Tag Archives: sxs

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NextoDI Demonstrate writing to BluRay from NVS2500

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At the recent BVE show in London, NextoDI were showing a demo of what will be available in the next firmware release, due around NAB time. The most significant feature is the ability to archive your material directly from the NVS2500 to BluRay!

You will be able to plug the NVS2500 into a USB BluRay burner and burn your files from the NextoDI straight on to BD-R discs!

So, no need for a computer or BluRay software, just the NextoDI and a BD burner. This makes the NVS2500 a truly pivotal device. You take your rushes in the feild, back them up on to the 2500, then plug in a BD writer and produce your archive discs. Remember that BD-R should have a shelf life of around 25 years. It doesn’t tie up a computer and there’s no reason why you couldn’t do this on location, the recommended LG drive even runs off 12v so you could do it in a car or running off another 12v battery.

As well as writing to BluRay the new firmware will also have the ability to recover some types of corrupt clips. To be honest, if you use SxS this should not be a problem, but it’s a useful tool to have. It will also reject bad sectors when writing to a hard drive thus reducing the risk of errors in the first place.

I know the NVS2500 is not the cheapest piece of kit on the planet, but it really, really, really is worth every penny. If you took mine away from me now it would be like cutting off an arm. It is one piece of the whole file based jigsaw that has really made my life so much simpler, faster, less stressful.

10/10 product, fantastic, excellent….

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PXU-MS240 SxS Backup device. First Impressions.

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I have been playing with a Sony PXU-MS240 SxS backup device. It’s quite different to my NextoDi NVS2500 even though it essentially does the same job. I will be reviewing it in some detail very soon, but here are my first thoughts.

The key feature is that unit has a removable 240Gb hard drive module. Extra drives are readily available and the removable drives can be used as stand-alone USB hard drives without the main unit. Each hard drive cartridge comes in a sturdy box that is much like a Betacam cassette box. There is space on the drives for labels and the box has an insert sleeve that can be used to write on, just like a tape. Clearly this has been done so that as you fill up drives you can pop them on a shelf for longer term storage as you would with a tape. The beauty of the MS240 is that you never need to off load footage, you just add cartridges as you fill them up.

The main unit is 12 volt powered or can run off a standard EX battery. There is a slot at the front for a SxS card and a big Copy button on the top panel along with the power button and menu controls. There is also a small and very clear LCD display that tells you what the unit is doing. In the setup menu you can choose whether to simply copy the SxS cards contents or to do a copy with full verification in one pass.

Another way to verify your clips is to plug it in to an EX camera. The MS240 is supplied with a USB to Express card adapter. You plug the adapter into an EX’s SxS slot and the USB end into the MS240 and then you can use the EX to  playback any clips on the  MS240 in full HD. This is something the Nexto cannot do. It also means that you could use the MS240 to store finished edits for playback via an EX over HDSDi.

The build quality is good and the range of connectivity is also good with eSATA and USB on the main unit and USB on the cartridges. A 16Gb card can be copied to the drive in around 5 mins.

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Working with XDCAM EX (or other file based) material.

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The one big question of everyones lips is how do you archive your material? Well here are my thoughts and some ideas.

The most important thing is to think ahead and plan your end to end workflow. You also need to consider the fact that hard drives will almost certainly fail at some point (maybe not now but in the future) and the vast majority of problems are due to human error. Possibly simply forgetting to copy something or not fully understanding the workflow.

Some Golden Rules, no matter what format or workflow you are using are:

Copy EVERYTHING off the card, keeping the original file structure.

Ensure all copies incorporate some kind of error correction or error checking.

Don’t skimp on the quality of your backup system.

Check, check and double check your workflow before you start shooting.

So you go on a shoot and start filling up you expensive memory cards, at some point you will have to start off loading your material onto something else. In the field this is likely to be hard drives of some sort. Backing up to a single hard drive should only be done as a last resort or for media that you don’t mind loosing. You have several options here, you could use Shotput Pro to backup to single or multiple drives. I really like shotput as you can use it to eliminate a lot of user errors. For a start shotput can be set to backup to multiple locations simultaneously from the source media. Then once it has made the copies and verified the copies it can, if you wish, format the card, ready for re-use. Allowing Shotput to format the media helps prevent human error. How? Well if I ever put a card in my camera and find it has footage on it, it means that card has not been backed up and verified by Shotput. This is better than backing up yourself as there is always the risk of a mix up between backed up and not backed up cards. The other way to backup with a computer is to use the Sony XDCAM EX Clip Browser. You should never use the windows explorer or Mac finder to backup your valuable media as there is no form of error checking. Clip Browser has built in error checking which is enabled under the preferences tab.

