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TallGuy

Cloud Storage for Collaborative Video Projects

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Forgive me if I missed previous posts on this topic in my searches.

There is a boogie that I've been attending for the past 10 years which used to be the subject of some of the most epic boogie videos. Unfortunately, the days of DZs covering slots for camera flyers involved in the production of these videos is at an end. Also, with the ease in which digital video may be shared and the general drop in sales of such boogie videos, there just isn't sufficient incentive for professionals to produce them any more.

Ironically, more skydivers are now wearing cameras and editting video than ever before. Unfortunately, these videos usually only end up being shared in small groups or personal collections.

It would be great if there was a free or inexpensive cloud storage solution that jumpers could upload all/some of their raw footage to, which could be readilly indexed and shared with others in the community. Then those with an interest in editting would have an abundance of material to work with at their convenience.

I've taken a break from wearing video cameras for the past couple of years, so this is probably already being done and I'm just out of the loop. If so, can someone please clue me in as to what you are all using? If not, does anyone have any suggestions for what might work well?

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I use cloud for some projects, but the I/O is still waaaaayyyyy too slow for non-logged footage, and given that many people use NLE's that require recompression for output, quality is lost.
In short, the cloud is currently useless for most endeavors related to what occurs on a local network, IMO.

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DSE, I knew I could count on you to reply. Thank you.

The problem with the event I have in mind, is that it is in a remote location. Most participants will be camping. They will be without power, laptops or even phone service. As such, being able to upload everything to a central repository after the event would seem to be ideal.

One individual with power and a laptop COULD collect video from the others. But that has its own hastles which could detract from their enjoyment of the event.

There are certain givens:

Service and Internet speeds are going to be a major limiting factor.

The grand majority of video submitted will be straight from GoPro's or similar.

It will not be practical to edit directly from cloud storage. Anyone editing footage will first need to download the video files first. A service that can stream the files for preview would be a huge bonus.

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At a different boogie I have seen a laptop with massive external drives being used to "dump" footage for later usage for DZ videos. This gives people the option to dump while they are right there and thinking about it as well as not consuming large amounts of bandwidth for 5 minutes of standing in a plane on jumprun footage. 1 or 2 Terabyte sized drives, a laptop and a USB card reader will get you about 99% of the footage being shot.

Last year I think I got 250 gigs from a 4 day event, trying to pull that from the cloud would have taken days or weeks just to download it all, having it on a drive meant I was ingesting it in about 20 minutes after organizing it a bit.
Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

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PhreeZone

At a different boogie I have seen a laptop with massive external drives being used to "dump" footage for later usage for DZ videos. This gives people the option to dump while they are right there and thinking about it as well as not consuming large amounts of bandwidth for 5 minutes of standing in a plane on jumprun footage. 1 or 2 Terabyte sized drives, a laptop and a USB card reader will get you about 99% of the footage being shot.

Last year I think I got 250 gigs from a 4 day event, trying to pull that from the cloud would have taken days or weeks just to download it all, having it on a drive meant I was ingesting it in about 20 minutes after organizing it a bit.



This is how I've done it in the past as well. Bring along a 500MB or 1TB drive, and that'll generally suffice. USB 3 or SATA is best, if a laptop has it.
Generally, using a Mac to import footage is not a great plan, for two reasons;
~can't manage multiple inputs of MPEG-based footage
~hoses Windows users once the footage is logged/transferred

In other words, for maximum sharing potential and Xfer speed...use a Linux or PC-based machine and NTFS HDD's.

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Get a DS213air by Synology.

It has a builtin wifi hotspot so you can have devices connect to directly via wireless without needing internet connectivity. It supports USB 3.0 so you can get up to 5gbps directly connected.

Alternately, you could get one of their models that has an SD card reader. All you do is put the SD card in the slot and press a "copy" button and it'll hoover everything on the SD into the NAS and you're good to go.

I don't work for them or anything I'm just a fan of their network attached storage devices.

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DSE

In other words, for maximum sharing potential and Xfer speed...use a Linux or PC-based machine and NTFS HDD's.



+1

The (current) NAS I built has an i5 quad core 3.1ghz processor, 16gb ram and 2x3tb drives (not in RAID, just an exact copy of the primary). It serves as a web server, media server, backup my DVD collection with minimal work to me (I put the disk in and it ejects when it's done).

Cost a bit more than a diskless system, but realistically with a bit of shell script experience, can do just about anything. It would be pretty easy to add just about any USB media card reader and have it automagically copy/sort/store anything from a card. Folder shares work great in Mac, Win and Linux systems.

