Saving terabytes of storage when editing DSLR footage

[Nino Leitner]

Hi guys,

I've come across the brilliant idea of a guy I know from twitter to save gigabytes or even terabytes of storage on your hard disks when editing DSLR footage and so I've written a blog about it:
Save terabytes of storage with your DSLR footage / tips for storage options | Nino Film - Blog - Nino Leitner

I also included my personal storage workflow and what I use for storing the massive amounts of video data we acquire every day.

Looking forward to your input and would love to hear what you guys use!

Nino

[James Donnelly]

I use Cineform Neoscene, and my intermediate files are huge, at roughly 1.5 times original size.

It might be possible to do something like you suggest with Vegas Pro, e.g. using something like Proxy Stream (an offline editing script) to create the intermediate files and switch between them.

However, it would worry me a bit that I would have to sit through the transcoding process every time I dug up a project. Cineform is slow, even on a quad core.

[Perrone Ford]

Interesting...

Hard drives are running about $100 per TB right now. Darn few people need more than 4 TB per project while it's a working project. I understand that this paradigm of actually having to use professional HD coddecs is foreign to those coming from the world of DV or HDV who are used to dealing with 12GB per hour, but there is a reason professional editors have been dealing with TB drives for such a long time. So this stuff is perfectly normal to us.

There is absolutely NO WAY ON EARTH I'd delete files in the middle of a working project. Make your intermmediates, finish the edit, hand over the deliverables, and then remove the intermmediates once you've got buy off from the client.

And given FCPs flaky nature with relinking with media I most certainly would risk your procedure with that NLE.

[Sean Vincent]

You need to watch the DSLR shootout on Zacuto's website. In the latest episode they compared the original H2.64 files to the converted Pro Res files. The Pro Res files looked way better than the original files. Something about converting to 4.2.2 makes them stand up to grading and colour correction too.

So... don't go deleting your pro res files. In fact, don't delete anything.

Your Original H2.64 files are your rushes... your footage. Convert to Pro Res and then back up somewhere safe. Edit using Pro Res files or even Proxies (made using Magic Bullet Grinder).

I wouldn't delete a single file... ever. Drives are cheap.

[Matt Davis]

Reminds me of the old days - make low rez intermediate files of your master footage, edit them 'off line' (remember those days? Or even fuzzy VHS with BITC?), then only transcode the stuff you need to your On Line format (e.g. ProRes).

But that workflow took time, facilities and effort which tends to lead to extra cost - the DV workflow (in that - in the sub-broadcast market at least - offline pretty much disappeared and we worked on-line from the get go) has set budgetary expectations for a large proportion of the market. Sometimes a bunch of disks are cheaper than the transcode time.