Want to hear a horror story about shooting directly to cards? Read on for a true story and you’ll change the way you work with tapeless video.
All DSLR cameras record video directly to cards. In the camcorder world, this is called tapeless recording as all camcorders recorded to some form of video tape until a couple of years ago.
I shoot video on a Nikon D90 and also on a Sony HVR-Z5U. The D90 goes straight to an SD card. The Z5 records to tape or CompactFlash (CF) card. Most of the time with the Z5 we record dual mode – tape for archive and CF for edit.
But I don’t have that option with the Nikon.
Everytime I dump video from my D90 to my computer there comes a moment when I have to delete the files on the SD card. It’s not easy checking every file to make sure it got copied clearly. And it’s even more difficult to keep everything logged and backed up.
I’ve been lucky. So far, nothing has been lost. But Jon Connor over at CanonFilmMakers.com had an experience recently that will open your eyes.
Scenario: Two weeks later you realize the footage you deleted off of your desktop is somehow not backed up anywhere!! Now what?
I did have a similar incident about a year ago when I discovered a main drive with corrupted files. No problem, just restore from the backup right?
Except the backup drive had been regularly failing and I hadn’t checked it in a couple of weeks. I ended up using the same tools Jon did plus spending a chunk of change with a drive restoration company to get my files back. Now everything is backed up and all backups are checked daily.
I’m adding an extra drive to hold video shot directly to cards with no tape backup. With 1 TB drives running about $110 right now it’s the cheapest insurance you can get.
-a-
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
It would be great to talk or re-cap the conversion process for D-90 from AVI to .MOV. I’ve started using mpeg streamclip for this because you can select more than one clip at a time and choose “open with mpeg streamclip” instead of Quicktime player. It will open them all in the viewer and convert the clips to pro res, 23.98, combining them into 1 long clip while doing so. Pretty handy. Any other ways to batch export the AVI’s and convert to .MOV @ 23.98 fps?
Thanks, Gerry – great idea to update a workflow for this.
I mostly use MPEG Streamclip but I load the app first then use the List command to build a batch list inside StreamClip. I also recommend opening the Adjustments dialog box and kicking up the Brightness by 1 to 3 clicks to compensate for the gamma drop during a transcode. If you spend some time playing with the controls and find a setting you like, make sure you save it as a preset so it’s easy to call up for your next transcode.
Also, I’ve switched to ProRes 422 LT – smaller file sizes, plays smoother in an RT timeline and renders a bit faster. No discernable difference in how the footage looks.
I’ll do some screen caps to show the whole work flow in a future post.
Oh yes, it is worth noting that opening a .avi file in QuickTime Pro (version 7, not the latest version) and simply clicking Save will rewrap the .avi into a .mov without transcoding. Goes very quickly with no loss. Yes, it takes longer to manually open and save a bunch of clips but it’s worth trying to see how it works for you in the FCP timeline.
-a-
It would be great to talk or re-cap the conversion process for D-90 from AVI to .MOV. I’ve started using mpeg streamclip for this because you can select more than one clip at a time and choose “open with mpeg streamclip” instead of Quicktime player. It will open them all in the viewer and convert the clips to pro res, 23.98, combining them into 1 long clip while doing so. Pretty handy. Any other ways to batch export the AVI’s and convert to .MOV @ 23.98 fps?
It would be great to talk or re-cap the conversion process for D-90 from AVI to .MOV. I’ve started using mpeg streamclip for this because you can select more than one clip at a time and choose “open with mpeg streamclip” instead of Quicktime player. It will open them all in the viewer and convert the clips to pro res, 23.98, combining them into 1 long clip while doing so. Pretty handy. Any other ways to batch export the AVI’s and convert to .MOV @ 23.98 fps?
Thanks, Gerry – great idea to update a workflow for this.
I mostly use MPEG Streamclip but I load the app first then use the List command to build a batch list inside StreamClip. I also recommend opening the Adjustments dialog box and kicking up the Brightness by 1 to 3 clicks to compensate for the gamma drop during a transcode. If you spend some time playing with the controls and find a setting you like, make sure you save it as a preset so it’s easy to call up for your next transcode.
Also, I’ve switched to ProRes 422 LT – smaller file sizes, plays smoother in an RT timeline and renders a bit faster. No discernable difference in how the footage looks.
I’ll do some screen caps to show the whole work flow in a future post.
Oh yes, it is worth noting that opening a .avi file in QuickTime Pro (version 7, not the latest version) and simply clicking Save will rewrap the .avi into a .mov without transcoding. Goes very quickly with no loss. Yes, it takes longer to manually open and save a bunch of clips but it’s worth trying to see how it works for you in the FCP timeline.
-a-