As it turns out, the internet is a great way to restart communications when it seems to be all but broken down. 

Less than 24 hours after my “Boycott G-Tech” post on SuiteTake.com, I received several calls from executives at both G-Technology as well as Hitachi. The calls came in while I was editing so they went to voice mail, but when I had a chance to finally call one of them back I was pleasantly surprised that the tone of the conversation was very constructive and apologetic.

At this point I’ve had a few phone calls with Todd Etherton, who is the Director of World Wide Customer Support at Hitachi. The very first thing he said was that they were very sorry for the experience that I had with their tech support team, and that they agreed that something needed to be changed. We talked for about 10 minutes and then I asked him to call me back when they had a plan actually in place so that I could talk about it on the blog (instead of speculate about what they might do). 

The next morning (still less than 48 hours since my post hit) I get another call (again while I’m editing) and I call him back in the evening on my way home. Todd tells me that in response to my blog post, they have made a few significant changes that will alleviate a repeat experience like the one that I had. 

First, everyone at G-Tech that is in the position of receiving a tech support or customer support call is being brought up to speed on the proper way to handle out of warranty big box units, like the G-Speed XL. Clearly there was not much of a plan before, so people really were not sure what the policy was. That’s no longer the case (or will not be in the very near future). He also agreed that instead of a customer support tech parsing out information one little thing at a time, more information should be offered by the tech right up front, knowing that I still need to get my unit fixed. This would have cut the exchanges down to only a couple of emails and saved both of us a lot of time. 

The second (and more major) change is that G-Technology is contracting with another company to make all necessary parts for the G-Speed and G-Speed XL units available for purchase to customers directly who are out of warranty. 

The way it will work in the near future is like this:

Let’s say you have a bad power supply, or a fan that stops working. You call G-Tech and find out that your unit is out of warranty, so they can’t cover the repair under the warranty agreement. However, they will give you the contact information of the company that will sell you the parts you need directly (this info will also be available on their website). They are close to having a final agreement with a partner that will help them facilitate this, and already have a tentative agreement with the parts manufacturer to allow them to sell the parts for G-Tech products directly to this other vendor. While I personally would prefer to deal just with G-Tech directly and not have to get another company involved, at least it’s a solution that works. I am no longer left stranded with a broken unit. 

As you might imagine, this sort of thing can not happen over night. It involves contract details to be worked out and I’m sure legal approval from many parties. So in the mean time, G-Tech has changed its “out of warranty” policy and has an updated statement on their website. 

Basically, if you have a problem – give them a call and chances are very good they are going to take care of you. They plan to do this until they have finished executing their plan to have a 3^rd party company help out. 

So, all is all that ends well? 

It’s too early to say. I will admit I was very impressed with how Todd handled the conversation and the problem, and was very open and honest with not only what they were doing, but the challenges involved. But I could tell that he and the company were both surprised and embarrassed about the experience that I had, and they did not want anybody else to have the same issue. They took it very seriously and were moving fast to make whatever changes needed to be made. I got the impression from Todd as well as others that had left voice mail messages, that they were as surprised as I was. 

In the longer term, time will tell if this was a one-time issue or a sign of things to come. I always have to balance the fact that G-Tech of today is not the exact same G-Tech as before, given then have been purchased twice, and now that Western Digital is purchasing Hitachi, it will be the third time. That’s 3x removed from the original company and management structure, and I know from having lived through that type of experience that things can get very messy, and often do.  

I will give them the benefit of the doubt for now, and let the chips fall where they may over the next several years. 

In my continuing effort to find a solid, reliable and affordable solution for long term archival of our editing projects, I have spent the last 12 months testing and creating a workflow for yet another product solution. Unlike when I reviewed the Cache~a a few years back (the positive review since removed from the site), I decided to spend a lot more time really running it through the paces. I learned my lesson the hard way with the Prime Cache and made changes to my review process.

The product that I’m reviewing this time is the “Edit Bay Production Desktop” software and hardware package from the Tolis Group. It has turned out to be quite the winner, and I’m excited to share our experience with it. While they do offer several different solutions of hardware/software or software only solutions (you provide the hardware), I’m going to focus on this one all in one package. It’s my feeling that this is the best fit for the small to medium sized post house with 1-5 workstations. To see some of their offerings, check out their website.

http://www.tolisgroup.com

What’s Included – Installation

What I liked about the “Edit Bay Production Desktop” package right from the onset was that it was a complete solution for your Mac. You provide a G5 tower, Xserve or MacPro computer with a open PCIe slot (must be a 8x slot), and they provide you with everything else.

In your open PCIe slot you will install a SAS host bus adaptor. The card they provide is the ATTO ExpressSAS H680, and it was as easy to install as a video card. It’s as simple as removing the side panel of your tower and adding the card to your open slot.

(Above is the Expansion Slot Utility that is on most, but not all Power Macs. Because the system we have the card installed on (a quad G5) does not support this utility, I took this snap from a different computer in the office just to show the utility. So don’t be surprised that in this shot the ATTO card is not listed. This utility allows you to configure the speed of your slots by dividing up the bandwidth in whichever way best suits your setup)

Once booted up, you install a driver for the ATTO card from the included CD, reboot again and the card is ready for use.

After that, turn the machine off and attach the LTO drive. Depending on the package that you choose, you will receive either a LTO-4 or LTO-5 drive. Both are HP drives in a external case. We have the LTO-5 drive.

With the LTO drive attached and the machine booted up, install the BRU Producer Edition software (from here on referred to as BRU PE) . This is really the heart of the product and is written for OSX specifically. Installation is as easy as mounting the included CD ROM or downloaded .dmg disk image and running the installer. Now you’re ready to start.

Hardware Details

As mentioned, the LTO drive is a Hewlett Packard unit inside of a external case, and has a single SAS connector. The case is nothing special, and if anything is a bit on the ugly side. In this case, form did not follow function, it just never showed up to the party. It’s not a big deal given that the unit will be located out of sight in most instances, but it’s still worth noting.

But there is one thing I really dislike about the case. It is noisy. I don’t have any sound measuring equipment, but being the nerd that I am I can tell you this unit is LOUD when it’s on. Too loud if you ask me. And I’m not talking about when the tape is shuttling all over the place (it’s even louder then), I’m saying just when you flip on the power button. I don’t think any attempt was made what so ever to make this thing quite, and it is far too loud to have in a edit suite while you’re working. Even if you’re not doing sound editing, it will drive you insane after awhile. We DO have it in a edit suite, but only run the backups after hours because of the noise it creates. When I return in the morning and open the edit suite door, it sounds like I’m entering a machine room that’s full of all kinds of hardware fans.

I asked Tollis about this, and they said they didn’t consider this to be a noisy unit. I disagree, especially when you’re selling it as a “Edit Bay” product. There’s nothing physically wrong with the unit, it’s not as if a fan is broken, so it’s just the way it was designed. We plan to relocate ours into a machine room soon with all of the other noisy gear.

Our Setup

It’s important to note that all of our backups are done over gigabit ethernet. What that means is that we can keep the LTO-5 software and hardware on a central machine, but still access every machine in the office to do backups. In our case, we only have 2 places that the editing projects and media are stored, but neither of those are on the local machine running BRU PE.

As shown in the diagram, we have multiple machines accessing 2 main media drives, and a G5 that we use exclusively for BRU PE.

Software Overview

Having used a few different backup programs over the years, I can tell you that backup software (regardless of backup media type) falls into two categories. There is the really full featured software that was well thought out and does virtually everything you need, but is somewhat complicated to learn and use. And in the other camp you have the software that’s very easy and intuitive to use, but falls short of doing anything beyond the most basic tasks and usually lacks some critical features. I think this is the first time I’ve used a piece of backup software that straddle both camps nicely.

If there’s one thing that hits you when you first start using BRU PE, it’s that it’s so simple it’s almost disturbingly easy to use. I kept thinking I must be missing something, or maybe I was doing something wrong and just didn’t know it yet. But that was not the case.

Here are the general steps to creating a backup in its most basic form.

1. Launch the program.
2. Drag and drop full volumes, folders or individual files from direct attached or network mounted machines into the main window
3. Click on the “Create Archive” button.
4. Go have lunch and see a movie.

Seriously, it’s THAT EASY. That’s not to say that there are not more options that you could choose, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to. This in itself is proof that just as their promotional information points out, you can train the most junior level of your staff to do this in just a few seconds. Even after using the Cache~a product (the Prime Cache) for nearly 2 years, I never felt like I had a good handle on how it worked or even what a good workflow was. Who knew that well thought out, well designed and properly executed software could be both powerful and easy to use!?

If you do nothing more than click on the “create archive” button, here is what will happen.

First, the software will scan the files that you dragged to the window and display a estimated size of the final archive. This is handy to make sure your final archive is not larger than the media you are putting it on (although you can span tapes, so that in itself is not a big deal).

If you do nothing, this dialog will go away after 30 seconds and it will start the archiving process. Obviously, how long it takes has everything to do with the amount of data you’re backing up, but generally speaking it’s very fast. There is a very nice, good looking progress window that provides all kind of useful information.

Once the archive has been created, the software will then automatically verify the archive. This is the process of comparing the data on the hard drive to the data on the tape and making sure everything matches perfectly. What’s interesting is that this is done a a 2k level, checking and comparing at 2k intervals. While this adds a bit more to the final archive size, what you get in trade is a much more robust ability to catch errors during the backup and recover from them later should you have any on the tape.

After the verify is done, a summary is displayed with several reporting options.

In addition to doing full backups, BRU PE also handles both differential and incremental backups, giving you flexibility on how you want to handle your archives. This comes in most handy if you’re doing regular scheduled backups of full systems and don’t want to backup everything all the time.

That’s the very simple overview of how it works. In a later section I’ll go into more detail of how we use the unit and what our post-production work flow is.

TAR vs BRU Format

It’s probably a good idea to compare the BRU archive format to what many would consider the long standard of tape backup, TAR.

The majority of tape backup systems are based on the long standing TAR format. TAR has been around for many years and is a cross platform standard for tape backups. I’m generally in favor of open standards vs closed standards (but don’t try to take any of my iOS devices from me!). There is comfort in knowing a technology does not reside with a single company. But that’s not the whole picture to consider, or even the most important when it comes to creating backups.

As The Tolis Group tells the story, the BRU format was created because of the shortcomings of the very old unix based TAR format (TApe Archive). While the TAR format has been around for many years and is widely used and accepted, that doesn’t come without flaws. Just a few of the shortcomings include lack of Checksum-based Verification, Recognition of Media Errors During Backup and the ability to recover from corrupted media. The BRU format was designed to fill in the gaps of TAR and to provide new modern features that make backups more robust and reliable.

While this review is of the Mac version of BRU PE, the fact is that if you create a backup tape on a Mac system, you can later restore it on any other supported system, using any other version of the BRU software. For example, you can take your OSX created archive and with the proper software and the catalog file, restore it using BRU Server for Windows or BRU Workstation on Oracle/Sun Solaris.

One thing that BRU handles very well, is metadata on your files. Unlike so many other backup systems we’ve tried (especially the Cache~a device) all of the important metadata is included as part of your backup and restore process. For example, file attributes such as ownership, permissions, creation and modification dates are all retained through the backup and restore process. Even hard and symbolic links are reproduced with all of their attributes intact.

If you’re interested in knowing more, BRU has a great white paper on their website that explains the significant differences.

Our Workflow

One of the most important parts of any backup plan is having a good workflow. You need a way to communicate when a project is done, when it’s prepped and ready to be archived, when the archive is complete and verified and when it’s OK to delete the media and free up drive space. It’s also a good idea to keep track of what’s on each tape as well with a cataloging system. After many revisions and improvements to our workflow, we finally have what I would consider a solid plan in place. That’s what I will describe here. While the details I describe here are very specific to our setup, you should easily be able to adapt it to your operation, even if you’re not using BRU or a LTO backup system.

Finder Organization

A good foundation starts in the finder. Our projects are either ACTIVE projects, or COMPLETED projects. By default, if a project is not complete it keeps the ACTIVE project status until it is complete. This can be anywhere from a few months to over a year in some cases (although that’s rare).

At Edit Creations we have 3 main edit suites, and they share two different Fibre RAID systems. We have what I have always called a semi-poor mans shared drive system. The two MacPros we have are attached directly to their own dedicated RAID systems over 4-gig fiber. But those dedicated drives are shared over Gigabit Ethernet with each other, and a MacBook Pro laptop edit system. Overall, it works out great. It allows us to open and edit with any project, in any of the 3 rooms, and have access to everything – even the render files. The MacBook Pro has no projects stored locally, and instead uses both of the RAID drives from the two MacPro Systems. This works out great because we can use a small SSD drive in the Laptop to speed it up while using the RAID drives for all of the heavy storage.

On each of the RAID drives, we have a series of folders.

Active projects are stored in a single folder, and are organized by job number. We follow a rigid folder structure that’s the same starting point for every job.

If a project is complete, it’s moved to the “Project Archive” on the same RAID drive that it’s currently located. There are 3 different phases of a project that is considered complete.

1) Needs Media Managing

2) Ready to Archive

3) Ready to Delete

Here’s how each of those stages are handled.

Needs Media Managing

About once a month I look over all of the projects listed in the “Active Projects” folder, and I have each editor do the same thing. While multiple editors may work on the same project, there’s almost always one person that’s considered the lead editor on a job and is ultimately responsible for the job.

As the projects are reviewed, projects that are considered complete are highlighted in the finder using the YELLOW label. Once done reviewing the active projects folder, all of the projects marked in YELLOW are moved to the stage 1 folder of the project archive folder – Needs Media Managing.

Each of the projects located in this folder now need the final sequences in the edit folder media managed so that all of the media used in the final edited sequences is included inside of the project folder. The main goal at this point is to create an archived project that can be opened at a later date and edited if needed. All of this media needs to be consolidated into the project folder, not the capture scratch folder.

Again, since we use a template driven work flow, there is always a bin in every FCP project called “Edit”. During the process of archiving, everything inside of the edit bin is media managed and consolidated into the project folder, so that everything needed to open that job is in a single location.

In the example shown here, there were several sequences for this single project (I shutter to think how I would have to handle this in FCPx). There were many versions of this final video for different regions, and in different languages. I want to have each and every final sequence in a form that allows me to easily make revisions should I need to in the future.

With the “Edit” bin selected, I select Media Manager and am presented with a window of options that help me decide how I want to handle the media for these sequences. Because I don’t want to save absolutely everything, I need to optimize the settings here.

I choose to COPY the media from these sequences, but also choose to discard any media that was not used in the final sequences. This alone saves a ton of space on most projects. While you can add handles that will give you some wiggle room on each shot, I almost always choose not to do this. I rarely need it, and over time it’s just wasted space on the backup tape unless you really need it.

The location of the archived media is set to the “Project Archive” folder inside of the current project folder, and the new FCP project file that it creates is saved in the FCP Project folder with the exact same name, but with “PA” appended to the end (we always use “PA” to represent Project Archive”.

Once this process is complete, the folder is then turned orange in the finder and moved into the second folder labeled “Ready to Archive”.

Ready to Archive

Once enough projects are moved to the “Ready To Archive” folder, they are organized into subfolders. Each of the subfolders is named with the name of the LTO tape it will be going on, and projects are added and subtracted until the folder size is around 1.2 TB. This is the approximate size that we know will fill a LTO-5 tape, but still leave a bit or breathing space. While we could avoid the subfolder process and do all of the organization inside of the BRU PE software, we have found over time that it’s just more flexible to work it all out in advance, and then just copy that single “pre weighed” folder to the LTO tape.

With the folder organized and the proper size, we’re ready to archive it.

Using BRU

Creating an archive is so simple, you have to wonder how other companies like Cache~a have missed the mark by so much. At its most basic, it’s a drag and drop function. At its most complex, you have some additional options and navigation, but it’s still stupid simple. Let’s take a look at the easy option first – what BRU calls QuickArchive View.

QuickArchive View

When you first launch BRU PE you are asked for an administrator password for that machine. This is not for security purposes or access control, but instead to allow BRU PE to properly restore files with the correct permissions/metadata, and to the location of your choosing. As the notice on the screen says, you can still operate the software without it, but you may have read/write issues later.

Once open, you’re presented with a very simple mac like interface. In fact, the only way to get files loaded into the window is by doing a drag and drop. As mentioned earlier, we pre-prep our folders with the jobs we need to archive, and make sure that folder will fit onto the tape that we have. This is especially helpful if we’re trying to top off a tape.

Please note that this review was written on and off over several months, so as a result some of the continuing action screen shots will not match up. For example, the folder we prepared was for Archive 85, but the one I’m showing in this example is Archive 88.

As you can see, there are only a few checkboxes, and most are self explanatory. At this point it’s as simple as dragging our folder onto the file window and releasing the mouse.

While it has defaulted to “Append Archive”, which will continue to add to a previous archive tape that still has room on it, in this case I’m going to be using a new tape, so it will actually end up being a overwrite.

If you had the “provide job metadata information” box checked, this screen will appear allowing you to add other details about the archive. In general, we don’t actually use this feature since we have a very rich index of everything we archive though CDFinder (covered shortly).

