peterbkk

I gave up underwater still photography when my beloved Nikonos V leaked a decade or so ago.  Since then, I focused solely on underwater video.  ( You can see a sample of my video work at http://www.peterwalk...nderawasih.html )

 

But, when I read about the RX100 and the Nauticam housing, it seemed like here might be a camera small enough without too much quality trade-off to take along on video trips.  It needed to be small and light enough that I could pack it with the video camera and housing and it needed to use the my video Sola 4000 lights/arms instead of strobes.  

 

So I put together the combination of a Sony RX100 (set to RAW), Nauticam housing and Sola 4000 light with locline arm on a tray.  Tried it earlier this month at Fish Rock at South West Rocks on the New South Wales north coast.

 

Take a look at the results: http://www.peterwalker.com/swr.html

 

All the shots were taken by the RX100, except the first one.

 

IMHO, not bad.

 

Regards

Peter

 

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As I have mentioned in this forum a couple of times, in addition to shooting video and making mini-documentaries about wrecks, places and environmental concerns, I am interested in building a library of video clips for my future use and, maybe, for future generations to see what the ocean looks like in our day. Not yet over-the-hill at 55, I do see a day when age and health may curb my diving somewhat. Hopefully at least 20 years away, one of my thoughts for that time, is that I'll have some sedentary time to go back over libraries of video footage and start recombining it to tell different stories. I already have nearly 10 years of footage which I am scrupulously maintaining, including migrating it forward into new formats as the old ones become obsolete. An earlier thread that I started was all about how to keep it safe through off-site backups. Here is the next topic on the subject, how to build a catalog of the clips.

What is the best way / tool to build a catalog of video clips?

Currently all the clips are in FCP X, including all the older clips which I have now migrated across. All stored on a Raid 5 system (currently about 7 Tb and growing). The more recent "events" do have keywords on clips, giving an indication of the content (place, type of shot, content, critter, etc). The older ones do not.

Before I do the massive exercise of key-wording all the older clips in FCP X, I want to make sure that this is the best approach.

One weakness that I see in using FCP X for cataloguing is that it tends to treat each "event" as a discrete database. In my case, an "event" is one dive trip (e.g. Truk Lagoon 2009). In FCP X, I can filter for "wreck" in one event but can not search across all events for this key-word. Maybe Apple will work on this in the future but it'll be a challenge, given that each event is in it's own folder.

I was wondering if I should use something like Aperture or Lightroom to build the video clip catalog, leaving the video clips in their current location but using Aperture to build a reference catalog. I have my image library, spanning 30 years of photography, all in Lightroom and all mainly key-worded. Would thousands of video clips, even in reference mode, swamp something like Aperture or Lightroom?

Or is there some better tool out there that some of you are using or have heard about?

Or should I just do the key-wording in FCP X and hope something will come along that can catalog event clips, loading in the FCP X keywords to start the tagging system.

Thoughts? Ideas?

Regards
Peter

Has anyone managed to successfully implement an offsite backup strategy for their growing video library.

I now have over 7 Tb of video event library (FCP X) stored on a 9 Tb Raid 5 external SATA drive and backed up to second identical Raid 5 drive. And I have over 2 Tb of finished video on a 3 Tb internal drive, backed up to another internal drive in my second MacPro. So they are getting close to full. I predict I'll be getting close to 90% full by end of this year. I am thinking that my backup Raid drive will have to become my second active drive so I can keep growing up to 18 Tb. But, unless I spend a lot on a whole new Raid system, I won't have any backup.

And, I am concerned that, even with my current backup approach of two Raid 5 drives, the 2 systems sit side by side. I've been worried about that proximity risk. A fire or thief could take out both.

Have any of you tackled this issue? Best solution?

1. Several cheap portable 3Tb drives? (but then how to spread one library over several separate drives?)

2. Or a tape backup system? Which one works on MacPro? Reliability? Does not need to be fast but needs longevity.

3. Or dozens of RW Blu-ray disks? This is what I do for my image library but it is only 1.5 Tb in total. How to spread one video library over many separate disks?

Your thoughts please.

Regards
Peter