When copying camera footage, most operators are familiar with the importance of verifying a good copy. ‘Verifying’ in this case usually refers to verifying the destination, e.g. making sure that the copied file at its destination are the same as on the source location. However, another possible process is often not mentioned in that context – and that is the source verification.
When creating dailies on set or near set, you want to create them in a way that makes the following production steps as smooth as possible. Passing on relevant metadata together with the transcoded clips can contribute to that. In this article we will evaluate the benefits of passing on metadata together with transcoded clips, introduce different ways of doing so, and explain how Silverstack Lab helps with it.
Your computer’s built in file manager is a great tool. It’s great for finding and accessing certain documents, and for moving single files, e.g. onto a USB stick. However, when it comes to copying professional camera footage, the Finder should best be avoided.
Everyone who copies digital media files will probably experience this at some point: You’ve successfully set up your equipment, started offloading the first files… and notice that the copy speed is much slower than you were expecting. If you are in this situation, you will probably want to understand where the slow copy speed comes from and fix it. But what’s the best way to go about this?
In order to achieve a high transcoding speed, it is important to choose the right CPU and GPU power to work with. But in which cases should you boost CPU, and when does it make sense to focus on GPU instead? Our infographic will help you find out.
When preparing for a job on which you will be responsible for transcoding, it’s important to choose the hardware with the right processing power. The type of processing power has significant influence on your transcoding performance, so choosing the right CPU/GPU-combination is important in order to optimize your transcoding speed.
The article will outline why it’s important to know the performance of a hard drive before using it for backing up movie data on a film set, and evaluates different methods of determining the expected copy speeds reliably.
Additionally it will outline a few additional factors that can influence copy speeds and therefore should be kept in mind when comparing numbers.
Digital cinematography enables (and sometimes even requires) post-production related activities to be taking place already on the film set. In this article we want to focus on one such activity: The interactive work with the digital look of camera images on set, also known as “live grading”.
A film set is a busy place. If you are responsible for offloading footage – either as part of other responsibilities, or as a designated data wrangler – there are always a lot of things to take care of. Usually more than expected. Therefore it makes sense to look out for helpers that reduce manual work, help you deliver a great job and give you time to focus on all those other things that also need your attention.
Part one of this article discusses the origin and ideas behind “log” images as produced in almost every camera system in digital cinematography. In this second part we want to take a closer look at how you work with these images – be it as the “log” live output of the camera as an HD-SDI signal, or as the “log” footage recorded on camera media. We will discuss how to benefit from typical look workflows on set within the camera department and beyond. As the setup for dealing with log signals on set varies with the expected level of interactivity, we illustrate the benefits in five scenarios.