One nice feature that I like is the preview mode. Before it starts writing to a tape, it gives you an estimate as to how much space you will need on the tape. This will help you catch problems prior to spending hours of backup time, only to find out you were 500 megs short of space on the tape. If you don’t respond to the estimate, it will continue with the archive after 30 seconds automatically.

Now that the archive is running, you’re presented with a very satisfying information screen that shows the progress, what file it’s currently working on and a time estimate. I say satisfying because watching how fast some of the files are getting backed up gives me a nice warm feeling inside.

Once the operation is complete, you’re presented with the final screen that gives you a few different options. This is one of the best features of the software.

First, you can create what BRU PE calls a “BRUsetta Stone CD”, that contains the tape catalog, metadata and a copy of the BRU PE software. This is great if you need to restore that tape using another machine, because it includes everything you will need to get the job done.

The second option is to export the catalog file for backup, or to move the tape to another system for restore (assuming that other system already has the software installed).

The third option (the one that we use) is to print the details of the job, including every file that was backed up, error messages (if any) and backup and verification information. We don’t print it out to paper, we just print to a PDF and keep it stored on the server for reference should we ever need it. A typical backup job for us creates a report that’s often over 100 pages long, so if you really do send it to a printer, make sure to have a few extra reams of paper standing by.

The one thing that we always verify in the report is that there were no errors during backup or verification. As long as both of those numbers are “0”, the backup is considered solid and we pop the tape and add it to the shelf.

We also setup the BRU PE software to send a email to all the editors on staff when it’s complete, because that too includes a more boiled down summary of the job, and if it was completed successfully.

Advanced View

For most people, the QuickArchive View is going to get the job done. What I really like about it is that it’s hard to get confused over something so simple. But if you are feeling like you don’t want the dumbed down interface, take a look at the advanced view. At anytime, you can switch between them just by clicking the icon in the upper right corner.

In the advanced view, the 2 main options that are added are the ability to navigate to specific areas using the shortcut icons, and the ability to schedule regular backups using the scheduling function. You can drag and drop files in this mode, but you can also navigate around the hard drive and add files and folders by double clicking on them. This brings me to one of my complaints about the software.

When you’re navigating around the file system on OSX, in the finder or in most programs, double clicking on a folder is how you open it to expose its contents. Not so when using BRU. To get the same result inside of BRU PE you’re forced to click on the little disclosure triangle for the directory, which will open it up to expose the contents (which also works in the finder). However, if you by instinct double click on a folder to open it, it will not actually open it but instead add it to the list of items to be archived. This is extremely counter intuitive, and hard to overcome even once you know it because it’s so second nature to use this action when opening folders. It certainly flies in the face of the Apple Interface Guidelines. If you’re not careful, you can easily end up adding additional files and directories that you had no intention of backing up. This really surprises me given how mac-like the software is otherwise. This is probably one of the reasons that I prefer the QuickArchive View.

Operation otherwise is the same. You can get into saving job definitions, which is like a backup set but I’m not going to cover that since it’s not applicable to the type of archives we’re talking about here.

Tape Doubler

While this review covers the single drive setup that’s best for the edit bay, it’s worth noting that if you had 2 drives attached, BRU PE has a nice feature called “Doubler Mode”. This allows you to backup the same data to two different tapes, without having to run the same archive process twice. If you’re in the habit of making one copy for on-site storage, and one for off-site storage, this could be a big time saver. We only have a single drive, so we were not able to test this feature ourselves.

Archive Library

There’s no point of going through all this work if you can’t find what you need later. We have a pretty simple library system that was easy to put into place. While BRU PE does have its own internal library system (covered later), we find our solution to be better for our workflow.

Once we have a 1-1 duplicate of a archive folder to LTO tape, and we have verified that the contents of both are the same (using the verify function as part of the BRU PE software), we scan and catalog the folder that was the source for that particular tape. By doing so, we have a complete listing of what is on the tape that we can search anytime from any computer in the office, while the tapes are sitting on the shelf. The program we use to do this is called “CD Finder” from West-Forest-Systems.

CDFinder

Don’t let the name throw you. CDFinder is a cataloging/indexing program that works with everything from removable media to full hard drives. I’m actually surprised that they have not rebranded the program yet given how dated the software sounds just based on the name itself. I would guess they even miss out on sales because people see the “CD” and think “I don’t even use CD’s”.

But unlike many programs I’ve tried in the past, CDFinder does the job perfectly, is a light-weight program that launches fast and indexes almost as fast, and finding that needle in the haystack is as simple is typing in a search term and hitting return. I also appreciate that the programmer (Norbert M. Doerner) keeps the program up to date and is always adding new useful features. Only a few weeks after Lion was released they released a Lion version of their program. When a big OS update like Lion comes out, you really find out which developers are dedicated to their programs and which are not.

I’m not going to do a full review of the CDFinder program, you can do that yourself or watch some of their video tutorials on-line. What I will do is give you the basics of how we use it.

Because over time we’ve had different series of archives (hard drives, then LTO, and some client specific) we created a few folders inside of CDFinder to organize our catalog files.

Inside of each of those folders is a list of the different media that was cataloged, and what is on each of them.

Creating new catalog is as easy is clicking on the “new” button, and selecting the folder, removable media or hard drive you want a catalog of, and hitting OK. The drive is scanned and a new catalog file is added to the library.

If you really want to get crazy, you can even have CDFinder create thumbnails of images as part of the catalog so when you’re browsing later you can get a sense of the images you’re looking at. Here’s a look at just some of the cataloging options you’re given in CDFinder.

Finding what you want is just as easy. Open the find window, choose the criteria you would like to search by, and hit find. A list of results will appear, and clicking on any of those results in the window with all the info that you need to reload that file or directory.

If I have one gripe about the CDFinder program, it’s that they require that you purchase a “business license” to store the catalog file on a network share. It’s like Microsoft saying you can’t save a word document on your NAS drive because you didn’t buy a business license. I think where I choose to save my file is up to me, and I should’t have to pay extra to add back in a feature that every other program on the planet already includes. You may be wondering why this matters. It matters because if you want to use multiple computers to access the data that you’ve cataloged, you need to put the catalog file in a central location, and then point them all to it. But on the “Private” license (for $39) you are required to save the catalog file locally on the computer the software is installed on. That’s fine if you have one computer, but we can’t get by with just that. So instead, you have to pay $149 for the 2-user business license. That’s right, for more than $100 extra, you get the privilege to save your file on the network, and share it with ONE other user. There are no other additional features in the business licensed program. This is just bad business in my opinion, and does not reflect well on the company.

My gripe aside, I like the program, think that it’s well written and it’s very actively maintained. I’ll step down from my soap box now.

Ready To Delete

Now that everything is on the LTO tapes, cataloged and we’re confident that there are no errors, it’s time to move the projects to the 3^rd and final finder folder, “Ready To Delete”.

This is one of the most important steps in our workflow, and I prefer to save this final step for myself and only myself. The reason being, when it comes to deleting projects from the edit systems – I want to be sure if a mistake is made, it’s on me. I can handle being pissed at myself and I can’t be fired. It also serves as a nice check/balance. I’m able to verify that all of the proper steps were followed before this undoable step.

This is where having such a unique job numbering system comes in extremely handy, and helps keep you from deleting files that you may not want to delete. The goal at this stage is not only to remove the project files that we just backed up to the LTO tape, but to remove ALL files associated with this project, and only this project. That includes the capture scratch and all audio and video render files. And they need to be removed from both RAID drives, since it’s not unusual for projects to be edited in multiple rooms. The way we handle this is with a program called Path Finder. It’s a very full featured Finder replacement, but I only use it for this one purpose – its ability to search multiple local and remote locations at the same time and return all files in a single window.

Path Finder

Path Finder allows you to search your entire computer or specific folders just like the Finder, but unlike version 10.5 or later of the Finder (including Lion) you can not set multiple custom locations. In our case, we limit the search to just the two RAID drives. By doing this, any search that we do on the job number will find every file and folder associated with that job, and nothing more.

And instead of relying on the index file of Spotlight, we have it do a raw search of the drive, ignoring any spotlight information. When searching on remote drives, Spotlight can be hit or miss in our experience and tends to be slower.

Now that we have our search locations setup properly, we’re ready to search and destroy (delete) our projects and all associated media. With the find window open, fill in the full job number. Actually, just to make sure to avoid any errors, I keep two windows open. One with the “Ready to Delete” folder and the other is the find window and results. With both open, I can copy and paste the job number into the name field. I also make sure “Starts With” is selected, because anything I need to delete should start with the job number. This prevents any other documents that might reference this number from being removed.

Click search and almost instantly the lower part of the search window is populated with all of the files and locations that you need to remove. As a habit, I always review the find results and make sure nothing looks unusual. Again, I’m just making sure everything in the window is in fact part of the job that I’m getting ready to remove. Once satisfied, I do a “select all” inside the results portion of the find window and hit Command-Delete to remove all of the files. Local files are moved to the trash can, but remote volume files are deleted immediately – so be careful. So with one stroke of the keyboard, all of your files, from all locations local or otherwise, are removed.

Now I just move down the list of jobs in the “ready to delete” folder and repeat the same steps for each of the job numbers. After that, empty the trash on the local computer and do the happy dance. You’re done and have new free space on your drives.

Restoring Data

While backing up data is very solid using BRU PE, restoring is a bit less intuitive. It’s fine, and it gets the job done, it’s just not quite as smooth.

When you click on the Restore icon in the toolbar, you’re presented with a list of catalog files for each tape that you’ve ever backed up on that particular machine. If there was more than one backup session to on a tape, there will be a number added to the icon as some of the ones here have.

If you select a catalog file, the contents of that will be shown on the right pane. However, this is again one of those minor annoyances. By default it will just show you the root level, and then you will need to click on each and every disclosure triangle just to get to the folder with the data you backed up. And sometimes clicking on the disclosure triangle seems to be sluggish. You may find yourself clicking more than once to get it to open. But OK fine, it does work eventually.

But when you’re ready to find those files, what you’ll really be doing is a search of the catalog. You can click on a single catalog (if you know what tape the file is on), or you can search the entire library all at once.

In this example, I’m choosing to search for just a single job, and I know what the job number is. But what I find amazing in this day and age of things being infinitely searchable, is that you can only search on a single criteria. Normally if I was doing a search like this, I would choose to search using the job number, but then also add another criteria stating that I only want results returned that are folders with that name (because ultimately what I’m looking for is the project folder with that number). This is a big miss with the BRU PE software.

When we use CD-Finder to search for files we need to restore, it can search every archive we’ve ever created (totaling over 100 when you count the HD archives we made in the past and client specific backups) and it can do it in a matter of seconds. Most searches, even complex ones only take about 2-5 seconds. But just performing the simple search I’m showing you here on less than 20 archives took over 3 minutes. And because I couldn’t confine the results to only folders, the results I was returned still left me too much to have to sift through.

This just makes another case for using CDFinder to keep catalogs of all of your archives. Our process is to do a search inside of CD-Finder, find out what tape it’s on, and then just go directly to that tape in BRU PE, find the files or directory and restore them. The whole process is so much faster, not to mention you can do many complex searches with CD-Finder in the time it takes to do just one with BRU.

This is what the search window and restore results (for the same job) look like using CD-Finder.

And this is the results that were returned. Infinitely more usable and user friendly.

But let’s continue down the line of just using the BRU software and how you would restore your files.

Once you have your search results and you’ve parsed out what it is you actually want to restore, you click the check boxes by the files or directories that you want, or you can choose to check all of them using the “add all” check box. You then click on the “Add Checked” button and close the window. You will now be returned to the main window with your selected items added to the window.

The last option to decide on before you start the restore is where these files are going. By default files are restored to their original location from where they were backed up. I guess this can be a good thing for some workflows, but for us this would just cause issues. It means that files would be returned to the “ready to delete” folder, which could cause some confusion. To avoid this problem, check the box that allows you to “Restore to an Alternate location”, and then navigate to any local or network mounted volume.

Now with everything ready to go, insert the tape you are pulling the files off of and click on the restore button. If you have the wrong tape in or the drive is empty, you will be prompted for the correct tape to insert.

When you consider how much data a LTO-5 tape can hold, it’s pretty amazing how fast it can find the files it needs are restores them. Like I mentioned, everything we do is over gigabit ethernet and the speed is still lightning fast.

Once your restore is complete a dialog box will appear letting you know that all was restored well. If what you’ve chosen to restore is on more than one tape, you will be prompted each time a new tape is needed. This is where a library system that can automatically load tapes comes in handy.

Library/Catalog Backup

One problem we did run into during our test period is that at one point we launched the BRU PE program and the library of tapes that we had created (usually listed on the restore screen) were gone. While in practice we don’t use those files to locate files that we’re looking for (as previously mentioned, we use CDFinder and a external catalog file), the BRU PE software does need these files to understand what tapes have been created and what is on each tape. It’s what enables you to quickly restore your files from such a massive tape.

With the help of tech support we were able to restore/rebuild the tapes that we needed by re-inserting each tape and having the catalog files rebuilt, but from that point on we decided that we should have a regular backup of that information. Even on the Tolis website they recommend that you do this.

All of the important files that you need to backup are located at the following location.

/private/var/lib/bru

You may be looking at that “location” and be wondering how the heck you get to it. After all, to most people (other than developers) this is not a familiar location, not to mention it’s hidden from view in the finder. The best way to get to this location is to use the “Go to Folder” command in the finder. While in the finder, click on the drop down menu under “Go” and then select the “Go To Folder” option.

In the next dial box that opens, type in the string outlined above and click GO.

The next finder window that opens will be the folder that you need to keep a backup copy of.

To make sure this always happens on it’s own, we use the program Déjà Vu that keeps this folder synced to our NAS on a daily basis. I would strongly recommend that you implement something alone the same lines to save you possible frustration later.

User Manual

Being a bit of a manual geek, I can tell you that the BRU PE user manual is one of the better manuals I’ve read. It’s written in a way that’s easy to understand and gets right to the point. It covers every aspect of the software in much more detail than I’m doing here and even makes some recommendations on the topic of workflow. I also enjoyed the landscape format, which made it comfortable to read on my iPad.

While the manual is 186 pages long, probably around a third of it is terminal commands. If you’re really feeling like the BRU PE GUI is just too easy to use, launch the Terminal app and try your hand at typing it all in by hand. Personally, I have zero interest in this, but there must be enough people out there to justify the detail they put into the manual in covering this topic.

Future Proof Archives?

So now you have a solid backup of your projects, and maybe you even made a second copy to keep off site at home or in a safe deposit box. But what if the worst happens and the Tolis Group suddenly goes out of business or stops selling/supporting the product? After all, because they’re using their own proprietary archive format you actually do need BRU in order to recover your tape contents.

Well not to fear. There are two very good pieces of insurance that will let you sleep better at night.

First (as discussed earlier), every time that you create a new archive tape, at the end you are presented with a dialog that lets you create a CD or DVD that includes the catalog file for that tape (basically a list of it’s contents and location on the tape), all metadata, and a copy of the BRU PE Software that you just used to create the tape. They disk also includes installation and restore instructions. So aside from the hardware needed to do a restore, you have everything that you need between the LTO tape and the CD/DVD that you create. They call this disk a BRUsetta Stone CD.

But if the worst happens and the Tollis group goes out of business, they are committed to put the most recent copy of the BRU software in Escrow with the NARAS, and if you’re a member of NARAS you can retrieve a copy if you need it. So it’s not as if you’re going to no longer have access to your data.

Here is my personal take. The Tolis Group has been around since 1985 and has a great history of making great products. I see no reason to worry about them going out of business anytime soon, and even if they did I am left with the tools that I need (through the BRUsetta Stone CD) to restore any tapes I have made over the years. True, I would probably want to start looking for something new to create new archives, but I would not be locked out of my old archives.

The fact is that technology changes so fast that my guess is 5-10 years from now I may not even be using LTO in favor of some newer and greater technology. When that comes along, I’ll move forward as well. And over time, the archives I’m making will have less and less value anyway. While the tapes are rated to last for 30 years, I would be happy if they lasted for half that. No client has ever come back to me for something older than 5-6 years, and that is very rare. My point is, I don’t need to keep these backups until the end of time. And if 30 years from now I had better not be still browsing my LTO-5 tapes and restoring jobs for clients. If I am, my life has taken a very bad turn somewhere along the line.

Go Beyound with BRU Server

While the focus of this review has been on backing up your edit projects, if you’re looking for something more comprehensive that will backup multiple computers in your office, BRU Server might be something worth looking at. It adds the ability to do client to server automated backups over your network so that entire machines are regularly backed up. The price point is obviously much higher and instead of a single tape drive you would usually use a library system that would hold 12-24 tapes.

And if you REALLY have money to burn, go for their Backup Appliance called bruAPP. This is a standalone device that includes both the BRU Server technology and OS, combined with a tape library system. It’s everything in a single box, and can be configured to hold upwards of 144 TB of storage. It also includes internal disk storage that allows you to “stage” your files for backup so that your local network is not impacted during large backups. If I had the money I would LOVE to have this as part of my office backup strategy.

LTFS

I’ve talked a lot about the BRU format as well as TAR, and some may be wondering about the newer format called LTFS (Linear Tape File System), which has been brought to light by IBM to address some of the shortcomings of the TAR format. This format promises the use of LTO tapes directly on the desktop, allowing you to mount them to your desktop and use them more like you would use a mounted hard drive. One of the significant advantages of this format is that the catalog is included on the tape, so in theory if you have the proper software installed you could mount a tape on any machine just by popping it into the drive.

