Oddessy 200/240 frm workflow

[Mat Thompson]

Hi guys
I'm heading out to do some high speed in the Phillipines with the FS700 and Oddessy combo. I will be on a boat and want to be able to efficiently offload footage but then review rushes from a laptop.

What would be the required workflow or post requirements? I understand the footy wil be recorded in raid across both drives.

Any tips/tricks muchly appreciated.

Mat

[Dave Sperling]

A couple of suggestions --
Bring more than one laptop and multiple drives, not to mention plenty of SSD's for Odyssey recordings -- you may be able to fill the ssd cards in the Odyssey very quickly, but it'll take you a lot longer to offload them twice - always remember your backups!
Spend some time and do your data usage and transfer times calculations carefully! Also remember that if you're recording to pairs of SSD's, you should have an extra drive in case one becomes flaky (since you will need an even number of working drives.)
If you're doing transfers on the boat, bring a good UPS (uninterruptable power supply) unit so you won't be worried about power on the ship.
Not sure how this would work with the Odyssey, but if you have another portable recorder you might be able to play back selected sections on the Odyssey (in slo-mo) and record directly to another recorder - recording in real time, giving you quick access to footage you may want to play with before the original cards are transferred & backed up.
If there are light sources running on ship power, be very careful about potential flicker issues! This can be a problem at any filming speed, but becomes even more noticeable at high speeds!
And of course -- test everything fully before you go!

[Mat Thompson]

Hi Dave
Thanks for your post. I'm very used to working in remote locations and the requirements it brings with it. However its really just a workflow question on this camera/recorder. I will have it for a few weeks before we leave anyway so I'm sure I can earmark any potential pitfalls and kit requirements.

Some specific questions would be...

I guess having four SSD's would be useful but do the raided clips have to come directly off of the Odessey or can the drives been removed and copied with a reader !?

Is any specific software required to re-compile/view these raided clips?

Can clips be deleted off of the Odessey if needed. - This shoot will create a lot of waste rushes for actually quite small amounts of needed material. Deleting individual files coudl be very useful.

Many thanks
Mat

[Mat Thompson]

For anyone else viewing this thread there is some interesting workflow info here.
ODYSSEY 7Q + FS700 2K Raw and HFR Workflow - Matt Allard, NewsShooter :: Convergent Design

[Dave Sperling]

you might want to take a look at the C-D website - particularly the downloads page for the 7Q.
Downloads | Convergent Design, Professional Video Recorders
as well as the manual.
When shooting material that is 'RAIDed' on the SSD's, you essentially take out the cards and copy the various files from both drives to a single folder, then run a combine utility. You should get used to that part very quickly.
But the biggest thing to remember is that if you're shooting 240FPS material you're burning through a Terabyte of data in about 20 minutes.
I had read that they might try to implement a 'last clip delete' function, but I don't think that's happened yet or even on the near horizon. Because random file deletes tend to slow down write times on drives, I doubt that there would be any delete option other than last clip. So plan on doing a lot of data transfers!

[Colin Elves]

You need a 2.5inch SATA dock or connector to download the footage - you can't download for the O7Q itself.

I'd reccommend getting a new MacBook Pro with the 1tb SSD - with the Seagate thunderbolt dock (STAE 101 I think it's called). Using that it takes about 10mins to transfer one 256gb SSD to the laptop. If you get two docks you could back up direct to a Samsung Evo SSD (the 1tb are about £450) that's probably the cheapest SSD back up option - and you'll need SSDs as bus powered spinning disks are too slow (30min for 1 256gb card) and raids aren't like to be an option on a boat (that way the laptop will be your UPS).

Workflow wise you just need Resolve Lite to check out the footage - but, again , you'll need a decent GPU in the laptop: the 2Gb GPU in the new macbool pros is pretty good - I get playback at 12fps in resolve when it's having to debayer & grade on the fly.

The CD website goes through the workflow in basic detail, but you should try and get your head around it who you still have access to the internet!

Make sure you have enough drives though. In my experience you'll shoot 750gb to 1tb of footage *per day* shooting high speed...

