[Mark Raudonis]

[Craig Seeman] “Guess which decks are easier to find now”

That would be Beta SP, Craig! D2 has mostly disappeared.

And yes, I have several 3/4″ machines standing by in our machine room “just in case”. Occasionally, they do get used.

Long term, I’d favor XDCAM discs over BLURAY. I agree that the future of consumer Blu ray DVD may be in doubt, but the professional XDCAM format is a different story. I see increasing adoption of that format industry wide, across many different genres of production; news, sports, reality, etc.

A PDW-U1 is such a simple machine (few moving parts) that it’s quite possible to keep one in good working order for a long time. If consumer Bluray doesn’t take off, then the drives to play it will become quite rare. In a professional environment, having a PDW-U1 around is a no brainer.

Mark

mark

[Mark Raudonis]

https://www.singularsoftware.com/pluraleyes/

[Mark Raudonis]

[Michael Slowe] “expensive and stupid”

One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor.

I think you’re confusing “archiving” and “Mastering”. Most people refer to “archiving” as the process of
storing the “ORIGINAL CAMERA MEDIA”. In the old days (tape based) you simply boxed up the camera original tapes and sent them to storage. With tapeless, file based media, it’s a whole new world of options. I work in broadcast, and when the networks want to take delivery of ALL original production elements, you can’t just hand them a firewire drive. They want something thats a bit more stable. Blu Ray data discs fit that bill. XDCAM discs which with their built in “caddy” are quite robust, and work well also, but they’re alot more expensive per gig of storage. When you’re talking about five thousand hours of original media, the price diffrential adds up quickly, so we use BLURAY DVDs.

As for the final edited masters… the de facto standard here in Hollywood has been Sony’s HDCAMsr for most projects. Yes it’s expensive, but that’s the cost of doing business here. HDCAM is a slightly cheaper format, and still a good choice. Bottom line, most final projects are printed to tape and saved that way.

mark

[Mark Raudonis]

[Craig Seeman] “there’s always 25GB and 50GB Blu-ray discs but obviously that’s not quite as secure as XDCAM disc”

Not as secure, true, but much cheaper! (By half)

We archive to BluRAY 50 gig (double sided) DVDs.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

Jesus,

Yes, this will happen. I’d suggest you think of your entire storage pool as the project, and NOT just the current project you happen to have open. FCP doesn’t care where the media lives, it can find it anywhere on the system (or network).

Therefore, if you think of your media as SEPARATE from the project, you can organize your media into a much more sophisticated format that DOESN’T rely on a project. For example, we use the plain old Mac folder and file structure to organize our media into various logical folders: Music, GrFX, Interviews, B-ROll etc. Any one editor may have half a dozen projects open simultaneously. One for Music, another for B-roll, etc.

True, you will lose the relationship to the master clip, but you can always use “reveal in finder” to show you where the clip came from. This requires a little bit of preplanning and organization on your part, but the end results are definitely worth it. We’ve organized our entire SAN this way, and have been using this workflow on dozens of shows currently on the air.

Good Luck.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

Philip,

Which version of FCP are you running? This has been an issue in the past, but as of 6.05, we have been
quite successful using MM.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

Andrew,

I can confirm the “green flash” preceding crash behavior.

We use lots and lots of XDCAM material on many different systems, and
we have observed that issue.

Some things that help: No thumbnails in the timeline. Restarting of the system at convenient intervals (like lunch), seems to ‘refresh” the memory and extend your “MTBC: Mean time between crashes”.

We work in native XDCAM timelines, but render to prores…

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

[Chris Blair] “since we hadn’t produced an entire season of shows before, they wouldn’t commit any funding during the production phase, but would commit people in the form of executive producers who would advise us during production. “

That’s NUTS! They won’t give you any money, but expect to “advise” you during production. Run, don’t walk from a deal like that!

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

[Michael Lansdell] “All the offline suites are still running FCP Studio 1 because there hasn’t been a reason to upgrade them,”

Michael,

Penny wise, pound foolish. I can’t tell you (or your boss) how to run your business, but if it were me, I’d bring EVERYONE up to a more current level. Media Manager is just one of the reasons to upgrade. There are plenty of newer codecs and workflows that just aren’t a part of Studio 1.

Staying current (or close to it) is part of the cost of doing business.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

[Chris Blair] “and still want you to deliver an entire season of shows before they’ll commit to buying them.”

Chris,

That’s just one way of working with the networks. We do shows for MTV, E!, Lifetime, Oxygen, Spike, VH1 and others. We NEVER have had to produce the entire season before getting a “green light”. In fact, we don’t start rolling UNTIL we have “funding” in place. But, typically, the networks retain copyright… not us.

The economic model you’re referring to is more of a “licensing” agreement where the producer (YOU) takes on all of the financial responsibility, retains ownership, and then sells limited rights to as many buyers as possible worldwide. It’s a deep pocket game that CAN be very rewarding… or bankrupting.
You’re essentially counting on your own creative and business skills to get you through. Any ONE network will not pay enough to cover your costs. You have to look at a global market to make any money on the project.

Mark