On the surface this sounds pretty awesome. We all know how to interact with hard drives and to see a tape mounted on the desktop that you can just drag and drop files to/from sounds like the holy grail. That is, until you get into the details of it. I’ve looked into it and talked to a few engineers about their opinions and here’s the short answer of what you need to know.

The LTFS file system has issues with slow access to files, no knowledge of an unmounted tape, single user access and limited file type compatibility. In addition, cross platform file exchanges are problematic because different software and drivers need to be written specifically for each platform, and may not be able to read tapes or files created on other systems. In short, in the current incarnation of the format it falls short of being a solid backup format and almost borders on being expermintal. While it’s possible that down the road this will change that remains to be seen. And after all, we’re talking about what is possible right now, not in the future.

So while I was initially very excited about what the LTFS file format might provide, as usual the sales pitch is better than the actual facts behind it. At the time of this writing the BRU folks have no plans of supporting the format as it now stands, and I think that’s a good thing. Just adopting a new format because it’s the latest and “greatest” thing is not always the best thing. I think it says a lot about their engineering team that they have investigated it and decided it was not up to par for their products.

If you would like to read more about the format yourself, you can find a pretty detailed entry on Wikipedia here.

Cost of Ownership

While the software can be purchased as a standalone product for $499, in most cases you’re going to want to buy the hardware bundle unless you already own a tape drive that you want to use. As part of the whole package, the software is cheaper with the bundled price. With all of their bundles you get a license for the BRU PE software and 1 year of support. Support includes help using the software, but also includes any upgrades to the software beyond bug fixes that are released during your 1 year period.

If you let the 1 year support contract lapse, you can still use the software but will not be eligible for upgrades to the software. I’m not sure that’s a big deal, because generally speaking if it’s working, it’s working. It does everything I need it to, so I’m not sure what features might be added that had me wanting to upgrade.

If you do decide to continue your support contract, it will cost you $199 per year and you would get all major updates (say version 2 to version 3) included in that price. If you don’t have it, and the same software is released you can still purchase the software for $249.

Overhead or Money Maker?

One of the big misses that many editors make in my opinion is passing on their ability to turn this process into a service that they sell to their clients. The big complaint that I hear is that buying software and hardware like this can be expensive, and it really can. But not prohibitively so. The fact is, people do need archives of their projects and in many cases they are willing to pay you to take care of it for them, and to keep track of everything. On top of backing up editing projects, another big room for growth has been backup camera originals from tapeless media, which is all we shoot anymore.

I can only speak from our own experience and tell that in far less than a year we were turning a profit on doing backups over what we had paid on both the hardware/software and the tapes we purchased to do the backups. We charge a flat fee per project, and in most cases can fit more than a single project on a tape. So a single 1.5 TB LTO-5 tape can generate anywhere between $500 and $1,500 in revenue depending on the size of the projects. It’s pretty easy to do the math and see how this is not much of a risk in the long run. The fact is, you are offering a very valuable and necessary service.

Here’s how we approached it. I ask every client this question. “As part of doing this project, would you like me to back it up to a long term storage tape for future access, or do you want me to just delete everything when I’m done?” What would you say to that question?

While we charge a flat fee for creating an archive of each project, we don’t charge anything for restoring files. So the client can recall those files as much as needed and know that they will not be billed for it.

It’s seriously something to consider when you’re looking at creating your archiving system, your workflow and a library system. While it might be a lot to get pulled together in the beginning, it’s well worth it in the long run on many fronts.

The SuiteTake

While not without a few minor annoyances, I’m very pleased with the BRU software and hardware bundle. For the first time in a very long time I feel like I have a very solid and robust workflow and backup system. That’s a big deal, because if you don’t have something you have faith in, it can add a lot of stress to your life (at least it has for me in the past).

We have now used this solution for over a year and feel very comfortable saying it’s a nice solid and affordable package, even for a small boutique post house like Edit Creations. I look forward to your comments and your own shared experiences.

My Experience With Keying

While I wouldn’t necessarily refer to myself is a “Green Screen Guru”, I have my share of experience with pulling color based keys. For me is started on a Grass Valley 200 switcher in the late 80’s with the little spinning knobs you used to select and finesse the color. I remember that little chirping sound it would make as you went from one limit to the other. Just thinking about that switcher really takes me back.

In later years I worked with a Ultimatte 45 external hardware box that allowed you to pull great keys using a component signal. At the time it was a $35k box and the place I was working at would only rent it when we had a project that required it. Sometimes I would run it as part of a studio shoot to check keys as we went, but most of the time it was setup in the online suite I was in.

The difficult part about using this box was that the first few times I used it I only had a few short hours to actually learn the box. As soon as it showed up I would pull out the manual and start reading so that I could at least appear to the client that I knew what I was doing!

Years later we have tools that are so much more powerful right on our computers, and they cost a small fraction of what the original Ultimatte did, or in some cases come free with editing and compositing software. FCP Studio has some ok keyers included, but Primatte inside of Motion is actually pretty good. And AfterEffects has KeyLight, which I find to be the best blue/green screen keyer out there for what I do. It’s rare that I can’t get a good key out of keylight regardless what I throw at it.

Why I Decided To Read It

So with my years of experience you might think that I’m great at pulling keys of all kinds without issue. In fact you may say the same thing about yourself.  While I can hold my own for sure, I have always felt there were holes in my knowledge. I learned on the job, and only learned about the things that were thrown at me, as opposed to any kind of formal training or even keying basics. We have a reoccurring job at Edit Creations that always seems to be more difficult than it should be. While the keys in the end come out pretty good, they’re not perfect. And while there are times that maybe you decided it’s “good enough” what you’re doing, I want to know that I can in fact pull that perfect key every time, no matter what.

So it was with great pleasure that I found Jeff Fosters new book, The Green Screen Handbook. The book’s only focus is green screen, and it’s a modern book that’s based on technology that’s available today, not from 10 years ago.

What The Book Is NOT

If you’re hoping that this book has tons of difficult keying examples with step-by-step detailed instructions on how to get great results, it is not. It does not get into what slider bar to adjust or which keyed is the best for which situation. This is what I was hoping it was. While I was disappointed initially, as I kept reading I realized it was much more comprehensive and covered the entire process, not just the post production part.

What Is Covered

The book starts out with a history of how we got to where we are today with travel matts, and what it was like in the early days. I actually found this part of the book fascinating and really enjoyed it. It gave me a good appreciation for what we have today and I couldn’t help thinking that the originators of the technology would really be amazed with what can be done now with relative ease.

Jeff goes on to explain the difference between blue and green screen (and when to use one over the other as well as when to use both at the same time), and hardware vs. plug-in based tools.

What I really ended up liking about this book is the way he covered everything from pre-production through post, as well as different budget levels. In other words, no matter where you are in the spectrum, if you do green screen work you’ll find something that applies to your part of the world.

One of the most important things I learned from reading the book was that the reason that some of my keys are difficult to pull, is that there are some issues related to the way they are shot. First, there would be a great benefit to using green bulbs to light the green wall (I didn’t even know you could do that). There are specific bulbs made just for this purpose. Second, and the biggest problem we’re having is the video we’re recording, while in HD and the P2 format, has too many compression artifacts, thus we are getting very noisy source footage to start with. There are some adjustments that can be made in the camera, but we are also considering recording uncompressed right out of the camera to ProRes 4444 on a Ki Pro. Our next shoot is coming up in a few months, and I look forward to implementing some of the new ideas.

There is a section of the book called “How the Pros Do it” that make my little head shot keys look like child’s play. It’s interesting to see some of the high end work with explanations on how they accomplished the scene.

Other topics covered include the importance of pre-production and storyboarding, testing shots as well as your workflow, having your talent interact with background elements and how to retain natural shadows from your subjects.

Overall I was very impressed with the work that went into this book and feel like I will be a better green screen artists having read it. It reminded me of when I took a motorcycle riding class years ago. Going into the class I thought I knew it all (or at least a lot). But once I was done with the class I realized how little I really knew, and was a much more confident rider.

Included DVD

There is a DVD that comes with the book (unless you buy the Kindle version, more on that later) that includes tons of goodies organized into folders that match the chapter numbers. You’ll find movie clips PS files and AE files that let you see first hand how some of the examples in the book were created.

Don’t Buy The Kindle Version

I love my iPad and the Kindle App, so when I realized I could buy the book and have it instantly I didn’t hesitate. However, a book like this probably would have been better in print. Here’s why.

Formatting on Kindle books is great, if you have a simple text layout with few images that can be shown in-line. Because this book is about visuals as much as the printed content, the formatting was just terrible. This is not the fault of the author, but of the Kindle book format itself. It just does not allow for free flowing organic looking layouts. I could have gotten by with this and still been happy with the Kindle version. The big problem was that you get no DVD with the kindle version, and that is a deal breaker for me. I was able to get a copy after making a few phone calls, but this was the exception. No physical book, no DVD.

Applying What I Learned

There are 3 main things I’m going to change in our reoccurring project based on what I learned in this book.

1) Shoot with green bulbs. This is covered in great detail in the book.

2) Record uncompressed out of the camera into a codec that is more “keyer friendly”, or at least to one of the higher bandwidth ProRes codecs. 

3) Try some slightly modified techniques in keylight to see if a different approach will yield different results this time around. Another takeaway from the book was that there is no one single technique that works in every situation, and I picked up a few new ones from the book.

The SuiteTake

I love learning. I love feeling like I have a challenge, I overcome it and have a new set of skills that I didn’t have before. This book really delivered that experience for me.

In my opinion if you are a video professional that either shoots or edits green screen scenes, this book is a must read to take you to the next level. I can’t think of anybody that I know that wouldn’t learn something from this book and improve their craft.

Another great resource is Alex Lindsay of Pixel Corps fame. He’s done some great web posting on the work that he does, with some real world examples. I’ve been really impressed with not only his process and what he has learned over time, but his openness to share what he knows to help others. We all improve when we help each other. Thanks Alex!

You can find some of his posts here.

]]> http://js-kit.com/rss/www.suitetake.com/p=4110 4 http://www.suitetake.com/2010/06/21/boston-supermeet-free-admission-code/ http://www.suitetake.com/2010/06/21/boston-supermeet-free-admission-code/#comments Mon, 21 Jun 2010 19:14:44 +0000 Thomas Tomchak http://www.suitetake.com/?p=4095 If you have never been to one Michael Horton’s FCP SuperMeets, than you have not been to a FCP User Group Meeting.

They are held at various locations around the globe, but for the first time you can attend one of these meetings in Boston, and it’s not too late to get in for free (details below). What can you expect when you attend a SuperMeet?

Aside from seeing demonstrations from some serious talent and on occasion some product debuts, it’s a great place to socialize with creatives from around the country and build new relationships. I had planned to travel to Boston for this meeting until I was booked on a travel job that starts tomorrow.

To find out more about the Boston Meeting agenda, visit the official site.

For your free admission tickets, follow the instructions below.

1. Go to: http://supermeetbos10.eventbrite.com/

2. Click on the ENTER DISCOUNT CODE link.

3. Enter discount code: suitetakevip

4. Fill out registration with legitimate email and address for EACH name.

Last night I was a guest on the Digital Production Buzz with Larry Jordan and Michael Horton. We discussed my last blog post on growing your business.

If you don’t regularly listen to the Buzz it’s a great resource for post production professionals, and keeps you up to date on the latest news and what others are doing in the business.

Click here for the Interview Excerpt

Click here for the Full Show

When the economy tanked in late 2008, I was forced to look at my business and figure out how to best combat the severe downturn in revenue. We have primarily offered post production services since opening in 2004, but what happens when there’s not enough post work to keep the rooms busy? Aside from the obvious solution of trying to increase the client base, there is also the option of adding other services so that you get a bigger piece of the overall project pie. Think of it like being in the stock market. All of my “stock” has been invested in doing post work. That’s great during the good times, but being more diversified will help when things are slow.

So throughout 2009 we’ve added a few new services to help us retain a larger chunk of every project we do.

Production

The first thing added was production services by way of purchasing a Sony EX-1 camera package and lighting kit. This helped by landing a few new jobs that we would have normally only done the post on, but we now had the whole job start to finish. What made this possible was having an editor on staff that is also a great videographer with years of experience shooting. It was a natural addition, and the camera package has already paid for itself.

Motion Graphics

Next we decided to raise the bar on the kinds of graphics that we can offer. Most editors can create graphics using Motion, AE or the like, but I’m not sure I would call all of these editors Motion Graphics Artists. I know many great editors that are not very good at the graphic side of things. Our goal was to bring some of the work back in house that has typically been farmed out.The first step toward this goal was to block out time to focus on new training, tutorials and some very specific goals/milestones.

One of the big challenges for any editor today is the expectation that you need to learn MANY things, not just editing. As a result,  focus can be a bit scattershot  when you’re trying to build a skill. You may spend time in AE one day, Flash another and Photoshop the next, and  no single area shows any significant benefit.

To help remedy this, I officially declared 2009 “The Year of AfterEffects” and asked that any and all tutorials being done on company time be focused on AfterEffects and only AfterEffects. Period. The results were immediately evident in the work being done, and clients noticed. Within a few months we took on 2 new jobs in house that we would have previously lost to an outside artist.

3D Graphics

Building on that, we decided to start down the road of offering 3D Graphics. This is not as easy as sharpening your AE skills, since the learning curve and time investment can be quite large. But nonetheless we spent the last year training a staff member on 3D. While he’s not quite far enough along to do paying jobs, he’s getting closer every week now. He’s also done a great job on some internal projects and has really impressed me with the speed at which he has picked things up. I have some 3D experience in my past (dating back to the golden days of Electric Image) so I know what a challenge it can be. My estimate is that this effort will start to pay dividends later this year and be in full swing in 2011.

Live Production Services

Finally, starting this year we now offer Live Netcasting of corporate events, conventions and the like. This is a natural fit into our already popular travel editing packages. For example, this week I’m in Nashville to do onsite editing for the IGA 2010 Global Rally. It’s the usual job with events being shot, edited and played back onsite. But in addition, we are going to be live streaming the awards night banquet live to the web as it happens. This will allow people around the world who were unable to attend the conference to tune into it and even chat about it as it happens via live chat. The client can choose to charge for this access or to make it free to the viewer.

What makes this attractive to the client is that we offer it as a total turnkey solution. We bring all of the Netcast cameras and studio gear needed to  do a live switch with multiple cameras,  roll in pieces and lower thirds, and send it up to the web in high quality, even HD. We provide the hosting, web page design, and if needed handle the sales and access to the broadcast.  The added benefit is that sometimes there will be extra editing needed before the event to create extra roll in pieces or graphics as part of the show.

So this will be a very busy week for me, having both on-site editing and on-stie production of the net event. The schedule worked out that I could do both, but in most cases I would have somebody dedicated to take care of the netcast alone.

BTS Production Photography

One other thing that I started to offer clients, more out of my personal interest than for the sake of increased revenue, is doing production stills on jobs. This is a pretty easy up sell when I’m already on the job to edit. For example, this summer I’m booked to do a editing job in Sydney Australia. The client on that job asked if I could come out a few days early and take some production stills for a shoot that she’s doing in New Zealand. So I get to travel out a few days early and provide her with some great behind the scenes photos that she can use to update her professional blog as well as her website. And for me I’ll get some extra travel to a great location and have fun taking the photos.

The SuiteTake

If you find that you don’t have enough post work to keep yourself or your staff busy, it may be time to take a look at what other offerings you might be able to present to your clients. Ask yourself what else you might be good at, or what else you’re interested in doing. Do you have a passion that is untapped?  I would not recommend offering a service that you’re not interested in or not  very good at.  That would do nothing but hurt you in the long run and possibly degrade a good relationship. But most of us have diverse interests and skills, and could probably find at least one other thing that we would enjoy doing (and enjoy billing for).

Take the time to evaluate your interest and skills, and you may find a new revenue stream for yourself or your company.

It is with great excitement that I am finally able to make an announcement that has been eating at me for nearly a year now. In June of 2009 when the iPhone 3GS was released I had a flash of what the future could hold for editing, and it’s that moment of inspiration that gave birth to the product I’m announcing today.

Our new groundbreaking product, Final Cut Pro Mobile, is now available on the iPhone 3GS. It will also be available on the iPad later this year. You heard me right – the full suite of FCPS apps have been ported to the iPhone 3GS, and in some cases, we’ve been able to add additional features not found in the current offerings from Apple.

Much of our inspiration at SuiteTake.com to create this mobile suite was inspired by the growing interest in editing projects outside of the office. While the edit suite has been the traditional place to get your project done, technology no longer limits us to just a single location. And it was with that vision in mind that we marched forward with the project. Here is a quick overview of what the new suite includes.

Final Cut Pro M

Starting with the current version of Final Cut Pro 7 from 2009, we included all of the same new features as well as the under the hood improvements from Apple. But we’ve also added some features that are only possible on the iPhone.

For example, with a single swipe of your finger – you can save your project, duplicate it, or permanently delete it – all with the same gesture. Swiping at different speeds determines which of the functions is selected. Now that’s efficient!

