simply be a matter of a problem with the external hard drive.

Bob C

[Bob Cole]

[Craig Seeman] “ClipBrowser from card to hard drive
Backup BPAV to another location (you can use ClipBrowser for that too)”

My bad terminology. I meant Clip Browser. I use the Log & Transfer function through FCP.

But my question stands. If I use Clip Browser to move files to two locations, is there any alternative to going back into Preferences each time?

re ShotPut: I don’t appreciate the per-CPU license. Although I understand the need to combat piracy, it should be an up-to-two or three CPU license. I want to be able to use software both in the field and in the editing room, i.e. on my laptop (which has an ExpressCard slot) and my MacPro (which I use for the actual editing).