[Eric Hansen]

hey mike

if you want to keep your 2Gb setup, maybe consider getting an old Xserve RAID. they’re selling for pretty cheap.

this is for the more adventurous, but you could also swap the Apple drives out for bigger SATA drives. they use old IDE connectors, but you can get conversion chips to change them to SATA. the RAID management software won’t work as well since you’re swapping the drives for non-Apple firmware units. but it should still work. my old facility has Xserve RAIDs and I was going to go this route before i left. all the research i did indicated it would work, but obviously, test it yourself first. also, get some extra parts too, since these RAIDs are getting older now.

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Eric Hansen – http://www.erichansen.tv

[Eric Hansen]

use MPEG Streamclip to create ProRes (or whatever your editing codec is).

as far as 720 vs. 1080, the native size of the Hero HD sensor is 1280x960p, which is 4:3. it’s an odd ratio and resolution, but thats what the GoPro guys told me at NAB. this gives you the widest angle and it also allows you to move the image up and down in FCP to select the best framing for your shot. when you select the 1080 setting, it’s cropping the sensor (ironically) and upressing in camera. since the 960p setting gives you more sensor info, i would go with that, and upres later.

60p seems smoother because its more frames per second. if you want to take 60p to 24p in real time, then you need something like Twixtor. if you just drop the 60p clip into a 24p timeline in FCP, it will throw out the extra frames and it will have choppy playback. Twixtor will smartly blend frames and you can add motion blur to make it seem like it was shot at 24p. i’ve used the Heros quite a bit and we run everything through Twixtor to get 24p. if we want to slow things down (which is what a lot of the test footage on GoPro’s site is), we retime using Cinema Tools. we only shoot 60p if we know we’re going to slow the footage down.

MPEG Streamclip is the fastest transcoder we’ve found. it also has a surprisingly good scaler.

as far as how good it will look on a big screen? as i explained above, you won’t see a difference in quality between the 720p and 1080 out of the camera since the sensor isn’t 1080. if you want the 170 degree view that the camera is capable off, then you need to select 720p anyway. due to the bend in the image from the fisheye, we usually take the 1280x960p image and stretch it to 16:9 and blow it up to 1080 (instead of changing the framing as i mentioned above) and get good looking results. but remember, this is a $300 camera. if you want it to look good on a big screen, make sure you’re shooting compelling content.

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Eric Hansen – http://www.erichansen.tv

[Eric Hansen]

hey Marcus

I’ve never used BRU Server, but i can tell you that PE (Producer’s Edition) is way different and designed for creative professionals specifically. it’s not perfect (nothing is), but it’s got an easy drag and drop interface.

regarding putting hard drives on a shelf and spinning them up every few months: i recommend 2 or 3 sets of bare hard drives to my lower-volume clients for project storage, similar to what you’re doing with your RAID-5 external drives. the difference is that EVERY SINGLE ONE of my clients never spins their drives up regularly. this is when i start to recommend tape because you don’t have to do regular maintenance that everyone says they will do, but never do.

hey nick

please keep us in the loop on what you decide to do.

thanks

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Eric Hansen – http://www.erichansen.tv

[Eric Hansen]

it seemed like input 16 was giving me the problems. when i switched the decks to 14 and 15, things got better. i also moved the router power from the UPS with our RAIDs attached, to the UPS with the server attached. so this combo seems to have ended the issue.

i say “seems” because we’ve actually captured very few tapes since the problem started. we mainly shoot cameras with flash drives, and we haven’t had to deliver a single tape yet. all of our deliverables have been ProResHQ on hard drives or SD MPEG-2 via FTP to DG Fastchannel.

in a few weeks we’re going to capture about 20 hours of SR, so i’ll know pretty quickly if this issue has returned. we also should have an Ultrascope setup arriving around then

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Eric Hansen – http://www.erichansen.tv