Need a quick rough cut of the footage you’ve imported? Just shake your phone up and down 3 times and the built-in accelerometer will create a rough cut using the current ins and outs of each clip. The phone will use our patented Content Detection™ algorithm to analyze dialog, body language and facial expressions. It will then systematically assemble the clips in the most pleasing and logical way.

Motion M

Complete with Open GL acceleration, 3D shadows and real-time playback, you can create graphics at uncompressed 4K or HD resolution while browsing the iTunes store, surfing the web or taking a call from your client. And all of this while you’re outside of the standard ball-and-chain edit suite. Be inspired – be Mobile!

While the standard motion templates that you’re used to are included, we’ve also added the ability to buy templates through the App Store, right inside of Motion M. Using your iTunes account and 3G networking you can download the latest templates where you want, when you want.

Soundtrack Pro M

Using your iPhone earbuds you can mix your latest soundtrack while listening to your favorite iPod playlist, checking your messages with  Google Voice and browsing SFX from the SoundTrack library.  All while walking through the busy city traffic to catch your bus to the beach.

But it’s not just about multi-tasking. SoundTrack Pro M can mix up to 256 tracks of audio in real time, has new MIDI functions available through the dock connector and now includes a cool iTunes-like screen saver to help you  see your audio as you mix. This is part of our new SeeHearMix™ technology.

Color M

Who says you need a $10K monitor to color grade your latest film? Don’t let the monitor industry make a fool out of you any longer! Using the precision color LCD touch screen on the iPhone you can grade like a pro using just your fingertips.

What’s that? You don’t have time to do the grading yourself? Again we tied into the Apple App Store and you can now purchase and download preset looks based on the type of project you’re grading. Some of the categories include Corporate Training Video, Broadcast Reality Show, Broadcast Sitcom, Over Produced Documentary, Low Budget Film, B-Movie, Direct to DVD, Flip Cam to Film Look and Barely Good Enough For YouTube. Each preset will optimize the look and feel of your video based on your target audience.

DVD Studio Pro M

Apple may not have updated DVD Studio Pro, but we sure did.

Need a DVD and need it while on the go? No problem! Plug in your favorite DVD burner and create a Standard Def or Blu-ray DVD on the spot right from your iPhone using our patented USB-BlazeBurn™ technology.

Don’t have a DVD burner? That’s OK too. Master directly to our new SuiteTake.com Print-On-Demand DVD service. Most DVDs will upload over 3G in just 2-3 weeks, and you’ll receive your DVD copies within one calendar year. Let’s face it, you didn’t really need it that fast anyway.

iChat Theater M

Using the iPhone 3GS camera,  you can now chat with your client live while watching your latest cut. You can even conference in up to three other members of the “creative team” to watch and comment on the playback of your sequence while referencing a live timecode window. Getting unwanted needless feedback has never been so easy.

And Finally, Compressor M

Compressor is more then a compression engine – it’s a publishing factory. Set up automated processes that will convert your final video to the proper format and upload it to iTunes, YouTube, Vimeo, FaceBook or just a standard FTP site.

As an exclusive to the Mobile FCP Suite, you can even export directly to another iPhone no matter where they are in the world. And all of this over 3G. Take that AT&T!

Need more speed while compressing? Using iPhone QMaster integration you can cluster up to 50 iPhone 3GSs together to cut compression times by up to 8.9%. (Estimated, actual savings can vary. In some cases render times can actually increase up to 75% due to some unknown reason that we’re still baffled by. Due to the increased radiation output of the phones during the render process, women who are pregnant or are hoping to ever become pregnant should limit their exposure to FCPm Qmaster. Do not taunt Qmaster under any circumstances.)

And with our new Social Media plugin architecture, you can send custom notifications to Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace and even the Creative Cow Forums. Now all of your fellow editors will know just how frustrated you are by that request to make “one more small change”. Partner deals with Gowalla, FourSquare and DropBox are in the works for late 2010.

I am proud to say that I think we’ve really hit this one out of the park. And we’re just getting started. Since I started using FCP Mobile I’ve realized that having a full size computer is a thing of the past. I used to say I would never give up my Mac Pro. Now I’m starting to ask myself if it even makes sense to have an office. Since I started using FCPm I have barely bothered to show up to work at all.

Still not convinced?

Check out the cover story in the next issue of MacWorld magazine for a full hands on review or read our Press Release.

Can’t wait?

Head over to the App Store and download it now. We hope you’re as excited about it as we are.

I’ve been very fortunate in business. Since I first started Edit Creations in my basement in 2003 I’ve been blessed with having multiple clients follow me into business based on our work history together and friendships. And over those years, word of mouth has filled in the rest of the time. Within the first 5 years business grew from me working in my basement to having a 2000 sqft office with multiple edit rooms, vo booth, graphics, travel gear and 4 employees. Things were going great. Then, the fall of 2008 hit.

At the end of 2008 work dried up and 2009 was the most difficult year since the business was started. During this time a few things happened that changed the way I looked at my company.

First, I didn’t lose any clients. I still had the same clients that I’ve been working with for years, in some cases close to 15 years. The problem was that those clients were no longer getting the jobs they used to. Projects were being scaled back, rescheduled or flat our cancelled. In one case a job that was normally 4 weeks of editing in 2 suites (a job that we received every December running into January) just went away and has not yet returned.

Second, for the first time in my career I was faced with having to find new clients. Two years ago I would have said you were crazy if you told me to go out and find new clients. I was already working 10+ hours a day and the thought of looking for more work seemed like self abuse.

Third, I realized that you can’t count on jobs that are promised to you, even if you have a long standing relationship with those clients. For example, in 2009 there were no less then 3 major jobs (one a broadcast TV series) that were promised to us. In one case actually scheduled for the last half of 2009. “Great!” I thought, the year is covered! The pressure is off! And then, one by one the projects just went away, in large part due to the economy. So I was left with open edit suites and very little work to fill them, but the same overhead as if it was business as usual.

As this all started to unfold, the reality that I needed to go out and sell the business hit me, and hit me hard. But what also hit me was that I didn’t know where to start. I’m an editor, I’m a tech guy, I’m a creative and a Mac addict but not a salesman. That’s not to say I couldn’t sell, it’s just that I have never had to and don’t really have the knowhow. Yet.

Late in 2009 I was invited to attend a local business leaders meeting at a new store in Naperville IL. I thought this would be a good opportunity to meet other business owners and possibly make new connections with people that were in need of editorial and creative services. Hell, any reason to go to the Apple Store is a good one in my book!

So I went to the event that was scheduled before normal business hours, and there were about 30-40 other business professionals there, snacking on donuts and drinking free coffee. I very quickly realized that I had a problem. I was, at least in this setting, a social misfit. Instead of walking up to people and striking up a conversation, I found myself avoiding all eye contact and just taking interest in the machines on display. I was nervous and genuinely uncomfortable. Was it really this hard to talk to people? It’s not like I don’t have years of practice working with clients, meeting new people at the office and giving tours of the facility (both Edit Creations and previously at a much larger facility). Driving back to the office that morning it hit me. How was I going to meet new people and convince new clients to do business with me, if I couldn’t talk to people?  This is a problem, and I had a knot in my stomach just thinking about it. I could no longer rely on business just walking in the door, I had to go get it. Yet, I didn’t have the most basic skills needed to do so.

Over the next several weeks I did some deep soul searching and came to the following conclusion. I needed to develop my social skills, and in a big way. My goal, I decided, was to get to the point that I could walk into a room of strangers (business people or otherwise) and not only feel comfortable, but be able to approach people and have a meaningful conversation. As if that wasn’t enough, I wanted to improve my public speaking/presentation skills.

If you’re already good at all of these things you’re probably wondering what the big deal is. But if you’re not, you know what a tall order this is. Just the though of taking this on scared me deeply. But at the same time I thought if not now, then when?

What really got me over the hump was thinking about the hours and hours of training I do every year to improve my editing and graphics skills. I will easily dedicate myself to doing whatever is necessary to learn a new software program or take my skill set to a new level. I’ll read manuals, 3rd party books, PDF files on my iPhone and do tutorials on Lynda.com until I fall asleep on my laptop. But over all of these years, what have I actually done to improve my personal skills? My interactions with the people around me have not been “upgraded” for years. When I started to look at it from this angle it became clear that this was something I had to do.

In my opinion the best way to find new clients is to first create new relationships, without pushing any type of business angle. Sure you want people to know what you do and what you could offer them, but that should be secondary to developing a genuine relationship and interest in the person. What’s key in what I just said is creating a genuine relationship, not a superficial one. Look at it like this. If you were a producer and needed a editor for your project, would you rather call up somebody out of the creative directory, run an ad to interview new people, or call the person you’ve already developed a trusting relationship with and that you enjoy being around? People like to work with people they like. If you’re going to spend several weeks working on a job, don’t you want to like the person you’re working with? Dare I say, even have fun on the job?

So, it starts with creating relationships, which is one thing I need help with. At least when it’s from a cold start. So I started doing research on-line and after a few weeks there was a clear winner. The Dale Carnegie course. The overall objectives of the course are as follows.

• Build greater self-confidence
• Strengthen people skills
• Enhance communication skills
• Develop leadership skills
• Reduce stress and improve our attitude

It’s everything I was looking for in a single course. The class meets once per week for 4 hours in the evening, and the class I’m in has about 20 people in it.

If you have not read the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” I highly recommend it. I’ve read it twice over the years and this course builds on those basics. Here is a list of the 9 principals they teach in reference to building better relationships.

• Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
• Give honest, sincere appreciation.
• Arouse in the other person an eager want.
• Become genuinely interested in other people.
• Smile.
• Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
• Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
• Talk in terms of the other person’s interest.
• Make the other person feel important, and do it sincerely.

While the thought of taking this class scared the hell out of me, that’s the idea of the course. They want to push you beyond your comfort zone and have you face your fears, but in a nurturing and positive environment.

While I have already started the class, I had to miss the first one due a petrie dish of disease at my house (aka 2 year old twins). So my first class (class 2) included me having to do a 2 minute speech. Nothing like jumping right in! While I was nervous all day before heading to the class, by the time the class was over I was feeling a lot more comfortable and could already see a difference after only 4 hours.

The idea behind the 8 week course is that they teach you certain skills and give you new tools every week, and then you have a week to implement what you’ve learned in your work environment. This allows you to really practice what you learn before moving onto other lessons. In fact, part of each class is reviewing how everybody did with their past week.

This week (class 3) includes having to do 2 speeches. One that’s 2 minutes, talking about how you used one of the 9 principals in the work place to change or influence a situation, and a 1 minute one explaining how to do something that’s related to your job that others in the class might be interested in. It’s an exercise in breaking things down in a very concise manner to quickly communicate your core message. So for my 1 minute speech, I’m going to teach the class how to create a 30 minute HD video in FCP using the Log and Transfer Window, standard transitions, 3rd party plugins, color correction with Color, audio mixing with Soundtrack, 3D graphics in Motion and how to repurpose the final edit for everything from BluRay DVD to YouTube. I’m just hoping I can fill the full 60 seconds.

The SuiteTake

My main idea behind doing this post was to get others thinking about their social skills, and to ask themselves if there was room for improvement. Some people are naturals at this kind of thing and could probably teach the class, but many of us are challenged in certain areas. A class like this can really give you an edge and create new opportunites for your business.

Over the upcoming weeks I’ll post an update or two and tell you how it’s going. At the very least I’ll do a post once the class is over to give you my full review.

With so many software programs and hardware only supported by the Intel based Mac computers, you might find that having that old Dual/Quad G5 around is becoming more and more problematic. And that may be true, especially as a production machine. More and more of the Apple and Adobe apps only support the newer processor, so upgrading starts to become difficult. Even Snow Leopard is only supported by Intel machines, so your G5 kind of gets stuck in time.

But I’m going to give you a few options to still make use of that older machine, and it will end up having more value to you than the few bucks you can fetch by selling it on eBay. Currently a Quad G5 (the last and fastest G5 made) is going for about $600, and that’s if you throw in a bunch of extra software/upgrades. And who wants to deal with shipping the beast anyway. My vote would be to keep the machine around and put it to work.

FileServer

One of the best things you can do is add more storage to the machine and have it as a file server. For example, in our office we have 3 main edit rooms, but there are many files that we use on jobs that are shared. We have a music library, stock footage, stock effects, some Editor Toolkit graphics, SFX, Custom Compressor Settings and many template items that we’ve created in house. We used to have all of these items installed on every computer in the office. Not a big deal, except when you make an update you have to make sure that every machine is updated with the same items or you quickly get out of sync. Having just one place to store it all is much more manageable.

Backup Server

Another option would be to add extra storage and make it a backup server that monitors the computers in your office and backups new files on a daily or weekly basis. You can do this using the new Retrospect 8 for the mac, or ChronoSync and Chrono Agent. Both packages work the same way, having a small client app running on your workstation, and the server software running on the backup machine. You select what you want to backup, when you want to back it up and where to. The nice part is that once it’s setup properly, you don’t have to keep remembering to back things up before you leave every night.

WIKI Server

Finally, you can install OSX Server (10.5) software and use it for workgroup management, contact files, file server and even a WIKI. We have a WIKI that we use for ECU (Edit Creations University) where we have all training materials, tips and tricks, job specific information, client FedEx numbers and even the employee manual. It’s all accessible to all employees whenever they need to reference anything, and any employee that has permission can add their own posts or revise posts that are there with new information. It becomes a very centralized location to store information, files, and video tutorials.

Creative Samples Database

Over the past 10 years I have slowly collected still images, QuickTime movies, DVD’s,  tv commercials, show opens, movie trailers and so on, of things that I found inspirational or creative. The main reason was that I wanted to have something to spark my creative juices when I was just dead in the water looking for a new idea. I don’t like to steal an idea directly, but there’s plenty you can take from any given example and than make it your own. Often just seeing something will spark an idea of your own.

I have so many samples now that I created a database called Creative Spark. Everything is processed into a friendly format and imported into the database. Once in there, it’s tagged for any number of attributes, from the type of video it is to what types of things is shows examples of (camera work, effects, text, graphics, etc.). This is the kind of thing that works great in a shared environment and it’s now accessible to any of the editors or producers in the office.

It also comes in handy when you’re trying to describe an effect or look to a client. It’s much more effective if you actually have the example right there to play for them.

TimeMachine Volume

Most people hook up an external drive for use with Apple’s TimeMachine. But by adding up to 6TB of internal space, you can do the same thing and take up no extra counter space. We have a TimeMachine volume on each edit computer that runs twice daily* to backup the active projects (and only the active projects). We’ve found this to be a very solid part of our overall backup strategy.

Whatever you decide to do with that G5, more storage is probably going to help. Today’s post will walk you through how to install more storage than you ever imagined in your aging G5 so that it’s up to snuff for you’re data needs.  Of the ideas I outlined above, all could be implemented on a single machine and play nicely, and in that case you would absolutely want to add more storage.

What You Will Need

A G5 Tower of any vintage (the photos here are from a Quad G5).

A Swift Data Kit for your model of G5. The kit includes…

Internal SATA card (you can purchase this with the kit as an add on option)

Up to 3 extra SATA drives (in addition to the 2 that your G5 normally holds)

One (1) open PCI, PCIX or PCI Express slot

Getting Started

Start by laying all of your parts out and making sure you have everything. I say this not only because it’s a good idea, but because I didn’t do this the first time and didn’t realize I was missing the SATA card until the machine was already stripped down. I was pretty bummed. TAKE 2!

Lay the mac on it’s side and take the side door off of your mac and remove the side cover and clear plastic internal cover.

Next, remove the fan assembly toward the front of the machine. It should just pull straight up.

Once the fan is out you will see a small metal screw in the near center of the bottom plate. This screw needs to be removed. Don’t worry, it’s not really holding anything in that you need to worry about.

Set the screw aside for now.

Next, it’s time to attach the brackets to your hard drives. In our case we went with 1TB Green Drives from Western Digital, but you can use larger 1.5 or 2TB drives if you wish.

The green drives are preferred for their lower power use, and it should be noted that Seagate drives are not supported, and I’ve personally had issues with Hitachi drives. To be safe, stick with WD greens. In my case I couldn’t get the computer to boot because the Hitachi drives were drawing too much power. With the WD drives this was not a issue.

Pay attention to how you connect the bracket. Your instinct may be to put the bracket on so that the bottom lip curls under the drive. However, the drive needs to curl away from the drive.

Repeat these steps until all 3 drives are brackets securely attached.

With all 3 drives mounted to brackets, it’s time to attach each of the drives to the base mount. As shown in the photos, attach each drive to the base using the supplied screws from the kit. It’s important that the drives are oriented as shown.

It seems like an odd way to mount the drives, but it’s actually very solid and the parts are well machined.

Next it’s time to insert the SATA card. We chose the Tempo Sata E4i which is recommend for our G5 model.

Take the card out of the packaging and attach the bight red cables to each of the ports. Be sure to plug the FLAT ends of the cables into the card, not the L shaped ones.

With all of the cables attached, gently insert the card into your open slot and secure it with a screw into the back of the machine.

Just leave the cables hanging out of the side of the box for now.

Next you need to hook up the power cable harness. At one in there is a Y type adaptor. What you need to do is pull the power from one of the current machine drives, and plug that power into one end of the Y adaptor. The other end of the Y adaptor goes back into that drive and you route the cable down the back of the machine. It’s basically a way to split off the power supply and share it with the drives you’re adding.

