Never Lose a Shot With This PRO Filmmaking Backup Workflow 

Hi Luc As a DIT I would always do YYYYMMDD on date entry. So you can sort by folder name a get it in order by date. DDMMYYYY will not work on long project.

For Davinci Resolve users the media import functionality will do a similar process wherein it can copy to multiple destinations and generate the checksums validation. Pretty sure it’s included in the free version as well. Has been a game changer for me.

9:34 One thing that I highly recommend doing instead of labeling the cards when you get them off the camera is labeling AT the camera: you put the label on the camera at the place of the card slot, so you can't forget the tape when removing the card and you deliver the card already labeled to the DIT. Zero space to mix cards.

Loving your videos! I just wanted to point out, I don't think it's good idea to backup footage from disk to disk. If you get corrupted or damaged file from copying footage from card to disk, if you don't check the files, you can easily backup that damaged files to other disk. And if you in the meantime format card, you can get in trouble.

Man, I discovered you channel quite recently and your practical, boots-on-the-ground, approach to teaching filmmaking is unbeatable. I feel as though I'm just beginning to "mature" as a filmmaker, and your channel is an incredible resource for me right now. I still have a long way to go before I can really call myself a professional, but I'm slowly getting there after 5(ish) years. Thank you for making these videos!

Happy to see that the workflow is still the same since I've been on a professional set. One thing to add being a DIT is also a great way to get into editing. Anyone who gets into it should know a little bit about editing and grading. You never know when a producer walks up to you and says: Can you put these two shots together.

Keep the commitment please ! Thank you Luc.

Nice chat about this Luc. I want to add, that as a solo filmmaker, even if it is only a few cards a day, Shotput Pro is absolutely 100% worth it. After every shoot, I immediately get the cards started with Shotput Pro, copying to an edit external SSD, and another external HDD for backup and files ready to edit. The verification process is huge here. Yes, lt takes more time, but you know the files are all good to go when the software is finished. My projects are usually 3-5 minute docs, so one external SSD works well to edit from. After the project is finished, the story is delivered, and I need to archive. I will come back to Shotput Pro and copy the entire External SSD drive(my edit drive for the project) to two identical Internal HDD's sitting in a USB dual drive bay. This sometimes takes awhile, but for archiving, I then have a drive to keep at home, and a drive to keep at the office. Internal HDDs are cheap, and very reliable. I came from an IT background and those things are robust for long term storage compared to SSD. Anyway, Thanks for bringing this topic to attention, and safe travels back home!

Another great video Luc! And it was so nice of Hank to participate, he gave some neat insights. These discussions around the real day to day are invaluable to get a grip of how things work in the real world. It took me a while to get to this video as I was busy doing my first PA gig on a short film :D

If you are somewhat confident in using console based applications, rsync is probably one of the best ways to achieve secure backups and data copying. Rsync is pretty much the industry standart for stuff like that on a more low level and enterprise scale. And it is open source and comes with MacOS and most Linux Distributions by default, which is always nice. I have a very simple shell script, that copies and automatically organises my footage based on its metadata (Shot date and Camera Model). Since it is script based, it is quite secure and I can not mess something up if I am tired or in a rush and it automatically validates copied files. The best thing about such a solution in my opinion is, that you can re- run the script any time for example if you re-arrange something, add files, delete stuff, pause syncing, or edit file names, etc. You just run the script again and rsync copies only the changed files, making sure that source folder and destination are always in sync. Again this requires beeing confident with the console and a bit of scripting but to me feels like the most secure and efficient way.

Congrats on wrapping up your gig out there in the wild! It's exciting to hear you have that one in the bag and are on to the next. I am sure you are taking a lot of new and wild memories home with you. Thanks for the awesome tips as always. I never considered/looked into the media manager position before. That could be a great gig!

