October 17, 2019

Rock Bands, a Legendary Concert Venue, and Offloads on the Go. Andrew Spirk About the Documentary “Live at the Agora“ 5 min read

Interviewing famous bands can be exciting enough. However, rushing around locations to get all necessary shooting material can result in a nerve-racking challenge. Therefore, offloading movie data on the go requires thorough planning. The guys of Clockwork 9 kept that in mind while shooting the documentary „Live at the Agora“. With a mobile setup and reliable software for their data management they made sure to accomplish their daily tasks as smoothly as possible.

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September 9, 2019

How Source Verification Helps to Identify Underlying Problems in Your Copy Process 5 min read

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.

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January 30, 2019

A Space Adventure With On-Set Color and Metadata: DIT Chris Bolton Talks About “Lost in Space” 10 min read

It’s not every day that you get to work on a set with a massive robot and actors in space suits. When filming the Netflix show “Lost in Space”, that’s exactly what DIT Chris Bolton experienced.

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January 18, 2019

How to Determine Expected Copy Speed for a Drive 6 min read

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.

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August 2, 2018

6 Things a Good Backup Software for Filmmakers Should Do to Make Sure Your Copy is Secure 4 min read

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.

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July 5, 2018

Using the Right Verification Behavior for Your Data Wrangling Scenario — 4 Examples 5 min read

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.

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June 14, 2018

5 Types of Clip Metadata on Set 8 min read

With today’s digital film cameras, a lot of data is produced and recorded on set. Most of the time the actual image and sound data is accompanied by various kinds of metadata. Some of this metadata is broadly available, such as the running time code overlaid in video monitors. Other metadata is not presented so prominently – especially when the benefits of carrying this information further on are less obvious on set.

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