Again, leave the power cable hanging out the side of the box, but only after routing it down below the top shelf of the machine.

Now the fun part. It’s time to slide the drive assembly in. With the drive assembly right next to the computer, work from back to front hooking up both the power and SATA connections. Don’t worry about the cables being a mess, we’ll fix that later.

With everything hooked up, slowly and carefully slide the drives into the machine as shown, with the lip/screw hole part of the base facing the back of the machine.

Once you get the drives part way in, start to route the cables up and above the fan assembly and above where the cards go.

Once you have the drives in the machine, push the assembly toward the front and line up the plate so that the screw holes are aligned. Once aligned, use the longer screw that came with your kit and secure the plate to the base of the machine.

Reinset the fan assembly, close up the case and you’re good to go!

It’s snug, but it’s a perfect fit.

Time to Power Up

With a little luck, if you did everything correctly and used the recommended drives the machine will power up. Let the machine boot and use Disk Utilites to format the new drives however you would like. They can be added as 3 separate drives if you prefer, or you can raid them together. We created a raid 0 strip of the 3 to add a single 3TB volume.

If the machine turns on and off right away, chances are the power supply is overloaded. Make sure you used the correct drives. In some cases, you can try a few times in a row and it will finally start, but then you’re living on the edge a bit. Try to disconnect the power from one of the drives and see if it will start up then. If so, you may need to stick with only a 2-drive upgrade.

Why Is There An Airplane In My Room?!

Now that you’ve done all of this, there is one little down side that we noticed. Aside from it obviously sucking more power to drive all of the new storage, the fans in the machine run a LOT more. If you have this computer in a back room as a server this might not matter, but if it’s your main edit machine it might start to annoy you. We did this upgrade on 2 machines, one is a server in the back room with a bunch of other equipment, and one was to a Quad G5 that we still edit on (the upgrade shown in this example), so that we could do local TimeMachine backups once daily. The edit machine fans are audibly running a lot more and a lot louder than before. This is no real surprise when you think about all of the extra heat that’s being generated, but you should be aware of it.

Otherwise, it’s a very sold upgrade. We didn’t do any official benchmarks on the drives but the speed is much faster than any single internal drive, and more than adequate for a TimeMachine volume, file server or even video capture for all but the most high end formats.

The SuiteTake

Before you get rid of that old G5 tower, ask yourself if there’s anyway it can make your life easier by automating something for you, acting as a server or just being a internal FTP or file server. There are many tasks that don’t really need Quad-Octo-Pecto-IntelAMD-SuperHyper-Threading chips, and will run just fine on a G5. The value that can be provided by keeping the machine can far exceed any small amount of cash you might get from selling it on eBay.

This week I have the good fortune of getting out of the cold Chicago weather and editing in sunny California. I’m was brought out to do some on-site editing for Fender at the NAMM convention in Anaheim.

Like every travel job that I do, there are unique needs that needed to be addressed. No two jobs are exactly the same.  The needs of this job resulted in me having the most sophicated travel setup I’ve had to date. Here are the details of the job.

NAMM is a convention that showcases manufactures of musical instruments and gear. It’s kind of the NAB of the music industry. Fender has one whole floor of the convention center, and my job is specific to what they’re doing here. There are 3 main areas of their venue. The Stage, where there will be live performances, both planned and as people walk up and just want to jam. There is the exhibit area where booths are setup for all of the separate companies that are under the Fender umbrella. And then there’s the “floor”, where people are just socializing and moving from one place to the other. All of these are being covered by video, and as quickly as possible edited down and posted to the web on the Fender website as well as many social media sites.

The stage area is being covered by another editor who is recording the line feed and 3 iso cameras to AJA KI recorders.

He then takes specific performances (just single songs), cuts them down, adds bumpers on both sides and compresses it for the web. He then hands it off to one of the 3 web guys that take care of the online distribution.

As for my job, I’m handling the show floor and the booths, which is being covered by 2 roaming cameras shooting DVCPro50 widescreen on P2 cards. There is an assistant that will be running cards to and from the cameras whenever they think they got something special to post. That might be a good interview, a really kick ass performance by somebody jamming out, or an unexpected moment with a real rock star. It’s rumored that Eddie Van Halen may be showing up at some point.

So, my job started out sounding pretty simple, but the more we talked it through in the pre-production meeting we realized that the big issue is going to be time. Time to get the cards, time to download and wipe them, time to edit, and especially, time to compress the final video to flash so it can be uploaded. While this can easily all be done on a single machine, it didn’t seem like the best idea. So what we ended up with was a multiple station setup, all being run by a single operator (me).

So from left to right, here’s what I have setup.

P2 Ingest Station

This machine is a MacBookPro laptop with Final Cut Pro doing nothing other then logging and importing p2 footage. The client provided the p2 reader, which is way overkill for what we’re doing. But it does hold multiple cards and connects via USB. It’s really designed to do a lot more then just read cards, but hey… it looks pretty awesome as part of my setup.

The footage is all ingested over the network to the edit station, where I continue editing as the footage comes in (everything is networked via Gigabit Ethernet and a small 5 port switch. This also keeps me from having to copy footage from one machine to the other. All of the machines are using the same drive. It’s local to one machine, and remote to the other 2.

Edit Station

The edit station is another MacBookPro running FCP. On this machine I have a small Raid 0 strip of 2 G-Raid drives, giving me 1 TB of raided space and connected via FW800. I also have a 2TB Western Digital “My Book” drive that I’m using to mirror all of my work and captured footage on-site. I’m a big believer of having a duplicate or triplicate of everything when editing on the road.

As I bring in the footage I’m first sorting it into different sequences (as opposed to bins), one for each of the companies. At some point the producer will come in and quickly tell me what footage goes up and what does not.  I will then edit down the clips with clean ins and outs, add the company logo bumper on the in and out and export it into a compression watch folder.

Compression Station

The final stage is a MacPro Tower running Episode Pro. I customized it just for this job, and it is also using the same raid drive that both the P2 ingest machine and edit machine are using. So as soon as a file shows up in the watch folder, it starts compressing it using the preset that was already created and tested with the client. The output folder is a shared folder that the web crew has access to on their end of the network (upstream of my 5-port switch).

Pulling It All Together

While it would not be too difficult to slide my chair from machine to machine, I had an idea as I was testing the system. Why not use Apple Remote Desktop to control all 3 machines from the one 23″ monitor!

So, that’s what I’m doing. From the edit station, which has a large LCD hooked up, I have access to both of the other stations, and switching is very fast and easy since it’s all the same mouse and keyboard. What an awesome way to work!

Ready to Rock n’ Roll

So at this point, I’m pretty much playing the waiting game. I’m set up, I’ve tested, retested and tested again and everything is working as expected. It all gets put to the test tomorrow.

Video compression has come a long way from the days of using Cinepak on a Quadra 950 tower and the old NuBus slots. For the most part, the wars between online formats has been settled with Flash leading the way. But behind that Flash Player is often H.264 encoded video, ever since it was introduced with Flash 9 in December of 2007. Even video powerhouse YouTube is pushing out H.264 video wrapped in a flash player. If that’s not enough, one of the officially supported video formats for Blu-ray is H.264.

So from on-line video (SD or HD) to high end Blu-ray DVD’s, h.264 is a huge player. It’s all good, right? Well, mostly. Have you ever compressed an h.264 video file? It can be unbearably long. We first started running into this bottleneck when we switched from doing mpeg-1 client web approvals (something that was very fast to compress and widely compatible) to h.264. We switched mainly because we wanted to post high resolution web approvals for our clients at higher quality, and MPEG-1 just wasn’t cutting it. H.264 really filled that need. But even a shorter video, say 10-15 minutes could take 60-90 minutes to compress on a Quad Intel MacPro, and some of our videos are more in the 30 minute range. If you have the time, leaving it running overnight is no big deal, but most of the time we’re doing these web approvals close to 5 or 6pm and they needed to be posted and sent to the client that same day. Waiting around just to finish a web post feels like a waste of time (although we did minimize this to some degree using LogMeIn as covered in my previous post).

After hearing others brag about how great it was, we finally decided to try the “to good to be true” Turbo.264 USB key from Elgato (the non-HD version). I really fought it because I had a hard time believing that a little USB key could do what my huge expensive multi-processor MacPro could not. But also because it did not integrate with Compressor, which is part of our workflow. For the price though, we decided to give it a try.

For what you end up paying, the Turbo.264 does a pretty good job. It is FAST for sure, and the output is not too bad, but it’s not perfect either. It gave us the speed that we wanted, but not the quality. One of the main reasons it’s able to do what it does so fast is that the very first thing that’s done is resize the video frame, and then pass it off to the USB key for processing. This is key, because the rest of the processing is done on a lower resolution frame instead of working with the original uncompressed frame. Great for speed, but not optimal for quality. But for many people, this might just do the trick depending on your needs and budget. You end up seeing compression artifacts in places that you wouldn’t when using compressor with similar settings, typically areas of fast movement, effects or dissolves. But it did take care of the time bottleneck that we were having. So we decided to sacrifice some quality for the sake of actually getting home on time but continued to look for other options.

Then I read a press release about a new product from Matrox called CompressHD, and I had a warm and fuzzy feeling all over. I contacted Matrox and asked them if it was possible to get a review unit and they were nice enough to send it out a week later. While it’s 4-5x the cost of the Turbo.264 USB key, (depending on which one you compare it to, the first SD key or the more recent HD version) it has some great benefits that make the cost worthwhile.  I’ve been using it for nearly 2 months now and it has taken the pain out of h.264 encoding.

Installation

Installation is easy, but for most editors the biggest problem may be finding an open card slot on your MacPro. We decided to sacrifice a SATA card to make way for the CompressHD card. All it needs is a PCIe slot. Once installed I started the computer and installed the software, and after a quick reboot it was good to go.

Integration with Compressor

The biggest selling point (aside from the speed)  is the seamless integration with compressor. Inside of compressor there is a new preset folder called “Matrox MAX H.264 Settings”. If you take a look at what’s inside, you’ll find that the presets are very similar to what you’re used to seeing in the Apple Settings.

If you’re used to using compressor, not much changes in your workflow for creating h.264 files. You pick one of the Matrox presets that fits your needs, apply it and submit just as you did in the past. However, much of the processing is now handed off to the CompressHD card. The only thing handled by compressor now is the decoding of the video frame, everything else is handled by the CompressHD card. The card has 2 processors that are optimized for different functions. One chip handles resizing/scaling, and the other handles the color space, compression and output. So what you end up with is this nice little video assembly line and each frame is passed from chip to chip to perform it’s designated function.

But what if you don’t want to use one of the presets included? What if you have specific needs of your own? No problem! You can create your own settings and still take advantage of that nice processing power. As an example, here is a setting that we created to use for web approvals.

What is the difference between the Apple h.264 presets and the Matrox ones? Nothing really. The Matrox folder was created for convenience and to streamline your experience. You can choose any of the Apple h.264 presets and they too will access the card.

If you want to compare performance with and without the card, there’s no need to pull the card out and then put it back in. Open up the control panel and you can turn the card on and off. This is what we did for the comparison tests. We’ve been running version 1.6 of the software, but the current version is 1.8 and is now Snow Leopard compatible. However, we’re still using Leopard and do not plan to upgrade until sometime late next summer.

Performance

Once we got this card in the machine, we just couldn’t wait to start compressing something… ANYTHING, just to try it out. It’s not that compression is all that interesting, but I really wanted to see how this baby performed. It was like dropping a new engine into a used car, we just wanted to hear the engine fire up. Here are the details on how we tested the card.

All tests were performed on a 3.o ghz Quad Core Intel MacPro with 12 gigs of RAM. We ran each compression twice. Once with the CompressHD card enabled, and once without. During these tests there were no other operations being performed on the machine, but only for the sake of making sure we were comparing apples to apples when we got the final numbers. One of the main reasons to use this card is that it handles so much of the work load, you can continue to work and even do processor intensive functions on the computer while having little or no effect on the compression times that the card puts out.

We used version 3.05 of compressor, that is part of Final Cut Studio 2. If you’re running the latest version of Final Cut Studio (we call it 3 because Apple forgot to give it a number) you will already have the ability to create Blu-ray movies within compressor. In our case, the card actually adds that ability to compressor, since this version of compressor does not directly support Blu-ray (only the now dead HD-DVD standard).

Our test video is 14:12 long and in 720p format using the ProRes 422 codec. The original file is 7.85 gigs in size, and we compressed it to 6 different formats as part of a single batch for each of the tests. We chose some of the most common presets that we might use, as well as one custom one that we use in house.

Here are the results.

As you can see, there is a significant difference with the card enabled.  There’s something very satisfying about watching it crank through the data so fast. It does however cut down on the coffee breaks and long walks on the beach.

One thing that I noticed is that the biggest benefit comes when you are changing resolution. This is where having the dedicated hardware really pays off. When you’re simply just converting from one format to another (say ProRes to h.264 with no other changes) the speed bump is less noticeable, but still there.

As an example, look at the Apple TV bar compared to the iPhone bar. Because the frame size for Apple TV does not need to be changed, the card just passes the frames through at the same resolution. But for the iPhone version it has to be scaled down a lot, something that the card does much faster and with better results then just using compressor.

*NOTE:  You might have noticed that the Blu-ray bar is the same on both passes. Because I was running Compressor 3 instead of the newer 3.5, Blu-ray is not supported natively. So on both passes, the CompressHD card was used. So kind of pointless for our purposes, but I left it in anyway.

Image Quality

The image quality is as good as anything coming out of compressor natively, but at a fraction of the time. In all of the tests that we did I couldn’t see a quality difference between using the card or not. Compared to video run through the Turbo.264 key, there was a noticeable difference. Again, I’m not totally knocking the Turbo.264 product, it does have its place. I use it all the time to convert movies/tv shows from the TiVo format to iPhone so that I can watch them while at the gym. But for trying to exceed the expectations of my clients the Turbo.264 key falls short. We’ve also had problems with it dealing with anamorphic footage properly without having weird scaling and cropping issues.

One thing to be aware of is that the CompressHD card will only do CBR compression, not VBR. Not a huge deal, but something to be aware of. This is also a limitation of the Turbo.264 usb key. VBR adds a much better quality to file size ratio then CBR, but in my experience this is not much of an issue. Disk space is abundant, the internet is fast and both SD DVD and Blu-ray can hold plenty of data. Not a huge deal.

Just to give you an idea, here are some file size differences based on the same source video.

Compatibility

One of my original concerns was that the card might interfere or conflict with other capture cards from AJA or BlackMagic, but it plays nicely. The codec’s that Matrox wrote are based on the Quicktime Component architecture built into QT, so any hardware or software that supports the implementation of QuickTime Component will work just fine.

Matrox Product Integration

It’s worth noting that you can get the CompressHD hardware (called the “MAX“) as part of some of the other Matrox products. For example, you can purchase a MXO2 and get it outfitted with the MAX card for just $400 more, saving you a $100 over buying the card separately. One of the great benefits of this is the ability to run this type of hardware on a laptop that has a Express34 slot, instead of just a tower. One of the down sides is that you can’t use both the MXO2 Max for editing/monitoring while the hardware is compressing. It’s an either/or situation. But for many that will be a small trade off for the ability to take this mobile.

The SuiteTake

At a street price of $499 the CompressHD is not exactly cheap, especially if you only occasionally need to compress to h.264, and time is not an issue for you. But if you encode as much as we do and don’t’ want to spend your whole week watching a progress bar, I would whole heartedly recommend getting the Matrox CompressHD. It’s a solid piece of hardware that integrates nicely with the FCP workflow so seamlessly you will forget it’s even there. That is, unless somebody takes it away from you.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This post was updated on Wednesday; November 4, 2009 with new information regarding resizing partitions on the Drobo using iPartition.

As brought to my attention by reader Bradley Davidson (thanks Bradley), iPartition does not actually support the method that I mentioned, and neither does drobo directly.

In my testing, I performed the resizing operation on a newly formatted drive that didn’t have any data (since I had just lost all of my data that was on the drobo). If you try to resize a partition as outlined in this post, you WILL LOSE YOUR DATA. So don’t try it. In theory it was a great idea, but apparently this too will cause problems.

You can find more information on the iPartition website, as well as from Drobo. Like we’ve pointed out many times, we’re also learning here at SuiteTake so thanks for the feedback.

Before I start, let me just say that I am a Drobo fan. I have 2 of them (an original USB and a newer FW version) and plan to purchase more Drobo’s in the not too distant future. Overall I’ve had a great experience with the units and when I needed assistance their tech support was very helpful.

All of that being said, there is a dirty little secret that they don’t warn you about and if you’re not careful you can have your Drobo crash beyond recovery, which is what happened to me this past week. I lost nearly 4 TB of files and there was nothing I could do to get them back. If you own a Drobo, this is a must read.

Here’s what the main issue boils down to. One of the ways that the Drobo is able to expand over time is by presenting the OS with a virtualized volume of its total achievable space. So if you format your drobo drive as a 16 TB drive, (the current maximum except for on the Drobo Pro which is 32 TB) the OS thinks that it has 16TB of storage available. Thus, every program you use also sees the drive as a 16TB volume. This is true even if you have a single 250 gig drive in the drobo.