[Eric Hansen]

hey nick

that sucks man. i’m sorry you had to go through that. i agree with everyone’s suggestions here. i’ve never tried Drobo though. i’ve heard not so great things about the standard Drobos mostly related to their speed, but the Drobo Pro as an iSCSI device could be really nice. the fact a 16TB one is only $2800 currently, is pretty cool. and i will “third” that Retrospect sucks. a facility i work for went with BRU PE with LTO-4 and i couldnt be happier. we deal with way too much media to consider hard drives as an archive solution. this is the system that we’ve set up to deal with your scenario of all volumes disappearing:

we have a backup server with CrashPlan software. it fully backs up all the boot drives on all the edit systems. it also backs up certain target folders on the SAN, such as project files and gfx. it’s an incremental backup system, so it will save many versions of a file. we don’t use this on media though.

as footage comes into the facility; field drives, cards, tapes, etc; everything is placed in a holding tank on the SAN. footage is then converted into its necessary format. we work with a lot of formats such as Cineon that can’t be edited directly. so we transcode everything to ProResHQ 1080p23.98. then, the original files and the transcoded files are copied over to LTO-4 tape (2 sets). then the ProResHQ files are placed on the SAN volume that the editor is using. once the footage is on the LTO-4 tapes, it is deleted from the field drives (we always make sure there’s 2 copies of all media, so field drives don’t get deleted until that footage is both on the SAN and on LTO-4)

so we’re doing 2 things at once here: we’re copying all our footage to LTO-4 for archive, but also indirectly creating a backup of the SAN. anything that’s not included in the original footage, and isnt a render file (such as GFX or sound) is backed up by CrashPlan.

i would suggest something like this instead of a full RAID backup because of cost, and it forces you to be organized with your footage. it also uses less energy because you don’t have to power all those RAIDs. however, i could see setting up a dual RAID system if you’re working with mostly source footage that’s not yours (you wouldn’t be archiving it anyway). then i would suggest a 16TB Drobo Pro because it seems to do what you need for a very nice price.

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Eric Hansen – http://www.erichansen.tv

[Eric Hansen]

Neil says: I guess one needs set a life for a RAID as soon as one gets it, and after that time, consider every additional day a bonus.

sage advice. i personally operate under the assumption that all drives will fail – are you prepared if a random drive in your facility failed RIGHT NOW? i have all my non-RAID systems backed up to a Crash Plan server, and extra drives sitting next to the RAID ready for swapping. at first i thought the manufacturer’s warranty period was a good indicator of a drive’s life. but my experience is that it’s not. i have a G4 tower running on its original factory drive, and i’ve had a few server-level hard drives fail within a month.

through all these installations, i’ve noticed that very few take environmental factors into consideration. a small production facility would never think about a “server room”. i’ve never been able to install a system in an ideal environment. the closest one is an Xsan that’s in a basement. the Xsan pretty much takes care of the heating for the facility in the winter. during that installation we budgeted for a rack refrigerator (very cool unit that runs about $5k – looks like a Coke cooler). but the basement stays cool enough that the fridge wasn’t needed.

during the construction of the building for my most recent SAN, i went over the needs for the server room a few times with the contractors, and they just never seemed to get it. their solution was to create a closet with a 1 foot vent at the top, and just allow convection to take over. this is part of the problem being out in the boonies where a “server room” is place where waitresses hang out. now they’re back in there (and can finally feel the heat this system puts out) and talking $3k+ for a dedicated A/C system.

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Eric Hansen – http://www.erichansen.tv

[Eric Hansen]

hey bob

thanks for the link. i’ll give it a shot. but i’m kind of leery of anything “native” in Final Cut, because we still have to render anything that doesn’t match the sequence codec. especially the MPEG-2 based codecs. i like transcoding everything to ProRes so everything is the same resolution, frame size, and codec so the editors can just edit. i may change my mind if a future version of Final Cut can support better RT effects. i would rather spend the time upfront doing the conversions (with cheap labor) than have expensive editors getting out of their groove on an edit because they have to render something that if it was in ProRes, they wouldn’t have to render. for similar reasons, i would totally support a hardware version of Final Cut for a few thousand dollars more if it made almost all effects full res in real time.

does anyone agree with me on this, or am i nuts?

a plug-in like this would make sense for our field editors though.

