[Craig Alan]

that’s what i kinda understood that they serve different functions. with thunderbolt 3 if it meets its promise coming soon – LTO should be plenty fast for most uses.

So each brand of LTO drive uses its own software? That would make me nervous. Big companies just update as needed. I’m a one man band and get to stuff when money allows and the need is pressing. Right now that need is an organized fast incremental back up system. And yes finished projects off the media raids and backed up securely. LTO seems like the best way to do this but a bit pricey given the amount of media I have of vital finished projects. Just the tape drive itself would get me 20 6TB drives. My SD footage is very small by todays standards and the P2 footage/FCP X files are about 16TB total. but counting. and my next camera will be 4 k.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

So what would you recommend for an LTO drive today. Could i use CCC to create incremental back ups of folders stored in files or is this not the way LTO is structured?
I thought for some reason that each LTO drive came with software that limited use to that brand even though the tapes themselves were used as a standard.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

What tape drive system did you buy?

Cost?

Are the LTO systems proprietary in any way? how sure is the future support of these systems?

Speed compared to hard drives?

I’m kinda feeling that as SD drives come down in price and increase in capacity and reliability they will replace other forms of storage.

$135 for 6TB is certainly more than competitive with hard drives.

But I’m seeing $5000 tape drives with two year warranties.

Don’t tape head wear out?

How’s the learning curve?

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

What I’ve done is just reimport the cards. And this is very rare. Usually I just need to to point the import interface to the folder that contains the original media folder that for whatever reason lost the link to the library/event that needs to reference those files.

Maybe you can suggest something for a particular reoccurring situation when it does mostly loose the links.

If I copy a folder with an entire project (legacy use of the word) to another drive and I open the library from that other drive, it no longer knows where the media is located. I assume it has metadata that points to the first drive that the project was created on. How then do you do a back up to other drives without running into this problem? Its not a huge concern since I have never failed at relinking the media by a simple reimport. But it’s still annoying and you always hope that a real loss hasn’t happened. Maybe a clone rather than a copy would do the trick?

On important projects I’ll check my back up just to make sure all is well. This is when I run into to this missing media messages. What’s strange: it’s not 100%. Some media shows in the events, some don’t. I do not store my media in the library. I use external folders for media/cache/FC backups. Reason being I feel libraries are yet another container that can get corrupted. If it does, all content is unreadable.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

Hand break, I believe, does not transcode to ProRes. what it does do is ProRes to H.264 very well and fast.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

Was not real clear to me what he meant by original form. I prefer to make a finder copy of a media card rather than using FC’s archive.

What is the difference in behavior between adding to favorites list and not. Reimporting has always worked for me to relink files. Whether that is navigating relink to the “original media folder” in the finder or reimporting/optimizing a media card copy. What does favorites do differently? I had always assumed favorites was just a FCP X way of doing the legacy equivalent of Log and Transfer.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

Editready does seem to address some organizational needs I have, I use a lot of P2 footage from Panasonic 250 cams.
Does editready handle AVC-Intra?

I’m always however a little concerned about using third party software that would remain a factor into the future. Is the media and metadata that editready produces independent of the software that produced it? Meaning if editready license was no longer active or the company stopped supporting it or whatever … are the files and metadata that it produced still readable by FC and OS X?

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

handbreak is free and good quality. do a search for how to do a batch. requires a batch folder and folder destiny. my words – read the tutorial. haven’t tried a batch but have gotten quality conversion on two hour projects.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

yes, assuming there is a Camera/archive.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

Did a search for Hawaii Keyer and was pretty impressed. some really cool tutorials from that company that explains how to use the features and how they are better than the built in keyer. My only concern with third party stuff is it makes each FCP X update more complex and a possible loss of the plug in and possible expense. I’m hoping even more than a better keyer is a new update to FC will improve the audio filters and effects. Gain works pretty well but back ground noise reduction is terrible.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.