When you’re manually adding files to the drobo, this is not too big of a deal. You’re interacting with the drive and if you start to get close to filling the Drobo it will start to warn you both through the lights on the drive as well as the Drobo Dashboard software. It’s kind of hard to miss, and can actually get kind of annoying if you just try to ignore the warnings.

However, in our case we don’t often interact with the Drobo directly. It’s used as a backup drive for one of our edit suites and sits in a back room attached to a server. Every 3 hours our Retrospect server runs a script to clone all active projects to the drobo. In doing this we’re protected against any failures and at most would only lose 3 hours of work (which could still be a lot, but better than 3 months of work).

We just finished a good long stretch of having projects back to back without time to offload the complete ones, so the “active projects” folder started to grow beyond the size of the Drobo’s capacity. Because Retrospect thought there was 16TB of space, it just kept trying to pile the files onto the drive until the drobo finally crashed. It unmounted itself from the computer and no amount of restarting of the server and/or Drobo would bring it back.

In this case the Drobo volume gets so overloaded with files that it has no “work space” left to do it’s own housekeeping to keep track of used and unused space, as well as file redundancy. It needs a small amount of it’s own space to do this..

You might think that since it’s a space issue you can just replace one of the drives with a larger one and let it rebuild. Nope, that doesn’t work either. I was on the phone with Tech Support for about 20 minutes as we walked through the situation and finally he informed me that if I was sure that the drive had been filled beyond its capacity than there was nothing to do other than to start over and reformat the drives.

Wow! The drive system that’s touted as the safe way to store all of your most important files has one major flaw, and most people are not even aware of it!

While on my tech support call I asked the engineer how frequently he received calls about this particular problem. After a big sigh he admitted that it was nearly every day.

For us, losing the drive was not a huge issue. It was only a clone of one of the edit rooms and could be rebuilt overnight by just re-running the backup (with fewer files selected this time). But what if this was your primary repository for something important? What if it’s the one place you keep all of your work files, photos, music or something else that’s of great importance to you? I have a Drobo at home that I use as my primary holding tank for all digital video that I shoot of my twin boys, which is all tapeless media. If it had been that drive that went down in this same way I’m pretty sure I would not have been so easy going on the phone.

When to be Scared
How do you know if this has happened to you? To be totally sure you should go through Drobo tech support, but I’ll explain what usually happens.

You’ll find that the drive is not mounted on the desktop and doesn’t show up in the drobo dashboard. Even after a restart of the computer and the drobo it will not show up.

To verify it’s not the Drobo hardware, power down the unit, take out all of the hard drives and then plug it back in (with it connected tot he computer). If with all of the drives out it is able to be seen by the Drobo Dashboard software, then you’ve verified that the Drobo itself is working fine.

Next, with the cover off the front of the drive, unplug the drive (reinstall the drives if you have pulled them out) and plug it back in while watching the lights on the front (the lights along the bottom of the Drobo). There are two sequences of lights as the Drobo first powers up. It starts by building lights from left to right, until the row of blue dots are all lit. This is the boot up sequence of the drobo (which is actually running a version of linix, so yes it really is a mini-computer).

Next, all of the blue lights along the bottom will go out and then start to build from right to left. During this process the Drobo is evaluating the drives and determining where the extra space is on each drive and reading other information that it needs. This process normally completes and the Drobo mounts. In my case, the lights never finished building and it would hang every time, 3 lights before completing. Even after leaving it on for a few days it didn’t make any more progress. This is almost surly a bad sign.

So, what to do?

If this has already happened to you, there’s not much you can do (again, make sure you go through Drobo tech support to be 100% sure). The usual procedure is to power up while holding in the reset button in the back with a paperclip. This will reset the Drobo back to it’s “out of the box” state and allow you to format the drives again.

The good thing is that since you’re now aware of this problem there are a few ways to avoid the problem in the first place.

The Easy Answer

When the drobo dashboard tells you to replace a drive, or you see a yellow or red light flashing next to one of the drives, REPLACE THE DRIVE! Don’t mess around! I know I’ll take this warning a lot more serious in the future.

The Easy Answer, But With A Trade Off
When you first start to build your drobo, format it through the drobo dashboard but instead of just going to 16TB, set the size to the size your drive will be after formatted with the you plan to use. To figure out the total formatted size, you can use the online Drobolator.

The down side? Remember how you loved just adding drives without formatting and just expanding your storage space? You can’t do that anymore. Every time that you install a new drive you will need to reformat the drive to realize the additional space.

The Pain In The Ass Answer.

Format the drive as you would normally do using the Drobo Dashboard software, and go to the maximum of 16TB.

Once this is done, you need to open the drive in Apple’s Disk Utility program and repartition the drive to create a volume that is just slightly LESS than the available space that you see in the drobo dashboard.

For example, in my case I have (2) 2 TB drives, and (2) 1 TB drives installed. Once formatted it gives me a total available space of 3.6 TB

But in the finder this drive is showing up as having almost 16TB of space. Remember, this is what causes the problem.

Inside of Disk Utility you need to change this drive from one partition to 2 as shown here.

Set the first partition to just smaller than the maximum amount of free space that you have. In my case it said I had 3.6 TB, so I have made this volume 3.5 TB. In doing so I’ve just prevented the drive from being able to be overloaded. The Finder/OS will now know what the proper amount of space available is.

On the extra partition, just set it as “Free Space”. This will allow you to still expand your drive later as you upgrade the drives on your Drobo.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This post was updated on Wednesday; November 4, 2009 with new information regarding resizing partitions on the Drobo using iPartition.

As brought to my attention by reader Bradley Davidson (thanks Bradley), iPartition does not actually support the method that I mentioned, and neither does drobo directly.

In my testing, I performed the resizing operation on a newly formatted drive that didn’t have any data (since I had just lost all of my data that was on the drobo). If you try to resize a partition as outlined in this post, you WILL LOSE YOUR DATA. So don’t try it. In theory it was a great idea, but apparently this too will cause problems.

You can find more information on the iPartition website, as well as from Drobo. Like we’ve pointed out many times, we’re also learning here at SuiteTake so thanks for the feedback.

Just for the record I have NOT used disk utility to do this step (I use iPartition) but it should work in theory. Test at your own risk!

SIDE NOTE
While the official word from Drobo is that pretty much any SATA drive will work, in my experience using Hitachi drives can cause heat issues once you get 4 drives in the case. My Drobo at home is a original USB version and I’m constantly having issues with it shutting down due to overheating, even though the ambient temperature is only upper 60′s to mid 70′s. I’ve been told by tech support that Hitachi drives are known to run a bit hotter. I guess I wouldn’t disagree with that.

The better choice would be the Western Digital Green drives. They’re a good balance of performance, energy usage and heat, and they’ve never given me a problem. The latest 2TB versions of these drives have really come down to a nice price and are well worth it.

The SuiteTake?
Even with the Drobo, it’s still a good idea to have more than one copy of your data. As a rule of thumb I try to always have 2 on-site copies and one off site “cloud” copy of anything that I can’t bear to lose. In this digital age it seems we have fewer and fewer tangible objects, and it doesn’t take much to lose a great deal.

The Drobo is a great technology and offers expandability and protection that other consumer drives just can’t match. But make sure you’re aware of the downside of not tending to the drives needs in a timely manner, or next thing you know you’ll be looking for a paperclip to push in that little reset button while holding back the tears.

In a nutshell, the main focus of this post is to keep your project and media organized in a way that allows any editor to pickup your project and have a pretty good sense of what’s going on. By following these steps you’ll also be more efficient, save yourself time and be more likely to avoid costly mistakes

This is part 1 of 2 parts and I’ll focus on pre-editing organization and proper setup of your edit system and project. Part 2 will cover editing media management, proper use of timeline tracks and exporting/final output and long term archival.

Use of Project numbers
Everything we do at Edit Creations, from the very start of the project until the media is removed from the system, and even invoicing, is based on the project number. And every project has it’s own unique number. We use a simple FMP (FileMaker Pro) database to create and keep track of our jobs so that we know what numbers are used for what jobs. This same database is where we track the project name as well (more on that later). While we do this with a FMP database, you can do it with a spreadsheet, or even a “New Jobs” notebook. What’s important is that you do it and have a way to track what the next unused number is.

What we’ve chosen to do is use a format of ECJ-XX-XXXX, where ECJ = Edit Creations Job, XX = the current year, and XXXX is a sequential number that continues to increment by 1 every time a new job is created. For example, a current job number as of this writing is ECJ-09-0591. So at a glance we can tell that it’s a 2009 job, and that it’s more recent then say 09-0590. We can also tell that the job is for Edit Creations, our main company. We also have a sister company called Timeline Creative, and if it was a job for that company it would start with TLC to differentiate it.

You can append any amount of information that you like. For example if you had jobs for shooting vs editing, you could add a designation of “PROD” and POST” to your system. So a job number could be 2009-0591-PROD for the production, and 2009-0591-POST for the post production. In doing this you could keep track of different stages of the same job with ease.

If you were working on a broadcast series you might use the season and episode codes, instead of having a number that sequences like we do, you could have a number that was a date based code (for example 09-0342 would tell you that the job was created on the 342 day of 2009).

The point is, come up with a system that is helpful to YOU and YOUR workflow based on the information that is important to you. One size does not fit all here and there is no right or wrong.

Using a database gives us the option to do nifty things like create the project folder/FCP project file name from the information that is typed in when the job is created, and then format it properly so that it can be pasted into the finder where needed. New job information is transferred both to the project folder, and to the FCP project file for every job.

Project Names

Project names should have some consistency and formatting as well. It’s a balance between making the project name descriptive enough that there’s value in the name, but not making it a paragraph long.

For us that means starting with the END client (not our direct client), a short descriptive name that describes the project, and if it makes sense the year, episode number or some other time based info. This is important because we have some reoccurring jobs that have the same title every year, so the date is the only information that differentiates each project.

So for us, the format looks like this.

Job Number – End Client – Descriptive Title – Time Information.

Or more specifically,

ECJ-09-0420- Kmart, Making The Sale – Episode 007

or

EJC-09-0452 – Lions Quarterly – Fall 2009

This is about as long as we would make a project title. Again, think about what works for you and come up with your own system.

Proper setup of FCP scratch disk
Ask 10 different editors how to properly setup the scratch disk and you’ll get 10 different answers, possibly some very heated opinions. I will admit that based on your workflow one way may work better then another, but in my personal experience there is only one way that avoids all of the common headaches and pitfalls.

Set it and Forget it (yes, just like the informercial)

FCP does a pretty good job of keeping things organized if you just let it do its job, and if you are consistent with your use of project names and numbers, there’s no reason not to let FCP do this job for you.

Note – this screen shot includes jobs that were created before we added the “ECJ” prefix. Without it, on occasion we had problems with folders that were not part of a job being selected during the deleting process, because a dated folder may be the same number as a job number, yet have no association with that project.

When you create a new project, the name you choose for that project is what determines the name of your capture scratch folder, along with the associated render files and auto-save folders. If you always keep your capture scratch set to the same folder, FCP will keep everything organized by project. The files will be where FCP expects to find them and you’ll avoid the dreaded “Media Off Line” screen or having to re-link all of your media.

The biggest benefit (to me anyway) is how this streamlines the removal of projects from the system. Do a search for the job number or project name, and all files and folders associated with that job show up in a single window so that you can review and delete them. You can even do this over the network with multiple machines if more then one computer was working on a project. This will save you having to hunt down every file associated with a job across various drives or computers.

One special note about this way of searching for files. In the Tiger OS you could create a restrictive search right in the finder using “custom locations”. I would narrow the search to the Final Cut Pro Documents folder on each machine I wanted to search for and get a very narrowed down list of files that I knew were in locations that were safe to delete.

It appears that this feature was removed in Leopard (correct me if I’m wrong but I can’t find it to save my life). There is no way to add custom locations, so for this process I use a program called Path Finder. It gives me the option of doing what I used to do in Tiger and is a bit more elegant at it as well.

For me personally, I just can’t come up with a reason not to lock down the location of the capture scratch folder, but I can think of some problems you’ll have if you don’t.

The biggest issue is nesting. I’ve seen it time and time again when the capture scratch folder is moved around to different folders, different drives and so on. At some point, because the same folder is not always being chosen, you end up with a capture scratch folder, inside a capture scratch folder, inside a capture scratch folder and so on.

Another down side is changing the capture scratch to a location that is not a permanent location on the machine, like an external or removable drive. Maybe you’re running low on space and hook up an extra FW drive to capture to, but later somebody takes that drive to another location to do other work and it’s no longer available the next time you open your project. Then you’re stuck trying to track down that drive only to find out that the other editor or a producer took it home so that they could screen footage! Ahh!

The cost of a decent drive is very reasonable these days and the cost per gigabyte continues to drop year to year. So if you’re running low on space, add another drive! But make sure it’s a fixture on that system, just as if it were an internal drive. Throw a label on the drive if you have to warning others to not disconnect the drive.

Proper Setup For Your Project
It wasn’t all that long ago that everything was more or less edited in a single format. For me, everything came to me on Beta SP or DigiBeta, we digitized it to uncompressed SD, and edited it 4×3 uncompressed (usually 8-bit to save a little space). It was simple, 4×3, 720×486, 29.97 fps.

Now, you not only have many possible sources of footage with different resolutions, frame format and time base, but what you master/output to is a whole other decision.

As an example, I recently did a project that had all of the following.

• Beta SP, 4×3
• DigiBeta, 16×9 Anamorphic
• Panasonic DVCProHD 720p30 (and a few 1080i shots)
• Panasonic AVCHD 1080i
• DVCam 4×3
• DVD Footage imported form a PAL DVD

Based on the source footage, there is no obvious choice as to what your sequence settings should be. So after asking the producer questions about the final distribution, expected shelf life of the project and so on, I decided to edit 16×9 HD at 720, 29.97 fps, with ProRes as the codec.

One thing that’s overlooked by many editors is that you do not have to edit in the same format that your source footage is, and you don’t have to transcode everything to a common format. You can do these things, but you don’t have to. We’ve had really good results using FCP’s multi-format timeline and working in ProRes. Yes, you will be rendering more then if everything was native, but with a fast enough machine you can continue to work in real-time even with the footage unrendered.

The point I’m trying to make is, every time you start a new project it’s critical to know the answers to several questions.

• What formats do you anticipate using as source footage?
• Roughly, what percentages of each format?
• What is our final delivery (tape, on-line, DVD, portable devices)?
• Will the video have a life elsewhere other then it’s intended delivery?
• Do you have PAL footage (or other formats that you don’t usually work with)?
• Do you have any graphic elements that are already in one format or another?

One thing I want to stress is to not only ask about the intended use, but any other possible uses outside of that down the road.

For example, I had a client once that insisted that the video would only be used for the web, and thus they told us to use the full image raster for graphics and text. When I really pushed the question and asked “So you don’t think you’ll ever do any DVD’s of this?”, they answered “Well, yes we’ll probably do DVD’s down the road for distribution and for any press requests”. Well, that changes things – a lot.

If I had not asked that question, we would have had all sorts of title and video safe problems down the road when they sprung it on us to make the DVD version. As it turned out, we just kept everything broadcast safe and it was OK for both purposes. It’s because of this one experience that I push to never use full raster unless it’s for a specific event and has no life after that (for example, Watchout videos which are very targeted and have a short shelf life).

Once you have all of the information you need to make an informed decision, it’s time to setup your FCP project file with the proper settings. Using the Easy Setup feature of FCP, this is pretty simple.

The bulk of our work these days is done in 720p, 29.79, ProRes. Unless we have ALL 4×3 material, we’ve had great success pillar boxing 4×3 video, blowing it up or just coming up with a creative treatment to make it play nice inside the 16×9 frame. Once you get used to editing in 16×9 it’s really hard to go back. I can’t say the opposite is true.

Once the project is formatted, we make it a point to always note the master sequence settings as one of the first folders in the project (this is actually part of our template). This way as we switch from job to job, or if another editor has to continue with a job that he/she didn’t start it’s obvious how to properly setup the project.

Importing or digitizing media (camera originals)

DIGITIZING
Time spent organizing your footage on import/capture is time well spent. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen people digitize tapes with the clip name “untitled”. In one case, I had a freelance editor that captured 2 hours of footage broken into about 150 clips, and it was all named “untitled_01, untitled_02…”. His idea was to go back and name the clips inside of FCP later so that they made sense. But back then (using FCP 5) there was not a way to rename the files on the hard drive to match the clip names. So your clip names had no obvious or logical connection to the file names. What a pain! This is a sure sign of inexperience and lack of professionalism. Just do it right from the start!

I understand there are times that you may not log and capture with super detailed names, but there are better ways then just “untitled”. If you have to capture a whole tape, or multiple clips from a tape, at least use something that gives you even the slightest amount of info.

Here are some examples.

• WaterPark_shoot_01, 02, 03…
• CameraA_Day1_01, 02, 03…
• Camera_Dan_ConventionCenter_01,02,03…

When you use a title in this way FCP will automatically increment up the number while retaining the original name, thus giving you some information to go on with a very minimal amount of effort on your part.

IMPORTING
For importing tapeless camera originals the work flow is different for different producers. And they’re both on opposite extremes.

