I bought my first tapeless camera in January 2008 (my Sony EX-1) which is when I first created my storage system.  I had been freelance for one year prior, and was shooting almost all tape-based cameras during that time.  Interestingly, when I (and many others) began using tapeless cameras a lot of naysayers talked about the security issues of storing all this data, as opposed to the “fool-proof” solution that tape-based cameras offered.  I quickly realized that, at least in my case, it was quite the opposite solution.  In my years of shooting on tape-based cameras (as a freelancer and the company I worked for prior), very rarely were these tapes cloned, or backed up.  Sure they got digitized at the time of editing, but what if we didn’t edit for a while and something happened to the tapes.  I’ve certainly had decks eat tapes before and that could be disaster.  But with the tapeless solutions, backing up is an easy part of the process.

When I bought my EX-1, I also upgraded my computer to a new MacPro, so I needed to come up with a storage system for editing, as well as archive.  I briefly looked into some of the bigger RAID systems (things like the Drobo, which I am not even sure were around then) but most were very pricey or slow.  Also while a lot of these systems offered redundancy, by storing data to separate drives, they did not allow for separating these drives easily for offsite storage (which is high priority to me).  It’s great to have all your data on 2 or 3 different “things” but if they are in the same place, you are not protected against theft, fire, or water damage.

I did make the decision on basing my system around hard drives.  There exist a lot of naysayers to this approach, especially, because of the risks that exist with hard drive failure, but they are cheap and fast.  I knew that I needed my system to be something easy to implement, or else I just was not going to keep up with it.  (While systems like data discs and tape drives have lower risk they take a long time to manage.)

So here is what I came up with:

For archive I decided on building external drives by purchasing internal hard drives and external cases.  My reason for this was that the warranty on most of the internal drives is 3-5 years, whereas most of the all-in-one external systems had a 1-year warranty on the drive.  Initially I was buying 500 GB drives, but have gone to 750GB, 1TB, and now 2TB drives.  I always buy 2 separate brands of drives (typically Hitachi, Seagate, or Samsung) and create a storage pair with one of each brand.  This helps to protect against a (unlikely) bad run of drives in the manufacturing.  I store these in inexpensive external cases by Eagle Tech (which I get for about $22 from NewEgg).  They have USB 2.0 and eSATA connections.  I just bought an eSATA card so that will help with transfer speeds, but I didn’t care too much because these were just for archive storage.  I keep one set of drives in my office and one set at home for added security.  There are similar solutions that involve bare internal drives, with a drive docking device but I really like the ability to take my drives and be able to plug them in and use them without a separate device.

When I finish a shoot all my footage goes to a pair of these drives, and when I am ready to edit I bring the footage over to my edit system.  I edit probably 60% of what I shoot, so in cases that I am not editing, after a shoot I dump the footage to a drive for the producer or client.  I still will archive all my footage on my own drives as a backup for them.  I have had a few occasions where a client called me because they lost or screwed up their footage and I could come in and save the day with my copy.  That is a major plus that didn’t easily exist when shooting on tape.  Clients REALLY like the idea that they get that security.

For editing, I am using all 4 drive bays in my MacPro.  One is for the system drive (applications), one is a “library” drive (photos, music, and the Final Cut cache), and two are configured through the MacOS in a RAID 0 configuration (which is for speed, not redundancy).  I built the machine with 2-500GB drives to make a 1TB RAID, but am about to upgrade to create a 3TB RAID.  Since this is my “active” projects, I try to offload projects to the archive drives as they get finished, but as I have more and more active and ongoing projects I have needed a bigger system for editing.  For each of these 3 drives in the MacPro (system, library, and RAID) I have an external drive as backup.  I use Synk (by Decimus Software) as my backup system.  I imagine Time Machine would work well for many, but at the time I set this up I had heard of some issues between Time Machine and Final Cut, so I avoided it.  The other benefit of Synk is that you can backup the system drive to a create a bootable backup.  That way if your computer dies for some reason, you can plug that backup into another computer and boot off of it, so that the other computer appears as your computer.  I keep my backup drives of the computer and RAID offsite as well.

I imagine that some might find some holes in the system and there is a little bit more manual labor involved than some other all-in-one systems, but this solution works well for me, is economical and (knock on wood) secure.  Between all my drives, I have close to 20TB of storage at this point, a number that not too long ago, seemed astronomical.

If you have any questions about my storage workflow, don’t hesitate to ask.

I have always been a little weary of whether I could even view 3-D properly.  You know those pictures that are supposed to pop out at you if you look at them the right way?  I have never achieved that effect, despite much time spent staring and concentrating.  Apparently my eyes (I think they call it binocular vision) just won’t produce that image.  And earlier 3-D technology was the same way for me, never really popping out the way people sitting next to me said it would.  But I knew that the technology had improved so I figured I’d check it out.

As far as I could tell the 3-D in Avatar DID work for me.  While I never felt that the characters were sitting in my lap or that I wanted to reach out to try to touch what I was seeing, I did see images emerging from the 2-D space.  I would say, though, that it took me about 10-15 minutes of the film to settle into “how” to view the film, and I felt myself getting a little headache at the beginning.  Long story short (as I don’t want to make this a review of Avatar), the 3-D was cool, but I left the theater feeling that it did not greatly enhance my viewing experience.  If felt a little gimmicky to me.

Now I don’t want to sound like some antiquated techno-phobe.  I am far from that.  I LOVE new technology in the video field, and I try to embrace and use new tools as early as possible.  I think, for the most part, advances in video imaging have really increased the viewing experience, as well as my enjoyment of producing these images.  I just feel that 3-D is one of those things that does NOT need to become the norm.  I know when HD came out, I looked at it as the holy grail, and a VERY expensive acquisition format, and now I have been producing at least 85% of my content in HD for the last few years, and shooting in some flavor of HD for about 5 years.  But I look at 3-D and hope this does not become as prevalent in the tv/movie world as HD.  Several tv networks are starting to build and roll out 3-D channels, and camera companies are starting to design 3-D rigs.  Panasonic has developed this 3-D camera at a relatively affordable $21K.

So why don’t I like this?  Well last night I turned on the Grammy Awards for a few minutes, just in time for the tribute to the late, great Michael Jackson.  Right before the song they said to put on your 3-D glasses, and a little icon reminder appeared in the lower corner.  Well, as it turns out, I don’t have a pair of 3-D glasses?  Do you?  So I sat and watched what I dubbed as “No-D” as a blurry Celine Dion and then many other famous singers came on the screen.  My nice HD plasma screen suddenly looked like crap.

Basically I don’t want to have to wear glasses to watch tv.  Many people already need some sort of corrective lenses, but they probably don’t want to have to put on additional glasses to view 3-D content.  Can they make 3-D TVs that don’t require glasses?  I don’t know.  But either way I am not sure I really need to feel THAT connected to my television.  I imagine some content would probably be neat in 3-D but I don’t think I need to feel like Al Roker is popping out of my television set.

While it would probably be interesting to shoot some 3-D footage for specific projects, I don’t think it needs to be the norm for all production.  I imagine the equipment and post-processing load would be greatly increased, and I have yet to experience all the merits of 3-D.  Will it become as ubiquitous as HD is now?  I don’t know, time will tell.

I would love to hear your comments though on this issue.

I feel at home behind the camera, and am very lucky to make a living doing such a wide variety of projects. This is a short sample of recent work done on projects ranging from corporate, documentary, broadcast, and narrative films. The footage was shot on several cameras including the Sony F3, Sony EX-1, Panasonic AF100, Canon 5D and 7D.

The music was composed for this reel by my friend and colleague, Jason Jordan.