best format for USB delivery

[Tom Van den Berghe]

Originally Posted by Peter Riding

Hey Paul your TV is probably older than 95% of your clients TVs and the cost of buying a new one is "peanuts" these days - in the UK at any rate, don't know about Belgium.

LG are one of the best now. You can get 4k (don't need 4k but it will upscale very nicely from 1080 and even standard def DVDs), high dynamic range, audio return channel etc for £350. The physical dimensions may attract your partner as well as they are much thinner and lighter than older sets so are easier on the housework :- )

You can pay more for an OLED spec.I have an OLED 55" and an LED 43". They are both great.

They will all do NTFS so no mucking around with FAT32. You could easily re-edit for the occasional client who still has to have FAT32 simply by doing two files instead of one file. You will still have your new TV's maximum speed over which it has trouble playing back so just experiment e.g. for MP4 I use max 20 average 14 for clients and max 24 average 14 for myself such as on my SSD laptop or on USB3 sticks of my own n.b. faster USB sticks work better in TV USB sockets.

Pete

thx Peter for this great advise! the USB3 is also good to know!

[Tom Van den Berghe]

Roger,

I always make chapters so the 4GB limit will be no problem. Handbrake can resize some wonderfull things.
Thx for the reply!

[Mervyn Jack]

Originally Posted by Chris Harding

Hi Pete

Seriously I deliver my USB's in 1280x720 (as some TV's still will downsize 1080 anyway) and I find that even at 8mbps the quality is awesome so I've never had a file exceed 4GB ... You must be running a super
Chris

You're right Chris.

I just used Handbrake to create a 1280x720 video of a 1hr 19min wedding from a .m2ts file that was 14.4Mb/s 1920x1080 and 8.4GB in size.
(I also have a .mp4 file but the .m2ts and .mp4 file sizes are almost the same.)

The resulting file is 1280x720 ~3.7Mb/s and 2.12GB in size and looks fantasic on my 1920x1080 24" computer monitor (with my glasses on).

[Chris Harding]

Hey Merv

Of course you could also put a 1920x1080 20mbps video on a huge USB but if the content sucks then it really doesn't matter. Brides are more concerned about correct coverage and decent audio too than having crisp sharp footage that doesn't have the content they asked for!! I remember a long time back I was showing a bride and groom a sample video on their (then) huge TV screen and I had shot it on my little Panasonic MD10000 SD camera with ting 1/6" sensors and just compiled into a 4:3 MPEG2 file and they just raved about "How clear it was" ... We also used to give brides an LCD video book a couple of years ago which had a 7" TFT LCD display and very limited on board memory so we had to compile the clip at 1280x720 with a bit rate of just 1000kbps yet due to the small screen it looked stunning!

[Steve Burkett]

I deliver couples good quality full HD files on 32gb USB, with 4K versions of the Trailer and Highlights Videos. For top paying clients, they get 64gb USB with 4K and HD files. It's true Brides may not see the difference between different resolutions, but in some cases the Groom is more aware and at meetings, I can get questions from them about 4K.
I think many Videographers do forget about the Groom. True in most cases, he's the silent nodding partner in any pre-wedding discussions, though I do get booked by the Groom in 1 in 10 Weddings. His opinion on video quality and my work will at least register some thoughts with the Bride, so I don't feel stumping on quality of the final videos is good policy. Having paid me to deliver a Professional product, I deliver as good quality files as my costs allows. Sure I could take advantage of some less tech savvy Brides to deliver less, but why?? In the end I simply use ntfs format with my videos presented full length and never had any comeback from couples over playback.

[David Banner]

I've been following this great thread and since it spans several years, I'm not sure what is the general consensus now that tech has changed some over time.
Do you guys still think FAT32 is best for compatibility or NTFS ok now?

[Tom Van den Berghe]

received my usb stick 32gig today. Bought 50 pieces to start with.
These are usb 2.0 so they are cheap.

I tested the free progam n2ncopy so I can copy directly to other usb sticks with the same files on it.
So in this test I used 2 usb sticks and copied 17gig of mp4 files. It took about 70 minutes!