Some producers will take the time to log the shots they need and provide just those clips, carefully named and organized. Others will give me the 10 hours of footage that they shot and ask me to import everything. From there they just write the timecode notes into the script, more like the old days of working in a tape based on-line room. I always try to stay flexible and adapt to how the producer prefers to work, instead of asking them to adapt to my way of working.

OTHER MEDIA FILES
(non camera originals)

While FCP handles the organization of tapeless media and digitizing tapes, what about other elements? You might get photos off of a CD, download some music or VO files, create some PS files along the way or other motion graphic elements. They might come from various locations on your system, the network, removable drive, USB key or optical media. Where does all of this go?

Again, this is where having the template really helps (if you have not read my post about using a project folder, check it out). Our system is to have any media that did not automatically go to the Capture Scratch folder, located inside of the project folder. There are no exceptions. That means files from any source are first copied into the project folder, and then imported into FCP so that they are properly referenced under the umbrella of that job.

There is never cross pollination of elements between projects, because if something is used in a project is should be part of that job folder. Even if that means duplicating some assets so that they’re in two locations. It’s not uncommon for a client to want to steal a shot or two from one of their other projects that’s still on the system. That’s not a problem, but whatever is “stolen” must first be copied to the current project, and then imported.

Why so strict? Getting burned, that’s why.

In the past before we established this rule, shots from several projects would be shared. On multiple occasions we would clean off a few long finished projects only to find out the next day that the “media off line” screen plagued several other projects that were using some of the deleted media and not yet done. That’s no longer a problem.

What’s in Part 2?
In the next installment of this epic post I’ll cover proper use of timeline tracks, versioning, nesting and why I never use it, exporting and finally proper long term archival using the new LTO drive from Cache~A.

Check Out the Popular Shane Ross DVD.
For a more in-depth look at keeping your workflow organized, check out Shane Ross’s DVD. It covers everything here and more in great detail, and is a bit more visual then reading a blog post.

Order It Now

Having regular backups is important enough (that’s for another day, another post) but how about starting with a quality drive system? I’ve seen too many people buy drives for their edit systems based on price and price alone, only to be burned and burned bad. It’s like shopping around for a heart surgeon and going with the cheapest guy.

“Hi everybody!” “Hi Dr. Nick!”

I was told a story about an editor that was working on a big show for the Discovery channel for over 3 months, and 5 days before he was to master the show his drive system went down and all was lost. Every bit. There was no way to recover 3 months of work in time to make the broadcast date so they not only lost the job and all future work from Discovery, but 3 months of revenue that they had already worked for. Just pause and think about that. That’s the kind of thing that some companies can never recover from.

At Edit Creations we have a job that we do every year that lasts from January through the end of June (2 rooms, 5 days a week), creating multiple videos and various programs that all play at a show in July. Whenever we start to come down that home stretch I remember that story and start to get a bit nervous. I’m always making sure that our backups are in good shape.

This post is all about making sure the drives you buy are worthy of the work that you’re doing. Or more importanly, that you avoid the drives that are not.

Before I start, let me break it down a bit more. There are hard drive manufactures that create the raw hard drives (like Hatachi, Seagate and Maxtor to name a few) and then there are the companies that take those hard drives and create products that incorporate them. I will be discussing is the second group.

I have always been somebody that gravitates to people and companies that take pride in what they do. Having a passion for whatever you do means that you’ll turn out something better then the guy who looks at something as “just a job” or “just a way to make a buck”. There are companies like Apple and Jet Blue that provide quality products and service, because they take pride in what they do and what they put out there. They may not always be perfect or make the right decisions, but they do their best to right their wrongs. It’s evident from the moment you pick up a MBP and feel it in your hands. It’s a beautiful piece of hardware, and you can’t deny that, even if you are a lover of the PC. The same with Jet Blue. Take a flight with them and it’s very clear that they’re all about making your experience with them second to none.

The two companies I’m going to outline here do not fit this model in my opinion, and I have plenty of personal experience to back it up in both cases.

Offender #1 – Lacie
Products – Any of the “Quadra” drives

Back in 2003-2004 I invested in some of the then popular Lacie drives (they were just called Lacie drives, no quadra model name back then). The drives seemed nice on the surface. They came in multiple capacities, they were FW400, and later 800, the enclosures were a nice solid metal and if you were to hold one in your hand it felt nice and solid.

I started buying them when I noticed other editors were using them, and even started to see them during product demos and I figured if they were using them they must be good. I started to recommend them to my clients as well. I should have done my research though.

Over the next 2 years I purchased more and more drives, and eventually ended up with around 12 of them of varying sizes. Some with single drives, some with dual and one with 4 drives in a single case.

Over the next few years I started having a few issues. First, some of the dual drive systems would literally unmount themselves while editing. Our usual setup was to have one of them for the video drive and one for the project files (we were only doing DV25/DV50 at the time), and while you were editing one would just drop off from time to time. All of the media would suddenly go “off line” and we usually had to reboot to get it all working again.

The drives had their own dedicated FW800 card so they were not on the internal bus system, and thus there was no other overhead, just 2 drives hooked into a 3-port FW800 card.

Then we noticed that when doing long copies from one drive to the next (cloning a drive) we would be hard pressed to get it to finish. The drive would at some point stop copying the data, and the blue light on the front would just flash on and off while emitted a steady and slow tapping sound.

The final clincher was when the drives would just fail. The internal HD’s just started to crap out and we actually lost data (however we did have backups of everything). A quick search on google turned out tons of people having the same issue. The general consensus was that the drives were overheating. The drives are very tightly packed into an enclosure that has no fans and no air flow, thus no real way to drop the temperature aside from it transferring the heat through the metal case. Apparently, that wasn’t enough.

At the Chicago Final Cut Pro User Group I started talking to people and found out other editors had had the same problem. In one case a drive was only 6 weeks old when it died, and the editor lost all of the captured footage. I also had one client call me in a panic because I had previously recommended that he buy Lacie for his backup drive, but his drive was dead (in his case the power supply blew so we were able to save the data by taking the enclosure apart and putting the drive in a new case).

I happened to be going to NAB that year (2006) so I went right up to the Lacie booth and told them some of my stories, told them how it was all over the web and asked what they were doing to address it. Mind you, I did this in a very professional manner, since at that point I still assumed it was a problem they were working on. His reply was that “As far as we know there is no problem, so there are no plans to make any changes”. There was no interest in getting additional information from me or looking into the issue any further.

So there they were at NAB, selling drives to media professionals who make their living on keeping their data safe, pushing a product with a higher then normal failure rate.

At that point I made the decision to get all of our drives replaced regardless of cost. When I got back from NAB we listed all of our LaCie drives on eBay (the working ones anyway) and bought brand new G-Raid drives to replace them – but only after doing several weeks of research. That was probably one of the smartest business decisions I made that year. Suddenly we didn’t have any of the issues we had before, the drives generally ran faster and there were no more heat issues. Zero problems, even now. We have since moved up from the G-Raid drives to getting 2 G-SpeedXL Fibre Raids, and those too work flawlessly. The older G-Raid drives are used for travel jobs and a few are on our internal backup server running 24/7.

The difference in my opinion is that the people at G-Technology (now owned by Hatachi) only put out the best products they can. They test their drives rigorously and guarantee the number of streams you can get in real time while editing.

I remember before I decided to go with them I called their office and asked to speak to an engineer (not a sales guy). I explained my situation, told him the other vendors I was considering and asked him why I should choose their drives over the others. Their drives were more expensive then the other ones I was looking at.

He explained to me that they are constantly testing the different hard drives that they put into the units because not all drives are equal, and that from their testing the only drives that consistently lived up to their performance benchmarks were Hatachi drives (at that time there were not part of Hitachi so they could use any drives at all). He said that while they were more expensive drives, they wanted to be sure what they sent out reached the standards they had set, and that other vendors could just take whatever drives they could get the best deal on that month and toss them in.

He also mentioned how they were big on keeping the drives cool so that they would last. For me he pushed all of the right buttons, and I bought 2 drives right over the phone for testing, and later purchased several more.

One more note about Lacie. Not that long ago I ran into a past employee of Lacie. As soon as I realized he used to work there I asked him about the heat/drive failure issue. He admitted that they were aware of it, and that internally there were people who wanted to address the problem, but that it was ultimately ignored by the higher ups. He said that one of the reasons he ultimately left had to do with quality issues that he felt were not getting addressed.

To be fair, Lacie does make other drives and some are probably very good. I have one of their rugged mini drives and I do like it. It’s well made and is priced right. I don’t use the drive for mission critical tasks so I felt OK giving it a try. But in general, a company that does not respond to their customers complaints is not a company I want to do business with.

Offender #2 – Granite Digital
Products – Swappable Drive Bays

As I’ve mentioned in some previous posts about archiving, up until the last year or so we’ve used a system of hard drives as our long term archive. We used a removable drive system and trays that allowed us to buy off the shelf IDE (now SATA) drives and backup entire projects with ease. We would then keep a catalog of every drive (using a great program called CD Finder. Don’t let the name fool you it does a lot more then CD’s. We still use it to keep track of our LTO tapes.) so that pulling things up later would be quick and easy. It was cost effective, efficient, and at least for a time it worked out great. Until we started to pull things off the drives.

We had purchased 3 FireVue drives from a company called Granite Digital and the products were a bit disappointing right from the beginning. Again, I didn’t do the research that I should have.

To make a very long story short, what we realized as time went on was that the drives had some sort of error transferring data and would, on occasion, prevent files from properly backing up or in some cases they were backed up fine but would not restore. Files would be too corrupt to open at all, or in the case of QT files there would be both audio in video “digital hits” that made the movies useless. We started using ChrnoSync to try to retrieve files from the drives without any errors using the “verify” option, but what we ended up with was a list of errors, which confirmed the problem. If we repeatedly tried to get the files we could get some of them successfully, but there were some that just wouldn’t transfer and were lost.

Sample QT Movie

To their credit tech support was very helpful, at least to the point of telling us all of the things on our end it might be. From OS problems, cables, software and on and on. We have 3 different units on 3 different machines and they all had the same exact issue, but somehow they were able to say with absolute confidence, that the problem could not be their drives. This is a quote from one of my exchanges from tech support.

“I can appreciate your concerns but would have to totally disagree as to the reliability of our hardware. That’s not to say you don’t have a bad component that could create problems but rather to say our stuff works as good if not better than most.”

Well, I disagreed then and still do.

Companies that take a defensive attitude when confronted with potential problems are doomed to fail. Nobody is perfect and no company is perfect. Most people know and accept this, but then it all comes down to how the company responds to mistakes. In this case every solution offered had to do with my system being flawed, which in the end it was not.

Their tech support finally wore me down and I stopped asking for their help. I sometimes wonder if that’s part of the plan.

We are currently in the progress of migrating all of our drives to LTO tapes using the Series-A Backup Drive from Cache~A. The only way we can even get some of that data off the old hard drives is to remove the drives from the trays and create a direct connection with a IDE to USB adaptor. Then it all comes off smoothly.

On top of this issue, one of their rack mountable units was $600 and when I received it it was made of very cheap bendable metal (it felt like it was cut out of a single piece of tin and bent into a case using pliers), it didn’t fit right in the rack, no cables were included and on the back was a single FW port, meaning you couldn’t even loop anything else off of it. Except for the smallest portable devices where space is an issue this is unacceptable in my book.

I emailed the company and never received a reply, but instead received a package a few weeks later with a cable and a new back plate to replace the one built into the unit. OK, not bad – but why wasn’t it right in the first place?

The SuiteTake

I’ve singled out 2 companies that I’ve had bad experiences with. The good news is there are a lot more good then bad companies out there.

I would suggest you deal with companies that specialize in creating drives for media professionals, and have a good, accessible tech support staff. Don’t be afraid to call them on the phone and ask the hard questions before you buy. When you’re having trouble nothing beats being able to pick up the phone and get immediate help. This has been my experience with G-Technology and AJA specifically. Two companies with first rate tech support and really great people.

Remember, if you’re a media professional the hard drives you use are the fort knox of your data. Everything that you do comes down to those files be safe and accessible on your hard drive. This is no place to cheap out, and a little extra money spent here can go a long way towards avoiding much more costly disasters.

Another way we use Windows is to check WMV files. While you can check them using Flip4Mac, VLC Player and the really outdated Windows Media Player for Mac, there are technical issues with all of all of these when it comes to doing a 100% QC check. In recent weeks we’ve had to watch over 100 VMV files, start to finish, to check them before sending them out for a huge Wachout presentation. The only true method we found of checking them, with confidence, was installing Boot Camp onto one of our machines and booting into Windows natively. It’s amazing how much better the files looked, and how much more smoothly they would play in that environment.

So when the free beta version of Windows came out a few months ago and I started hearing good things about it, I decided to give it a try. I installed it as both a virtual machine on my MBP, as well as a Boot Camp volume natively. What really struck me was that running Windows 7 under virtualation inside the Mac OS was actually faster than running Vista natively on our accounting PC (a 2 year old laptop).

When running in under Boot Camp, it screams and feels very fast and fluid.

I wasn’t planning on sharing this on the blog but recently Microsoft did something they’ve never done before. They lowered the price for all pre-orders to $50 for a upgrade version of Windows Home Premium. That means if you have a copy of XP or Vista, you can upgrade for $50 for a limited time. Once the software is released on October, the price goes up to $119. Full versions are $199 and up.

So if you have a PC in your life, this is worth buying. If you’re not sure, download the Public Beta of it now and run it using Boot Camp or Sun VirtualBox. Both are free! If you like it, get on board and buy it before the price more then doubles. It’s what Vista always wanted to be. I purchased 2 copies, one to run on my laptop in virtual mode, and one for our QC Boot Camp machine.

And don’t hate me because I use a PC. I’m still a Mac at heart.

Click here to buy it on Amazon.com

While posts have been a bit hit or miss lately due to our heavy work load, that doesn’t mean that we’re not getting some work done under the hood! I wanted to do a quick post to let you know some of the not so obvious changes we’ve made.

Videos
Because of the increasing demand on our server, videos are now hosted by Blip.tv. One of the new advantages is that you can now more easily play the video within the post, or watch it full screen. All video is also available in multiple formats so you can also download clips to your computer.

iTunes
We now have a SuiteTake.com podcast on iTunes. For now the feed includes videos that we post in their original h.264 format, but in the not so distant future it will also include the new SuiteTake.com podcast. More on that later this summer.

iPhone
Most of our videos are now formatted to play on the iPhone as well. There are a few that still need to be updated, but most of the older ones have already been converted.

Speaking of the iPhone, we also have a new iPhone interface that makes viewing the site simple, clean and easy on your phone.

A Comment about Comments
As we say in most of the posts, we welcome comments. And we mean it, good and bad. We don’t claim to be the experts on everything, we do make mistakes and we too are learning new things all the time. We expect to learn from your experiences as well, not just share our own. I can’t tell you the number of times that I learn something by reading a post that one of the other contributers wrote – and I work with these people all the time.

Recommended reading for the less mature commenters.

However, one thing we will not tolerate is rudeness, the use of bad language and just flat out being mean spirited. While overall the responses we receive are very professional, there are a few people who are obviously deficient in the area of human interaction (they know who they are, and we know who they are).

One requirement that we have for all posts is that they come from a valid email address. Using a phony address is akin to screaming an insult at somebody and then running away like a child. If you have something to say, own your words or keep them to yourself.

More to Come
We have some great things planned for the upcoming weeks, so stay tuned! Thanks for your continued support.

It’s been quite some time since I was really excited about a business book, but I just finished reading one that I thought I would share. The book is called “The Knack:How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up“, and is written by Norm Brodsky, Bo Burlingham, both writers at Inc. Magazine.

The book is written in an interesting way. Throughout the book, between different topics/chapters, questions from business owners are read and answered by Norm. By writing the book in this way a diverse number of topics and questions are covered that are not necessarily covered in the book otherwise.

Topics covered include how to decide if a new business is worth pursuing, how to raise capital to start a business, non-traditional ways to compensate your sales people, ways to detect unhappy customers and make sure you don’t lose them, the decision to grow or not to grow your business and when to ask for help from other business professionals.

One of my favorite parts of the book is when Norm discusses business plans, and says that before you put any effort into a business plan you need to first come up with a life plan. Ask yourself what you want out of your life in the next 5 or 10 years, and be very detailed. Maybe it’s more money, more time for vacation, the ability to travel with your family, or maybe it’s to reach a certain milestone in your company. The point is, you can’t decide what you want out of your business until you know what you want out of life. By planning one without looking at the other you run the risk of moving further and further away from the things that actually make you happy in life. I found this especially powerful and I reflected on it for several days.

While nothing in this book is specific to the media industry, like many business books the lessons learned can easily be applied to any business. And even if you’re not a typical “business owner”, you are still in business for yourself in one way or another. Even if you have a staff position, you are still the President of your own personal company. You still need to market yourself, continue to grow and improve yourself, and at some point move onto another staff position and sell yourself again.

If you are a freelance editor, this is even more true. You don’t need to have your own facility and staff to learn and apply valuable lessons from a book like this. As a freelancer you really are out there selling yourself and your skill set everyday. Books like this one can give you an edge over your competitors.

If you’re like me and have a hard time keeping up with reading, this book is also available as an audio download from Audible.com. If it wasn’t for my iPod and Audible, I would not be able to consume as many books as I do now.

