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What to Consider When Going Tapeless: Procedures to Take on a Tapeless Workflow

By Saro Varjabedian
posted May 16, 2009, 12:57

Saro Varjabedian is a director of photography based in New York and has worked on over twenty films, music videos and corporate videos for various production companies. He has recently finished post-production on La Chambre de Motel, which he wrote and directed. Currently, he has finished production on the spec for GeoCache and is getting ready to go into production on the music video for the band KHZ. Saro can be reached at www.sarodp.com.

History has a way of repeating itself. If we were to take our cues from the path that audio and photography acquisitions have taken, then it becomes quite evident where video acquisitions is heading. It�s going tapeless.

The reason is quite simple: efficiency. For some time now, post production has been done over non-linear systems. However, the workflow has been to record to tapes that then need to be captured, turning the footage into digital files or clips. This is inefficient because it takes the real time length of the footage to capture the information, and during this process no editing can be done. But with digital acquisitions where video footage is recorded on solid state disks, optical disks or hard drives as digital files, the clips can be ingested and brought directly into the editing software in a fraction of the time. There are some other benefits as well such as instantly reviewing footage without having to rewind and the ability to delete bad takes. However, there are some drawbacks too that need to be considered when moving to a tapeless workflow. The biggest obstacle that will need to be planned for is how to archive and protect against the loss of files.

While the capture process of video tape recording is time consuming, at the end of the day you do have a physical copy which unless you run under a magnet or record over, you can be pretty certain that the footage will not get lost or erased. When having the footage only as digital files, it becomes that much easier for files to get lost, or accidentally erased by human error. And as you ingest the files to your computer and store it on a hard drive, there is always the possibility of the equipment failing. For this reason, it becomes paramount to establish a system for your tapeless workflow and strictly adhering to it. Below are some steps to think about as you develop a system for your tapeless workflow.

Organize
When labeling your digital acquisitions, it helps to think about them like a tape or a can of film. As soon as that tape or film is done, the first thing you do is label it and lock it so that the footage can be found easily later on and to prevent it from being recorded over. With today�s digital acquisition cameras you can label each clip in camera. This can also be thought of as slating at the beginning of the take. In addition, once the files have been ingested into your computer, some programs allow you to document information into the metadata of the clip. Labeling the clip will ensure that you can locate the clips easily and prevent the loss of any files.

Back-up
I can�t say this enough; you must back up the footage. Storing the files on one hard drive is definitely nerve racking and really increases the chances of losing some files. There are now raid systems that do an automatic copy so as you are ingesting the files into one drive your computer is instantly creating a copy of the files onto the other drive without any downtime. If you don�t have such a system, then design one of your own whether it is on two separate external drives or one internal and one external, it really doesn�t matter. Whatever you do, do not erase the solid state card or optical disk until the backup has been made.

Archive
Just like any other video or film production, at the end of your project you would create a master copy. However, in digital acquisitions you will need to back up the footage as well as the master onto some form of hard copy. There are many options and solutions that are available for this step, and you have to decide which works best for your setup. If you already have a method for creating hard copy backups, then it is very possible that you can continue to use that system. Digital acquisitions do offer some new options for creating backups such as saving files onto optical disks such as DVDs, or the higher capacity disks like Blue Ray and HD DVD.

Ultimately, moving to a tapeless workflow isn�t that much different from a tape-based workflow. The only real difference is that in the end, you can make your workflow more streamline, and as long as you develop a sound workflow system which you adhere to, then you can sleep more soundly at nights.

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Check out this article in the February 2008 print edition of StudentFilmmakers magazine, page 14.

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