Colin Elves
DP, London
Colin Elves - Director of Photography and Steadicam Operator, London, UK

[Mat Thompson]

Hi Colin
Yeah I've been doing plenty of reading/watching and I think I have my head around this now. I've done plenty of shoots with phantoms and such so I now how high speed shooting goes. This setup will be a bit different because there is no end/trigger and cache record. So its going to be even more roll happy.

That said we are after something that is VERY wastefull and easy to miss so I think there will be room to just re-format and shoot.

I'm thinking a 4x256 setup for a swapout - then in the evenings deleting all eroneous rushes from the laptop should mean I'm not banking TB's and TB's of none required rushes.

I didn't know there was a resolve lite and it was free....that's useful, great!

Mat

[Colin Elves]

That sounds like a good idea - it's definitely worth getting 4xSSDs. But you really need to be thinking about some high speed storage, even if it is just enough to cover each days shoot, especially if you don't have a DIT of runner who can sit with the back ups - I don't imagine you want to wait for a slow back up to finish if there's a chance you might miss out on something important.

Resolve lite is great - but the workflow can take a little time to get used to as the cDNGs CD are forced to use are a bit non-standard.

Don't forget of storage is a problem you can use Resolve and the CD LUT you can transcode the 2K Raw to slog2 Pro res 422 in 2048x1080 overnight giving you 90% of what the Raw files have at 1/4 the file size - allowing you to delete the Raws.

[Dan Keaton]

Dear Mat,

There was mention of a Last Take Delete function.

This is not available, and for very technical reasons, this will not be implemented.

I do not know what type of computer you will be using, but getting fast external Raid systems can be a huge timesaver.

I also recommend testing the workflow thoroughly in advance.

Respectfully,

[Alister Chapman]

It's also worth considering a few things about fast raid in a portable environment. Simple raid 0 raid will be fast but less reliable as the failure of any single drive will take out the entire array. So unless you are going to use a large raid 5, raid 10 or similar array, raid is less safe than single hard drives or SSD's.

SSD's are very fast but expensive. 3.5" hard drives are a lot faster than 2.5" hard drives, but they need power. Often all they need is a 12V power supply. This could be from a camera battery or similar via a simple 12v regulator (car power adapter perhaps).

Remember that you need to raid the SSD's to record the HFR from the FS700, but once it's recorded the playback data rate is a fraction of the recording rate. I find that 2K raw will play back from the majority 3.5" USB3 drives. In fact when working with the 4K raw from Sony's F5/F55 I use off the shelf seagate 3.5" USB3 drives with acceptable results (real-time playback of 4K raw).

Backup may take a little longer to a 3.5" hard drive compared to an SSD, but once on the drive you should be fine playing back 2K raw, 2K HFR and HD ProRes from the 7Q. A 3.5" 2TB drive costs about $90 USD. My workflow is to make a primary backup to a 3.5" USB3 drive and then over night to duplicate that drive to a 2TB 2.5" USB3 drive. This way I have two independent copies of my footage. The 2.5" drives go in my carry-on for transportation, the 3.5" drives in the hold in my luggage. The 3.5" drives are used for playback etc. You could also consider setting up a batch process to convert your 2K raw slow mo to ProRes HQ or 444 overnight, putting the ProRes on the 2.5" drives. This should playback fine off the 2.5" drives and will take less space.

Last year I flew over 100,000 miles with many, many drives this way and have not lost any footage yet.

[Dave Sperling]

Good points about the overnight backups Alister!

One question - as part of your setup do you transfer multiple C-D ssd's as one batch? (So as not to have to keep waking up if you need to transfer 4 or 6 512GB ssd's overnight) If so, how do you have it set up?

[Alister Chapman]

I do one drive at a time. It takes about 15 -20 mins to backup a full 256GB SSD to a 3.5" USB3 HDD, so 4 drives would take a little over an hour. If I wanted to do more together I would just get a powered USB3 hub and connect the 4 SSD's to the hub and and copy them all at once.