A further option is to use a dedicated backup device such as the NextoDi products or soon to be released Sony PXU-MS240 backup device. These are easier to use than taking a laptop into the field. The NextoDi devices can backup to 2 drives at once (full review of the NVS2500 comming soon) and the Sony device backs up to removable esata drive cartridges.

So what sort of hard drives should you use? Well I am currently using pairs of USB Western Digital “Elements” hard drives. Where possible I use 3.5? drives as opposed to the smaller 2.5? laptop type drives. These are low cost yet so far have proven to be reliable and of good quality. The larger 3.3? drives should be more reliable, but they are bigger and bulkier and require mains power, so in the field I use the 2.5? drives. By storing these drives at separate locations, one at home and one in the office, I have a very safe system. If my office were to burn down or get flooded, I would have a spare copy at home. Over time however these drive will fail so every couple of years I move my footage on to new, larger hard drives. Another hard drive option is to use G-Tech G-Raid drives. These units contain two separate hard drives and can be used in raid 1 mode so should one of the drives fail your data should be safe. The cost is similar to using a pair of drives and it’s certainly less fiddly than using pairs of drives but it doesn’t give the security of separate storage locations. If you are doing corporate videos then you could consider selling drives to your clients. The client then keeps the drive and as a result you are no longer responsible for it’s storage or safety, just like if the client kept your rushes tapes.

For longer term storage, again there are many options. I backup a lot of my material to BluRay discs. This is not a fast process, use high quality discs and you should be good for 20+ years. Another option is to backup to Sony Professional discs using a Sony PMW-U1 drive. This is a lot faster than most current BluRay burners and the discs are protected in a rugged caddy. Sony claim a life of 50 years for the discs so it is a very good long term storage solution. The new Sony PMW-350 and EX1R as well as the Convergent Design NanoFlash (next firmware release)  have shooting modes that allow footage to be saved on XDCAM discs (Sony Professional Discs) as video clips and not just data files. Using these modes you can put the discs in a player and play back the material directly.

A further long term storage solution is LTO tape. It seems strange to be going back to tape, but LTO4 tape is very reliable and widely supported. It’s not suited to applications where you need quick access to your footage, but is very good for long term security. A good compromise may be one copy on a hard drive as a working copy along with a backup on LTO for archive.

Raid Arrays can be used for long term storage, but even Raid arrays can fail. If the lookup table becomes corrupted it can be next to impossible to recover the data off the discs, so do be careful. Do remember however you store your footage try and be organised. Store your material in a sensible folder structure that will help you find your rushes quickly and easily. If you are out shooting for a day you may be generating a hundred or more files, do that day in, day out and you will generate thousands and thousands of files. Make sure you work out you clip naming and clip prefixes in such a way that you won’t get duplicate names and can find your footage quickly and simply.

And just one more reminder, always save the full file structure. In the case of XDCAM EX keep the full BPAV folder and all it’s contents, also don’t rename the BPAV folder. Even if you edit on a Mac and use the Sony Transfer Tool to make .mov files you should keep the BPAV folders as trying to edit the  .movs on a PC or AVID is a nightmare. If you have the original material you can easily work with it on any platform.

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ShotPut, ProxyMill and Primera

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I’m a bit slow on this one but it is a really excellent workflow. You use Imagine Products ShotPut Pro to backup your SxS cards (highly recommended) and then add a Primera BluRay burner to you system. Shotput will then write you files to the BluRay disc, extracting the metadata and printing that data on the face of the disc! What a neat workflow. Add in ProxyMill and you can create Proxies with burnt in timecode to hand off to your clients for logging or offline editing. I’m hoping to get a Primera system to evaluate. As soon as I do I’ll let you know.

So with Calibrated Q’s pluging allowing the use of MP4?s in FCP, Imagine Products making Proxies and auto backups of those MP4?s to BluRay or whatever the EX and SxS workflow is really, really making a lot of sense.