Re: Transferring from SBS to EXCam Disc

You really do NOT want to go rooting around in that BPAV folder.

I don't work with XDCAM gear anymore, since I changed jobs a few weeks ago (that why my posting has been light! :) Hopefully I can get this new place migrated over) When I did we burned to XDCAM disc for archiving. Here's how I handled a situation like yours, and it may or may not work for you:

- Combine all footage from large shoots into one BPAV folder
- Use the "Split/Combine Folders" function in Clip Browser to split the footage into 20GB folders by selecting "Arbitrary Size" and entering 20GB. 23 GB discs allow 20GB of UserData.
- Burn the resulting folders to XDCAM Disc.

The reason we used 23GB discs instead of 50s is that the price of the 50s was well more than twice the cost of 23s. The size of the 23GB discs tended to fit our projects better anyway.

One caveat about this method is that "Split Folders" does NOT keep your clips in order. It does the best job it can to calculate the combinations of clips that will best fill out a folder of the target size you give it.

In our case, this was just fine for making a backup archive of our footage. We did not use the BPAV folders to organize our clips; rather, we did that once footage was rewrapped to Quicktime and transferred to an edit system. Many might have a problem with this, again it's a matter of what works well for your workflow and your facility. In our case it worked well.

I hope this is helpful.

Cf