Re: handing off EX-3 footage

I was about to add my 2 bits to this thread but then Steve posted his reply and said just about everything I was going to. Now I don't have to type so much.

The very first thing you need to find out from your client is what they plan to edit the the XDCAM stuff with: Windows machine, Mac, which NLE they use, how recent is it, etc. etc. How they answer will determine how you hand them the XDCAM media.

To be compatible with the most number of post houses the hard drive should be formatted in FAT32, which is the formatting that can be read by both Mac and Windows platforms. Surprisingly enough, this is also the same formatting used by the SxS Pro memory cards. Then it's just a simple matter of dragging the BPAV folder from the card over to the hard drive, which is now just a lot bigger version of a card but with moving parts.

[Ed Kukla] "Data wrangling in the field is messy & time comsuming."

That's subjective. With my Macbook Pro and a FW drive I can offload a full 16 Gbyte card in about 5 1/2 minutes. You've got what, an extra laptop bag with everything you need to transfer the cards in the bag. The big downer for tapeless as opposed to tape is that you can't write on the hard drive you're about to hand the client like you could with a tape cassette. Important stuff like recording format, tape number, etc. I guess you could email them a shot list later.

Like Stephen May has already said: "Nobody gets your cards." But you can charge them for the hard drive. They get their money back if they return it and it's still working.

- Don