I have been binging this channel. So much gold. Time to get to work 😅

Great video! This stage of the production is arguably the most important and most overlooked. Not getting a shot in the field is nothing compared to loosing all the shots on that card/day. Creating a system that is foolproof is important, so even after a 12+ hour day, nothing can happen. How I do backups for doc shoots is pre-make my folders before the shoot starts. I love folders so an example of my file structure would be, Project Name -> Video -> Day 1 (or date) -> Cam A -> Card 1. Same structure for audio. My process for cards are, once the card leaves the camera, it’s exposed film. Tape does over the contacts immediately labeling what it is and it never goes back into the camera. Director wants ‘just one more shot’, new card. The DIT is the only one allowed to take the tape off. End of the day, tape comes off and card goes into the reader with the tape stuck to the reader it’s in. I sometimes have 8-12 cards to backup at the end of the day so having many on the go at once is the only way. Knowing what is what when something needs to be ejected is important. I do the same as you Luc where the left of my computer is transferred (where the backup SSD’s are) and the right side is exposed. When all is done, I check the bites, as you do in your video. Shotput makes the copies 100% the same (unlike Hedge) so I check the project folder on both drives and they are always the same. I then go through each card on one of the backups and check the clip numbers to make sure all the clips are there and a card wasn’t missed. Once I confirm everything is there, including the last clip of the day on each camera, the cards are formatted and prepped for the next day. Lots of steps but like pilots, if a step list is followed, you can be sure to not miss anything. Oh and the second copy never leaves me. Never leave both copies in a hotel room, in a vehicle or on set/site. SSD’s are so small, just put them in a pocket or give a copy to production for safe keeping during the day. Keep doing what you’re doing, Luc. This is amazing, real world content

I work on windows and I use teracopy and multiple card readers. I just give the command to copy and verify on many HDDs and the program will just queue the files and copy them one by one and verify them automatically. Afterwards I can compare the files on the HDDs with total commander to see exactly why there is a small difference between file sizes.

I love that you use a $1100 laptop. I use an m1 Macbook Pro as well and it honestly works totally fine.

It would be really helpful if you made a video that explains the features and components of a camera that you look for in a camera body for doc shooting. I know these things vary from person to person and of course from shoot to shoot, but having a baseline foundation would be great to hear from your perspective. Do you like AF, or hate it? Pro auto ports, or don’t bother? Etc etc

Reset file number on each shooting. Then number of last file must to be the same of the all file count(+-) on your PC. Like a checksum 😁

Awesome content, thank you Luc!

This is perfect timing! Been looking for a proper backup process

Thanks a lot for paying attention to my request and giving us these valuable information. Congratulations for successful completion of a mega project.Yash.

informative topic informative content Thanks Luc.

I'd like to add three more techniques I use when offloading: 1. Use a copy software that creates a checksum I once had a video file that always crashed my editing software. Other files were fine. I noticed Windows hadn't copied one clip correctly. Since then I recommend using a software like TeraCopy that compares the copied files to the originals. 2. Don't make a backup of a backup If your first backup has a problem its copy on the second drive will. Always copy from the source to each drive. 3. Format your media on the day before the next shoot Leave your cards alone until you prepare your camera for the next job. Don't format them after offloading! If you experience a problem with the copies you might still have your original files.

This is the video I needed!

Great video. Thanks for posting. One thing I'd suggest regarding the naming convention is that it's best practice to name as follows: YEAR/MONTH/DAY as opposed to DAY/MONTH/YEAR. For example in the video, it would be better to call it 20231123 (instead of 23112023 as shown). Reason being that when a shoot lasts more than one month, or starts at the end of one month and carries over into the next month, the folders remain in order. To use the example in the video, think of what happens when you go from the last day of November (30112023) to the first day of December (01122023). The December date is numerically lower than the November date -- which puts them out of chronological order in the project folder. Whereas if you go YEAR/MONTH/DAY... the last day of November (20231130) is numerically lower than the first day of December (20231201), so the files remain in order. Furthermore, that order will remain in perpetuity if a project carries over from one year into the next. So the last day of December, 2023 (20231231) to the first day of January, 2024 (20240101) the order remains. Thanks for all your videos. I've learned a lot!

Great protips as always. I occasionally burn to a secondary hard drive and keep it in a fire box just to be extra careful when I'm working on giant projects.

Personally, I only work with the default indicators of the Mac OS. The most important thing is not to check if the copy has been well done, but to ensure that the native files are not corrupted due to the hardware or recording issues. In both cases, verification software is not helpful at all because, according to him, the data appears fine, but unfortunately, the files are corrupted from the start. However, it's super important for big productions where there are insurances involved. In that case, we are obliged to work with this kind of software to have concrete proof that the job has been done properly

I label the containers as “full” & “safe to format” instead in&out because after a long day your brain won’t recognise what in&out mean

Quick question for either Luc or a DIT: When you're all done with a project, what is your archival process like? What do you keep vs what do you get rid of?

I use multiple stills cameras at events and also video cameras for corporates etc and they all have the ability to have the file # prefix customised. I find this really helpful to identify and work with the files from different cameras as they are all different even if they are supposed to be the same sensor. I use the camera model # or Acam and Bcam etc as prefixes. Find it in the file structure menu and set and forget...Congratulations on the shoot and still keeping up the great content for us. It really is time you got a haircut though....and a rest.

