[Gary Huff]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Shotput Pro told me exactly what didn’t transfer and I was able to solve the problem without a 12TB redo, and it saved me a bunch of time. That’s my only issue with Finder transfers, I realize it’s an extreme case, but this happens to me a lot.”

Yeah, for full disclosure, I use Finder a lot too. Never on a paid job where money is on the line, definitely not for anything DIT related. But that is a good point about Finder copies, though I haven’t had one mess up on me, mostly because I careful purchase gear and drives. With paid jobs, you never really know what kind of drive a client will show up with (one had a single striped RAID enclosure for a very expensive shoot).

[Gary Huff]

[Steve Connor] “It isn’t an issue for me, I’m just interested in best practices for backing up footage and ALL the data wranglers I have worked with don’t use the finder.”

I ingest footage quite often, so here are some different ways.

For all of my personal stuff, I just copy straight off the card, either in Windows or OSX. Create a folder that is properly named, and drag the entire contents of the card (for AVCHD, say, it’s the PRIVATE folder into that folder, for P2 its’ CONTENTS and LASTCLIP.TXT, ect. ect). Whatever that card looks like when you click on it to see the files and folders on it, I duplicate that entirely on the drive I am copying to.

Use Disk Utility to make a .DMG of the entire contents of the card. This also ensures an exact file structure. Though I am leery of single-file archives, because if something goes bad, you can lose everything in it as opposed to a handful of files.

For jobs where it is imperative that I can verify a correct copy, I use this utility. It’s basic, but works great, and gives you checksum logs.

[Gary Huff]

[Andy Branner] “Erm… yeah… which was exactly my point? Don’t use the Finder. And there was never any talk of some DIT’s, so let’s not shift the goal posts. Aside from the fact that the DIT on a Showtime pilot I recently worked on did exactly that with the F55 cards he was given. But hey, if aaaall those DIT’s that you’ve worked with did something way better/safer, then… do whatever they did??”

The fact that you PA’d on a Showtime pilot with a DIT who was apparently taking a huge risk doesn’t mean anything.

I DIT, and there’s no way in hell I would use Finder for copies. I use a bash script that does a checksum verified copy to multiple drives. Anything less than that is being foolish with your data. I have encountered situations where the checksums don’t match even though the copy was fine, and the resulting video had hard-to-spot artifacting. Finder would not have alerted you to this.

[Gary Huff]

[Andy Branner] ”
Which I guess is admitting that any and all paid upgrades of e.g. Avid of the last 5+ years were a rip-off, by that logic.”

I guess you have a poor understanding of the word “logic”?

[Andy Branner] “”advanced features from iMovie”??!! LOL! Those being?”

Here you go, Beavis.

[Gary Huff]

[Marcus Moore] “I do think it’s a possibility, but a remote one.”

I just don’t see anything coming down the pipe that’s any more “revolutionary” than what’s already there. Interface upgrade and a few tweaks that bring it more in line with the advanced features from iMovie?

It already has 4k support, remember?

[Gary Huff]

[Clint Wardlow] “But hey, I wouldn’t complain if it did only cost $49 or was even free.”

I have a feeling it’s going to be a free update.

[Gary Huff]

[Mike Parfit] “But in our feature doc we had 350 hours of our own footage and about 45 hours of other people’s stuff, and the organizational work, including keywording, which we did in CatDV, was absolutely necessary.”

I absolutely agree for a project like this. But for a quick turnaround with a 2:30 run time, keywording is a bit overwrought.

[Gary Huff]

[Bill Davis] “Which, in turn, caused me to revise my traditional “get to the timeline to start editing” orientation.”

So now you are slowing yourself down by keywording everything…do you really need to keyword? I was doing that on a project just the other day when I realized that it was wasting time.

[Gary Huff]

[Mark Raudonis] ”
I respect the creator, NOT the critic.”

Until you’re being the critic, of course.

[Gary Huff]

[Santiago Martí] “Well, editing, grading and sound are not made by the same guy usually, so there you have some days.”

That’s not necessarily the case.