Delivering Raw Footage on Hard Drive

[Jeff Harper]

The basic thing in delivering raw footage is finding a hardware solution. Newegg has zillions of cheap hard drives. I bought a 80GB portable HD (eagle brand) for $29. You bill the client for it, of course.

I would think you would give them files raw, as they came straight from the camera or encoded as avi. Not a lot to think about. Raw footage is footage as it comes from the camera, not encoded to another format. You need to explain to your clients raw footage as it comes from your camera may or may not be viewable depending on their computer, but you're happy to deliver it to them if they want it.

[Matthew Craggs]

Originally Posted by Chris Bryan

Hey guys,

Thanks again for all of the responses, so it sounds like I'm kind of stuck as I don't own a pc and don't plan on buying one simply to give raw files to clients. What do you guys do to deliver Raw Files?

If I deliver raw files, they're raw files - not transcoded to ProRes - so I format the drive FAT32.

Is there a particular reason why you are providing ProRes files and not the raw AVCHD files?

[Chris Bryan]

What client can view AVCHD files? What would they even use to watch the footage? Unless I'm completely missing something they'd have to have special software to view the footage.

[Chris Bryan]

On another forum someone pointed out MacDrive 8 which seems like a great solution, maybe someone here will find this useful as well.

[Jeff Harper]

Windows 7 plays AVCHD natively. Or, the files can be watched on TV from a hard drive with WD HD player, cost $100-150.

AVCHD is common now. All consumer cameras record in it. At any rate, if they are asking for raw files, after they are converted they are not raw any longer, they are converted. If you are going to convert the files for your customers what hoops you will have to jump through will vary from customer to customer.

[Chris Bryan]

Good to know about Windows 7, thanks! Now I wonder how many people are still running xp or vista!

[Wayne Faulkner]

Some of us never got past XP SP3, but I still have Win95b, and Win2K Pro SP4 running here on various machines, and they still perform their tasks perfectly. Not long ago I was still running DOS 6.22 on a 286 12MHz, and was surfing the net with it.

I generally run XP, Ubuntu, and OSX here to do anything 'modern'.

If you start providing 'raw' footage, you're probably best using .wmv, since virtually any platform will be able to play it as MS ditched its older Media Player (6?), and it's now GPL, so virtually everyone uses it as the basis for video playback, you just need to tell clients that the slower machines might not be able to cope with HD.

The alternative is the timeline suggestion and just putting up to 2 hours on DVD & Blu-ray, leaving it up to the client to sort out playback.

In my own role, I've only had one request for raw footage from the head coach, and either it was for him to check that what I was editing out wasn't worth looking at, or he had something specific he wanted to check on whether it had been caught on video, either way I complied without questioning the reason, putting it onto DVD, and on the next edit he told me to carry on as I'd previously been doing.

Since then the element of trust has increased significantly, and I now provide edited video for a range of other matters, including disciplinary proceedings, and have created and manage the online video streaming service to aid coaching and player development.

[Jeff Harper]

Yes, Wayne, some of us may not have moved past XP, but that is much less likely to be true of a consumer.

Most brides were either in middle or high school when XP was out. Most anyone that has bought a PC in the last two years, which is a lot, would have Windows 7.