[Mark Laslo]

Hi Chris,

I don’t have any software except on2 flix to go from video to Flash. Would you recommend this as a solution?

Thanks,
Mark

[Mark Laslo]

Thanks Jerry,

Right now keeping the ProRes isn’t really an option. Budget is tight so getting additional drives is tough, being able to store a few extra projects on that drive can be quite helpful. I can wait for it to transcode again as I don’t often restore the projects and they’re all pretty short at this point in time.

Thanks,

Mark

[Mark Laslo]

We have been using RoyaltyFreeMusic.com. The quality seems to be decent though a lot of their tracks tend to be more loop based than dynamic songs. For what we’re doing though it works great.

[Mark Laslo]

Hi Jeremy,

Are you keeping all media (pictures, music, and video) on your RAID and just your project file on the system drive or are you saying you just keep video on your RAID and everything else on your system drive.

If all media – do you keep all of your media for one project in a unique folder and if you need a clip from it for another project duplicate it and keep a copy in both folders or just reference the old project?

If only video – Do you use media manager to consolidate all of your media before archiving?

[Jeremy Garchow] “When I archive the project, I archive it all off of my system to a central location. If the project needs to be restored, I restore it to my raid until I am finished with it. I then rearchive the whole thing again with a _REV_Sept2010 (or whatever) added to it. This way when I search the archives for the project, I can see the latest revision and restore that.”

What steps to you take to archive and where do you put the Rev number you talked about. At the end of the project file or the folder?

[Mark Laslo]

HI Shane,

The tapes were only reused after the project was completed and put up on the web, but I do understand what you are saying about price vs being able to use/have the footage forever. Honestly it was a rookie mistake that I learned from and am learning from.

I understand that I cannot make the jump from DV to HD in any capacity besides upscaling the original footage and getting no improved quality. This is not a major concern to us as most of these projects are time sensitive and will not be on our site much longer and our current streaming solution does not support anything higher than 512k flv streaming.

What I am most interested at this point is your organizational strategy as this is something I’ve struggled with. I work for a non-profit and we are trying to keep price as low as possible so while I understand that drives are cheap, we lack the ability to regularly buy drives to add storage space. Right now I have internal one 700 GB and one 1 TB drive. The 700 GB drive is my OS drive and stores my project files and system files. The 1 TB drive stores pictures, music, video, render, and other misc project and FCP files.
I also have a 2 TB time capsule that is being used as a system backup including all Media except render files.

In terms of organization to avoid duplicate files I keep all of the pictures organized by region (we operate in 7 states), video organized by region with individual folders for each project, music separated by original source – Soundtrack, purchased, CD. My goal is to try and avoid duplicate files and end up using unnecessary hard drive space by having pictures in a general folder as well as each individual project, the same with video and music.

Sorry if that is long winded or confusing, I am just looking to get the best possible solution to allow for archiving. If you think that I am better off making duplicates then I am willing to consider that option but want to make sure I don’t fill drives up unnecessarily.

Thanks,

Mark

[Mark Laslo]

Thanks Shane and Neil,

I will consider both of those options.

Shane unfortunately the first camera we worked with was the HDV tape camera and to save cost we imported the entire tape in SD and then after the project was dormant for a few months reuse the tape. The original imported files still exist (though we have no way to get the HD footage back but that is not a huge issue for us as we are just now making the push to HD on our website). Going forward I will be making backups of the AVC files.

I like the idea of the 1 TB drives and a external dock. What is your suggestion for migrating the media – just copy the sequence and all of the original avc media into a folder or should I be using media manager at all? My only concern is we use a lot of pictures in some of our projects but they are stored in region specific folders instead of project specific folders as they are reused from time to time.

Thanks,

Mark

[Mark Laslo]

Hi Shane,

Thanks for the tip, that worked great. What would your suggestion be for a starting point for uploading to Youtube. My raw video files are three and five minutes long and end up being around 1 GB in size, which takes about 3 hours to upload to youtube.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Mark

[Mark Laslo]

Hi Gary,

If you haven’t renamed the original media files you could try right clicking on the clips in your bin and selecting revealing in finder. If the original clips aren’t named properly, you could try looking at the date created. If you captured them in order my assumption would be the oldest is Clip 1 and the newest is Clip 3. That would be my best bet.

Also to tag a question onto the end of this thread – clipwrap was mentioned and I am curious if that works at the same speed as L&T or if it is slower. I will be getting an HMC150 in the next few days and want to know the best way to maintain timecode and other file data.

Thanks,

Mark

[Mark Laslo]

If you are a student you can try looking for educational discounts. I don’t know any sites off hand but typically Apple offers educational discounts directly and you may find it for less at other sites. Just be careful, I found a site that claimed to offer full program downloads for something like 1/6th of the cost and it was a scam site. If you find a deal just do a little bit of research. Most scams have been pretty well documented.

As previously mentioned B&H typically has great deals, and I know from experience they are great at giving discounts to educational institutions, but you’d probably have to check and see if your school has an account with them already and go through the school.

Good luck

[Mark Laslo]

Shane And Nace,

Thanks for the advice. I work with a lot of still photos in my project and am currently trying to reorganize my media files. Does it really make much of a difference if my pictures are on my system drive as long as the video is on a separate drive? It would make backing up with timecapsule easier since I would set it to back up my system drive and not my media drive and find another system to back up media.

Thanks,
Mark