So I want to buy a usb hub so I can copy much more usb stick at once.
Do you guys now if the usb hub needs a power adapter? A usb stick doesn't need much power but I don't know. With a power adapter it is much more "expensive"

[Pete Cofrancesco]

inexpensive usb 2 drives are horrendously slow. I’ve added a card so I can do 5 at once. I’ve notice that it slows it down further because the computer has to feed 5 concurrent streams of data.

Earlier this year I looked into usb hubs. My take away is it’s surprisingly expensive. At the top of the list are stand alone duplicators. Simple fast easy but expensive. Then there are others that plug into a computer. These are less but not cheap. I read negative reviews about some of their software and it wasn’t clear what their performance were.

The main bottle neck is the write speed of the flash drives and then there is the multiple streams. But if your going to set 20 of them copying and go to bed then the cheapest solution might be adding an external hub or a couple of pci usb cards. I’m not sure how many streams a computer can handle at once without crashing.

[Tom Van den Berghe]

received my usb hub 3.0 with 13 usb ports. This have also external power.

It took about 12 hours to copy 28gig with 2n2copy program on 32gig usb 2.0 sticks.

the good news: it worked! all the usb sticks have the same mp4 files and work.

Bad news: much too slow!

I saw this video:

Use a bunch of USB Flash drives in a RAID array. - YouTube

Because i have windows 10 this is not working for me

I found there is a tool that makes your usb flash drive from removable to fixed disk.

An with windows storage spaces you can make a storage pool (works only with fixed disks)

. so you create 1 virtual drive that contains all the drives you connected it with. In my case it would be the 13 usb flash drives.

This would be simulair as the raid configuration.

I will test this out. If someone has more info about this or has a better solution. let me know

[Donald McPherson]

Like the good old days of leaving to render overnight.

[David Banner]

Thanks guys. I hadn't considered the fact that I would need some type of hub or duplicator to deal with quantities. A couple flash drives for a wedding are one thing, but 50 or 100 for a recital quite another..
Now I need to look more into this

[David Banner]

So it sounds like USB 2.0 isn't a good idea due to much slower speed. I found some name brand for $3 on clearance at walmart I was about to buy but now I'm thinking I should spend more on 3.0 ?

[David Banner]

What are your thoughts on duplicators such as these?
Aleratec 1:10 USB 3.1 Gen 1 Copy Cruiser
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...2855/KBID/3801

and standalone
Vinpower digital USB Shark
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...2855/KBID/3801

[Pete Cofrancesco]

Originally Posted by David Banner

So it sounds like USB 2.0 isn't a good idea due to much slower speed. I found some name brand for $3 on clearance at walmart I was about to buy but now I'm thinking I should spend more on 3.0 ?

In this type of work besides time, media is the largest part of your expense so you want to spend as little as possible. The highest quality dvds are only $.60 and take only 6 minutes to burn where as the cheapest usb 2 flash drives start $2.50 and can take 20 minutes or more to copy. I buy 16gb SanDisk Cruzers for around $5, they're slow usb 2 but very reliable (never had a problem or customer complain). I am still thinking of going to either less expensive generics or to the usb 3 so I don't have to waste my time.

Be aware of that there are 2 bottle necks with flash drives. The first is the memory speed and the second is the interface. A lot of the cheapest usb 3 drives have the faster interface but still have slow memory. I always like to read a performance review or buy a few and test out whether the price/performance is a good value.

Also note the flash market prices can fluctuate greatly. Last year there was a shortage and prices shot up.

[Tom Van den Berghe]

no complaints so far about the usb stick from clients. Now I have 2 complaints.

2 times the brand of the tv is "philips" that causes problems.

From 1 I have been to the clients home. The strange thing is that some chapters play and others not.

On their tv upstairs they said everything is fine (no philips brand tv)

Normally they all have the same codec MP4 and the usb stick is FAT32.

First I exported from sony vegas pro to a MP4 file and in handbrake I resized it.


I downloaded the testvideo from philips that should work.

With mediainfo I got this:

video stream: AVC and audio stream: AAC LC
MPEG-4
main@L4
24 fps

when I checked my handbrake file:

video stream: AVC and audio stream: AAC LC
MPEG-4
main@L3.1
50 fps

So the mail level is different. Maybe that tv It doesn't support a lower 3.1 level ?
Framerate is different but normally that couldn't be the problem.

I don't know how to solve this. any thoughts?