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Eric Hansen – http://www.erichansen.tv

[Eric Hansen]

i’ve never worked with NTFS and SMB with Final Cut. but i had a similar issue with AFP, a G5 and Final Cut 6 captures ending at 2GB. the solution was to change to NFS instead of AFP. not really sure the technical reasons why it worked, but it worked. but i think whatever bug causes this is fixed in FC7. i can’t confirm that because i haven’t tested it myself though.

at a newer installation i’ve done, we don’t do much tape capturing since almost all the formats we shoot are tapeless. but for Log and Transfer, i read the P2 cards from the SAN and write the ProResHQ transfered files to a local scratch disk. when i’m done, i move them over to the SAN. or i read the P2 cards from the field drive and write the ProResHQ files to the SAN. either way, having the source and target on different devices really speeds things up.

Eric Hansen – http://www.erichansen.tv

[Eric Hansen]

hey bob

no, i learned my lesson with Seagate. this RAID is a ProAVIO/Enhance Tech enclosure, Hitachi Saturn drives, and an ATTO R380 card.

ATTO Tech support helped me get the volume back up so i could copy all the media off. those guys rock! i replaced the 2 drives that failed and turned that particular volume into RAID-6. so the volume is now 5.46TB instead of 6.37TB, but the RAID-6 helps me sleep better at night. as we finish projects on the other volumes, i’m going to change them to RAID-6 also. we have 4 volumes currently. i might even merge them into 2. our plan was for 4 edit bays initially, thus the 4 volumes. but now 2 of the bays have turned into a Pro Tools suite, and a finishing/color correction/transcoding suite. so maybe we’re better off with 2 larger volumes instead of 4 smaller ones.

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Eric Hansen – http://www.erichansen.tv

[Eric Hansen]

thanks for all the help Rodney. i’ve been over and over this manual, so i know exactly what you’re talking about.

Rodney writes: I downloaded the manual for the H4n and looked up setting the levels. When the unit is recording in Stereo mode (2 recording tracks), you should have the inputs set as mono inputs (in the MTR menu). If you have the inputs set as stereo inputs, then I could see how you might not have independent level control. Again, double check to make sure in the MTR menu that you have not selected stereo inputs. (Page 048 of the manual).

there are 3 modes with the H4n: Stereo (2 channel), 4 channel and MTR. MTR is mainly a remix mode. if you’re recording in MTR mode, it will only record 2 tracks at 44.1k/16bit WAV. it’s designed to take stuff you’ve already recorded, maybe add some effects, and remix a new stereo track. or other things i would rather do with a DAW than a recorder. so you can’t set up mono inputs or set levels in the MTR menu when you’re in Stereo or 4 channel mode, because they’re not there. btw, i could record 2 channels with this mode and set the levels independently, but 44.1k is not ideal since i need 48k for video editing.

its strange, but when the H4n is in either Stereo or 4CH mode, inputs 1 and 2 are always locked together level-wise. this is why i think i need to pad the signal before going into the H4n to create a safety track (if i want to use tracks 1 and 2). i keep mentioning tracks 3 and 4 as an option because in 4CH mode, the H4n allows you to control the levels in groups (track 1 and 2 together, and track 3 and 4 together). if i’m sending my main audio to track 1 and split that off to track 3 using an XLR splitter, then i can drop tracks 3 and 4 to be lower than tracks 1 and 2, creating my safety track. the negative is that tracks 3 and 4 use a 1/8″ stereo input and it just adds more cabling and splitters. it’s too bad the Zoom can send the input of track 1 to track 3 with a lower level like most camcorders can. maybe in the H4n^2.

Rodney writes: Your H4n unit does indeed have the XLR-1/4″ combo jack. The balanced input is the XLR and the unbalanced input is the 1/4″, thus the differing levels in the specs.

i’m sorry, what a meant in my previous post is i thought all XLR-1/4″ combo jacks had balanced TRS 1/4″ and not unbalanced TS 1/4″. i was surprised that the 1/4″ was unbalanced and that the XLR was always Mic Level and the unbalanced 1/4″ was always Line Level.

thanks for letting me know what you’re using the H4 for. it’s always interesting to me to hear how people are using this equipment.

Eric Hansen – http://www.erichansen.tv