I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did, and look forward to your comments and emails.

First home edit suite, 2003

Basement edit suite, 2004

Luckily, the home edit suite was short lived. In less then a year my wife and I had outgrown it and had to get office space or we would lose some of the larger jobs. The separation of work from home life was back in balance. However, there have been times that I wished the suite was back at home. It’s one thing to stick around the office to edit, but it’s another to stick around watching a render bar or compression bar just so you can finish and upload a file. What if you could do this from home? And what if it was free to you assuming that you already have a high speed internet connection at your home and office? Well, I’m hear to tell you that the solution is not only out there, but it’s a lot easier to get setup then you might think.

I’m sure by now everybody knows about MobileMe and Back To My Mac on the Macintosh (just try to get Back To My Mac working reliably though) and services like GoToMyPC.com (now supporting the Mac platform). There is also a client/server based service called HamachiX for Mac, but I could never get that to work reliably and it would often get very frustrating. About a year ago I found a free service called LogMeIn.com, which supports both Mac and PC. They’re goal is to get you hooked on their free service, and then have you upgrade to one of their paid accounts. But for what i use it for the free version is perfect. I now have several computers registered with them and use it at least weekly, sometimes every day. It has become an important tool in my toolbox.

How It Works
The concept is very simple. You create an account at LogMeIn.com. Make sure you sign up for the free service to start, it’s not always obvious that it’s available. I actually had trouble finding it when I started writing this article. Once you have an account, you download the client software that you install on every computer that you want to control. The installation is very fast, and during the setup you enter some account information that they provide you when you setup your account.

Once you install the software, it takes you to the LogMeIn.com website and registers that computer as one of your computers. You’re able to keep everything in one master list of computers, or create groups of different computers as I’ve done here.

One of the great and flawless things that the LogMeIn.com service does is get around all of the routers hubs and firewalls of your network. Our network is by no means complicated, but it’s not just an open network either. We have a cable modem, Apple Airport Extreme router, and about 5 switches in multiple locations on the network. And not once have I had a problem navigating through all of that to the machine I wanted. Hell, I can’t even get iChat to work at the office half the time.

At home it’s a similar setup. Cable modem, Time Machine wireless router and a few switches. There have even been a few times that I was at Panera Bread and wanted to start downloading something on the server at the office, and did so with great success. That says a lot because if you’ve spent any time on the free wifi from Panera, you know how painfully slow and frustrating it can be.

If you want to get really crazy, there is an iPhone application from LogMeIn.com as well, allowing you to perform all of the same functions but using your iPhone. I have not tried this, but if you have please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Putting It To Use
Once you’ve setup one or more computers, it’s just a matter of logging into the LogMeIn.com home page and you’re taken to your list of registered computers. From the list you can tell which ones are on-line and available, and which ones are not. Just click on the computer, enter a name and password and you’re in. Your browser window transforms into the desktop of the connected computer, or you can make it full screen and get the full experience being in front of the remote computer. Nearly all keyboard shortcuts that you would use locally work as expected (I’ve found a few that do not and randomly quit the browser).

This is one of those situations where seeing it in action goes a lot further then me telling you. See my real-time demonstration of it at work by watching the video at the end of this post.

How This Can Help You In Your Business
I have found many uses for LogMeIn. The initial problem was getting used to the idea that I didn’t have to hang out at the office for everything that needed to get done. Here are a few examples.

Post Edit Output
By far the biggest use we’ve had for it is web approvals. For example, it’s the end of the day and you’re finally ready to show the client your masterpiece. The typical process for us is the export a self-contained QuickTime Movie to the project folder, take that into compressor and create a H.264 QT movie file optimized for the web, take the output from compressor and into our Dreamweaver Template, create a web approval page with all of the necessary details, sync that to the server and send the client the approval link. With the exception of the compressor step, it all goes very quick. But unfortunately, if we have a long video to post the compressor step can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2-3 hours (we’ve tested the Elgato Turbo.264 USB key, but the output is not as good and the files tend to be larger. It is fast though).

Using LogMeIn.com, this has changed. When the edit is over and the master is exported, we take into compressor and start the conversion. We prep the web page with everything except for the final video file, and leave. Then the editor, from home that evening checks in when the file is done being compressed (we’re sent email notifications from compressor as each file finishes – or fails), finishes the web page and sends the link via email on the edit computer. Total time spent about 5 minutes. The big differences is that all of the time you would have waited around, is now spent at home.

Check The Status
From checking the progress of an AE render, FCP export or making sure a large copy in the finder completed, getting peace of mind is fast and easy. How many times have you left something going in compressor just to find out that it crashed 5 minutes after you left and you had no idea. Now, even if you can’t fix it remotely, you know what you’re in for before you get there.

We’ve also used it to check on large DVD runs. Our duplicator usually runs flawlessly, but on runs of 500 or more it occasionally gets hung up and has to be reset. Again, in this case there’s not much we can do to fix the problem remotely, but just knowing that somebody has to go in early to fix so that we make the deadline it is a huge help.

Creating DVD’s
While this is not an ideal way to create a DVD by any means, in a pinch it can be very helpful. There have been a handful of occasions that I received a last minute panicked call that a client now wanted a DVD instead of a web approval. At the very least I could login and start the compression so that the DVD was a quick output in the morning. In most cases though I can get the entire process done right up to saving a disk image that the assistant can burn as soon as he gets in and then messenger it out.

Grab Files Remotely
While the edit computers themselves can not share files outside of the office, it’s no big deal to login to grab some files and upload them to a FTP server so that they can be downloaded elsewhere. When I was out of town on a remote job there was a situation where I needed a graphic element from a current job that I had forgot to bring with me. It was an animated background in QT format. No problem. I logged into the edit system, dragged the QT movie to a program called FileChute, and emailed myself the link from the edit system. Ten minutes later I had the file downloaded on my remote edit system and the client was blown away (these sorts of things can really make you look like a hero).

These are just some of the ways we’ve found it can help. I’m sure based on your own projects and work flow you’ll come up with new ones of your own. If you do, feel free to leave a comment on the blog and share it with others.

See For Yourself
Click on the link below to see a real-time demonstration of just how easy it is. To sign up for your own free account, just go to LogMeIn.com and you’ll be up and running in just minutes.

One concern I always have when doing these jobs is having a system go down while being far away from the office. Part of my safety net is having a second laptop with me on every trip. I learned my lesson the hard way when a few years ago one of our editors was doing a job in California and the a AJA IO box stopped working. It was a Saturday so I couldn’t get in touch with tech support at AJA and no amount of google searching helped find a solution. By Monday the job was going to be all over, videos laid off or not. So in that case, after troubleshooting all night on the phone and realizing it was not going to be fixed, with only a 4 hour window I had to shower, head to the office and make a second system from one of our edit bays, stop and Home Depot and buy a hand truck and head to the airport. I made it in time to save the day, but it burned though all of the profits for the job.

While having 2 systems is great security, I always want to have the ability to troubleshoot, test or rebuild a machine with all of the needed software on site, should the need arise. In my worst case scenario that I play back in my head (rehearsing it like a fire drill) I imagine running to a local Apple Store, buying a new machine on the spot and reinstalling everything I need to get the job done.

Up until recently I’ve always brought with me a small selection of DVD’s. Everything from all of the original FCP and Adobe install disks, to Disk Warrior and a system restore disk. While this would obviously work, there is a better way. Why not buy a new, small portable FW drive (or even better, use one of those old drives that you have laying around) and created a multi-partition boot drive that contains everything? Then, not only do you have everything you need in one place, booting and running off of the FW drive will be much faster then working off your DVD drive.

The rest of this post will show you how to create your own emergency boot drive that is the perfect companion to your travel system.

Check List
Before you get started, here’s what you’re going to need.

• A hard drive. FireWire is my personal preference, but a bootable USB 2.0 drive will work as well. I don’t care what anybody says, FireWire is still faster then USB so I prefer to never buy a drive that is only USB.
• Hard drive space on your computer – lots of it if you’re going to be putting a lot of software on your new boot drive.
• Original CD’s/DVD’s that you want to make copies of.
• Apple Disk Utility (in the Utilities folder of your hard drive).

Pick Your Drive

The first step is to get yourself a drive. For me, I used a 500 gig G-Raid Mini that has not been getting a lot of use.

I had several other options as well, but all were too small for what I wanted to do here. Funny how 60 gigs is now considered “small”. However any one of these would make a great DiskWarrior/OSX Install disk.

If you are buying a new drive, I would recommend one of the Western Digital Passport drives. You can get a 500 Gig USB drive for less then $120, or a 400 gig version with both USB and FW800 for $115. If you’re not as concerned about the size of the drive or having an external HD, you can get an even better deal on a 1TB Quad Interface drive for about $150, also from Western Digital.

Select Your Software
Before you do anything with the drive itself, decide what you want to use it for. In my case, I decided to make partitions for the following.

• Disk Warrior Emergency Boot Disk
• OSX 10.5 Leopard Install Disk
• OSX 10.5 Server Install Disk
• OSX 10.4 Tiger Install Disk
• “Additional Software” partition for Adobe and FCP disk images

Make Disk Images

It’s time to make disk images of each disk. If you have not done this before, it’s a way to create an exact byte by byte copy of a disk (even a hard drive) to a single file on a your hard drive. Later you’ll use these files to create the hard drive versions.

Insert the disk into the disk drive and open Apple’s Disk Utility program. Towards the bottom of the list on the left you should see your DVD drive listed, and the CD that you have inserted. In my case the Leopard install disk is inserted in the machine. Click once to highlight the mounted disk as shown here.

Now click on the button along the top that says “New Image”. You will be asked for a place to save the new disk image. If you’re doing this for several DVD’s, you’re going to want to make sure you have plenty of space since each disk can be multiple gigs in size. Name the disk something meaningful and hit save. The default options of “compressed” and “none” will work fine.

Disk Utility will now create a single file that is an exact copy of your CD or DVD.

Repeat these steps for each disk you want to put on your boot drive. Even if it’s not going to be a bootable disk (for example, the Final Cut Pro suite of disks). Later you’ll see the benefit of doing so.

Get Organized
Once you’ve created a disk image for every optical disk you need, it’s a good idea to organize them into two main categories. Boot drives, and non-boot drives.

As seen here, I’ve not only put my bootable disks into their own folder, but in the additional software folder I’ve created sub-folders to keep programs grouped. Doing this is going to help you figure out how many partitions you need, and how large to make each partition.

Looking at the list I have, I can tell I need 5 partitions. There are 4 boot volumes, and the rest will go onto a 5th partition called “Additional Software”.

Before we move on we need to know how big each of the bootable volumes need to be. The best way to do that is to double click on each Disk Image so that it mounts on the desktop, and do a “get info” on the mounted volume. You may be tempted to just look at the size of the disk image, but since it’s compressed it will not give you an accurate final size.

I went through each of my drives and just made note of the final sizes. I don’t really care about the extra non-bootable images since they’re all going on whatever is left and there should be plenty of extra space. If you think you’re cutting it close you may want to get their sizes as well just to be sure everything will fit.

Splitting Up Your Disk
We now have everything we need to create the boot disk. Again, open Disk Utility and select the drive that you’re going to use. Make sure to select the drive itself, and not the current volume that’s right below it.

With the drive selected, click on the Partition tab. Currently there is just one partition for the entire drive. Let’s change that. Under “volume scheme” change it from “current” to “5-Partitions” (or however many you need for what you’re creating). We know we need 5 from the previous work we’ve already done.

Initially you’ll see 5 equal sized partition boxes. To optimize the use of space we’re going to create each partition to match the disk image so that we don’t waste space. To do this, starting from the top box click on each partition box and type in a name and size based on the sizes you recorded earlier. I usually make the partition size a little bit bigger then the size I recorded, just to be sure it all fits and there’s some working space. it’s really not necessary, but that’s what I do for my own neurotic reasons. I usually add half a gig to each recorded size.

Repeat this step for each of the new partitions, working your way down the list. When you’re done, name the final partition “Additional Software” and leave the size as is. It will automatically be whatever space is left.

The Partition Table Scheme
I will come right out and tell you the first time I went through all of this trouble I ended up with a disk that would not boot. I was baffled. I knew I did everything right. It took some digging to realize what I had done wrong.

This part is very important. Before you create the partitions, click on the option button at the bottom of the screen and you’ll see this dialog.

The type of partition scheme you use effects what machines can boot from the drive. By default, it’s setup so that it can boot from non-intel machines only (G4, G5). My problem was I was using a MacBookPro which is Intel based.

Nearly all of my machines are now Intel based, so I don’t need to have a dual booting drive that does both. But if that’s what you need, there is a way to do it. I’m not gong to bother showing you since I didn’t do it myself, but I found a good step-by-step description on how to do it on Mac OSX Hints. Feel free to follow their instructions. If it were super easy I may have done it just to say I did it, but it’s more of a pain then it’s worth to me personally.

So in my case, I chose GUID partition table and clicked OK. This will create partitions that all boot on any Intel based Macintosh.

With everything ready, click on the “apply” button and you’ll receive the standard warning letting you know you’re about to destroy the disk as you know it.

Click Partition and let it do it’s thing. It shouldn’t take more then a few seconds to a minute. When it’s done you’ll have 5 new volumes created under the main hard drive on the left side of the screen. You will also have 5 new hard drives mounted on your desktop representing each of the new partitions.

Makin’ Copies
We’re almost done. You now need to take each disk image that you created, and restore it to the matching volume that you created for it. This is pretty straight forward.

Inside of disk utility, click on the first partition that you want to work on, and click the “restore” tab. From that window, you can select your disk image file, and then drag and drop the HD from the desktop that you want to copy that image to.

Click the “restore” button, click OK on the warning dialog and enter your user password and away it goes. This part can take awhile, especially if like me you’re restoring form a network server drive that’s also busy doing other things.

Repeat this for each of the boot volumes.

If by chance you get an error like this one…

…don’t freak out. At least not yet anyway. Chances are pretty good you have that disk image mounted on your desktop. Just unmount the disk image by and try again.

The Rest of the Software
The disk images that were not intended to be boot disks (all of the Adobe/FCP images) can just be copied using the finder to the volume called “Additional Software”.

Once all of the drives are restored from their perspective disk images and all of the extra software is copied over to the extra drive, it’s time to take it for a test drive.

Restart, Reboot, Relax
Plug in your drive and choose restart. As soon as your Mac chimes on, hold down the option key on your keyboard. (I should mention that this needs to be a wired keyboard for this to work). In a few seconds you’ll see a list of all of the bootable disks. Use the arrows on the keyboard to make a choice and hit return.

A Few Usage Notes
A few things I wanted to mention.

Installing OSX
When you use the OSX install DVD, normally you put the DVD in and click on the “Install” icon, and away it goes – rebooting the machine and starting up from the DVD. If you try to do this from the boot drive you just created, it will not work. It can tell that it’s not the original DVD and gives you an error. So the way to get around it is how I described above, restarting and holding down the option key to choose your drive. After that it all goes as normally.

Installing FCP
One of the great benefits of having a program like FCP Studio as disk images, is that the installation goes a LOT faster, and you can install everything unattended. No more switching of the DVD’s as it needs them. The trick is to just open up all of the images and have them mounted on the desktop. Once you start the install, it will appear that you have multiple DVD’s all mounted. So as it finishes with one, it just moves onto the next one.

Quick System Restores
Creating disk images can be a great way to keep a backup of your current edit system. Once a month we create a disk image of the boot drive of each edit system in the office. Why? This way if a system crashes or goes down due to a hard drive problem, we can use the image to create a new identical drive and be up and running with all of our software, plugins and system settings as we had them. This was put to the test once already when a system just didn’t boot one morning and we were on deadline. By noon we had a new drive installed and imaged from the backup and were up and running again. Try rebuilding an entire system from all of the original software disks in just 3 hours. Our usual rebuild from scratch time is about 8-10 hours, and usually several days of finding little things that we forgot and fixing system settings and preferences.

Adding or Changing Partition Size
Let’s say that you create 5 partitions as I did in this example, and later on want to add a 6th because a) you have enough space on the drive and b) you now decided you wanted to add Snow Leopard as an additional boot disk. Can you do this? Yes, and no. Mostly yes.

Apple’s Disk Utility does allow you to resize the partitions, but in doing so you will destroy everything on that partition. After going through all of this work, it’s clearly not the best option. However, there is a great and reasonably priced program called iPartition from Coriolis.

This nifty program makes it possible to non-destructively and intuitively adjust the size of each partition. You can create new partitions and a whole lot more. In my limited testing, iPartition performed as promised and made short work of what would have otherwise been impossible using Disk Utility. At the low price of $45, this was a no brainer purchase for me.

Duplicate Your Work
And finally, after doing all of this work, wouldn’t it be nice if you could make a disk image of your new boot drive? Well, you can! Just follow the same procedure and you can have a backup disk image on your system to either create another drive from, or to just have as a backup in case your new boot drive goes down or gets lost.

The SuiteTake?
With a little bit of work you can not only put some old unused drives to work, but be better prepared for a unplanned emergency. At the very least, you will have a more efficient way to install your standard production software and have a great troubleshooting disk. If you ask me, being prepared like this is underrated. It’s little things like this that allow me sleep just a little bit better at night.