Thank you would be great if you could continue with this subject; as to how to handle the files and cut out unwanted parts or how to only keep the best parts for future projects etc

Great video, I think it's a very relevant topic. I had to check your workflow to see if the way I do it is way off. Turns out I do pretty much the same. I have 2 types of sd card cases: blue ones and silver ones. Cards in the silver case are formatted and ready to use. Cards in the blue case serve as a 3rd backup. I like to also keep my sd drive no larger than 2TB. This way I "only" loose 2TB of data instead of 4TB and so on. It takes some extra managing but I think it's worth it. Tanks for sharing great content :)

3:48 🥶 (N)ice day of filmmaking! 😅 RESPECT!! 👊🏻 love your vids

Great video. I like the bowl idea. When corralling up to 10 photographers a day for an event, I found these tiny “coin envelopes” ULINE sells them in a box of 500, shooter pulled their cards, put one in each envelope, initialed and time stamped the outside, and they go to bed. All night I just kept opening envelopes and processing. When I had copied and verified the shots were there, I initialed and timestamped the envelope clearing the card for formatting. These are great for SD cards, may not be so good for some of the newer larger high speed cards. Still have about half a box left for the next series of events.

Well, this "backup" perspective from a DIT would have been helpful BEFORE I lost all my drives a few months ago 😅 The thing is, I did back up 2-3 times. The problem was that it was in the same computer. Anyways, I have to say, that tip of labelling the cards individually as they come out the camera is a GREAT tip that I'm DEFINITELY going to be doing from now on.

What a great vid! Yes thanks for posting! Looks like Ill be pruchasing yet another 4TB SSD!! 😂🤣

Great video really needed this guide. How long do you retain the multiple location copys? Until your project is in editing, completed, or longer. Any long term storage considerations?

a boring topic. but concerns everyone who takes pictures or shoots videos... on earth. thanks you very much for this useful video initiative

Parashoot is a great software for solo ops. No checksums like shotput but it "fake" formats the card in the computer so the camera forces you to format on the next use. Great for not shooting on half filled media lol.

Yo Luc! when recording are you recording simultaneously to each card or record to card 1 then to card 2 in camera?

Also. If you use Mac formats. Just use APFS and not the old MacOS Journaled.

When you're on location, what are some tips for "geographically" separating the backup drives?

nice tip with the bole , most of the time i empty cards to my work server hd , they get trascode on hd1(trascod keep a original copy) , then i take the trascoded footage go on work hd2 , and get automaticky backup on external drive on insert , and also in the vault server , and every year the work server get purge ,, to the vault server and copy to the backup server , the work server is always power on , the vault and backup get power only when i need them , at some point i will put the backup server in some other location ,

What's your backup workflow like? DO anything different? Let me know! ALSO - Thanks to @jackobEvers for pointing out my mistake: used YYYYMMDD for your folder naming structure, not DDMMYYYY. I was tired and not thinking!

I'm wonder what "extra time" is added by using that program? I use hedge and transfer to multiple drives at once. It doesnt really take any more time. It also provides verification the tranfers were successful.

We filmed an entire movie. Filmed, edited, it was done and ready to go. The theatre was booked for the premiere and tickets were already purchased. The night before the first showing, the director called us to let us know his daughter had accidentally broken the ONE ssd he used to store the movie. The entire movie was on ONE ssd. ONE!!! We just wrapped on the second go around, but that was a hard lesson for everyone involved. Please, PLEASE, backup your stuff!

My heart dropped when I saw you were using Lexar cards on such a big shoot. I heard too many horror stories with these cards on Sony cameras, I would never take the risk to use them. Have you or your team ever ran into any issues with this brand ?

What’s the controversy with the drag and drop copy? I’ve been using Super Duper for cloning drives successfully.

Do you do any cloud backups. If so, what service are you using? Anyone in the comments please pitch in which cloud storage/file sharing service you use. Thanks.

Do you ever do online backups? What’s the best way to do this?

@13:36 Difference is more like 50,000 bytes and not 900. though

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Any fellow Red camera users struggling with those R3D file sizes when backing up?

Not to brag. But I traditionally use the technique of idea-film-backup - review - think idea sucked - leave on hard drive. But that’s just me. 😂

Me shooting wedding for 20 years leaving the files unatended not backed up in the cards for days or weeks without having a single error or lost or problem with them. Hundreds of events covered and not a single issue whatsoever.

I'm getting triggered seeing those cards fall into the bowl like that. Is it an OG troll throwing Lexar cards around. I've always heard to shoot on any card besides Lexar. This is a great refresher video and a kick in the but to put good protocols in place. Always amazing and educational videos, appreciated it!

As always, nice video and good information. If you use YYYYMMDD, instead of DDMMYYYY, when you name your subfolders they will automatically appear in the correct sequence in the folder.