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.
The DIT handles a variety of different tasks on set. While the creation of camera backups might still be the most well-known to others, his work in fact goes far beyond that. And so do the benefits he creates for others. In this article we will outline 5 examples that show how others benefit from the work of the DIT and discuss how professional software can support the DIT.
On a film set it is the data wrangler’s job to securely copy & collect all the media assets (including camera originals, audio files and more) that have been produced on a shooting day. As soon as the different assets have to be organized together in a meaningful structure the question comes up how this should be done in the best way.
A good backup software for filmmakers naturally should simplify the backup procedure (e.g. by creating multiple copies in one run), but it should also let you be fully confident that your copies are complete and verified. In this article we will outline some of the criteria that a good backup software should fulfill, and describe how they are implemented in our on-set data management application Silverstack.
In order to work with the live camera metadata at your DIT cart, the first step is to make it available in the on-set software. To make sure you know all about the options, the following article will give you an overview of the currently possible setups and hardware configurations for capturing camera metadata with LiveGrade Pro.
Copying and verifying source material is one of the most essential tasks of data wranglers and DITs alike. Silverstack provides various ways and many levels of detail to control and complete copy and verification tasks: It helps entry level users by reducing complexity, as well as advanced users by giving them more options.