My DNS-323 now sits in my desk at work, in case for some reason we need a temporary network storage for moving files around at one of our remote sites. I'll NEVER go back to something that slow, most of the consumer/pro-sumer systems just don't compare.
"I may be a dirty pirate hooker...but I'm not about to go stand on the corner." iluvtofly
DPH -7, TDS 578, Muff 5153, SCR 14890
I'm an asshole, and I approve this message

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PhreeZone

Either of those options are still going to need a computer to deal with the MSPro sticks from Sony cameras.



Hmm, I just got an idea... Maybe I could build systems and sell them to the DZ that will just let people drop their cards in it, create copies of it the card and send the user on their way.

Unfortunate for the person who has to go thru it all, as many a skydiver has forgotten about their 'home made' videos that are still on their memory cards.
"I may be a dirty pirate hooker...but I'm not about to go stand on the corner." iluvtofly
DPH -7, TDS 578, Muff 5153, SCR 14890
I'm an asshole, and I approve this message

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The Synology or other similar NAS products *is* a computer. A server, actually, but it has a (Linux-based) operating system none-the-less. Just plug in your card reader before you go and make sure all is well and you're on your way :)

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Quote

Maybe I could build systems and sell them to the DZ that will just let people drop their cards in it, create copies of it the card and send the user on their way.



That's exactly what the NAS I referenced earlier does: insert media and press button:

Quote

With just one single touch, you can quickly backup data from a USB storage device or a SD card to DiskStation. Just plug in the external storage devices into DiskStation, push the copy button on the front panel, and all files will be uploaded instatnly to a specific shared folder on DiskStation.



I think it's a great setup for quickly backing up media.

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TallGuy

There is a boogie that I've been attending for the past 10 years which used to be the subject of some of the most epic boogie videos. Unfortunately, the days of DZs covering slots for camera flyers involved in the production of these videos is at an end.



Forgive me for taking this off topic but isn't the problem that you are seeking to solve with a NAS, etc what has contributed to the fact that "the days of DZ's covering slots for camera flyers". I guess that I am struggling to see why it is the duty of the paying customer to provide open source videos for advertisement purposes to a business that charged one full price for the service in the first place, regardless of the industry.

Lets say I go to Chili's and pay menu price for my meal and standard gratuity like anyone else there that day. I think that my cheeseburger would be a great image and I whip out my camera to capture that. Do I now give that to Brinker, Inc for use on their website for marketing purposes?

Just an observation.

"The eyes must learn to listen before they learn to see".

randyswallows.com

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The VASST system (windows based) that we've been putting into DZ's for years do exactly this, but without hitting a button. Once the card is inserted, it copies off, archives, populates a timeline, preps the edit automatically.

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SD Dallas is using some variant of the same. One takes their camera/cards to a USB station after the jump and it assigns a file name. The video is immediately available for debrief via AC Ryan all around the DZ. The sophistication of the VASST system, however, is just remarkable.

"The eyes must learn to listen before they learn to see".

randyswallows.com

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Years ago - WFFC, LP, etc used to actually pay for video staff to document the event on both the ground and in the air and then put together a boogie video for promotion and for jumpers to buy for later reviewing. Pre-internet there were only a few ways to promote your event and how great it was. You could hope to get photos published in Parachutist or Skydiving, you could take out ad space or you could have a killer boogie video that people showed around their DZ during the bad weather days to get other jumpers interested in coming out to that event in the future. Best way to get that type of exposure was to have a boogie video that was filled with skydives that everyone wanted to be part of so you had raft jumps, big ways, freeflying, CRW, bloopers, etc all in there for 30-60 minutes of highlights.

In terms of paying for the video slots back then there were no different than organizer slots. Want to get on this 15 way? The organizer had their slot covered to get people on the plane and the DZ would pick up the video slot of the professional jumpers also to get shots to build a better promotional video or a still to be used for promotion reasons. You still see this occurring on organized big way and record attempts every weekend.
Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

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I'd love to see DZs covering camera slots for boogie videos. It just seems that many have lost interest in doing so. I won't venture to guess why. Since many professionals no longer have incentive to create professional grade videos, I thought it might be nice for amateurs to have a convenient repository for creating compilations for their own benefit, not necessarily the DZ's.

Without a doubt, everybody dumping to and pulling from attached storage is fastest and in the end may be the only practical solution, but it has its own problems. Not everybody is going to have high capacity storage to get their own copy of all the videos collected. Even if they did there would be a mad dash in the 11th hour to collect it. Finally someone still has to babysit the device and even then something could happen to it. Hosting a NAS is great if you have an Internet connection that won't suffer as a result.

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having done a fair bit of this, the only practical solution really is attached storage. Even over a dedicated, very fast pipeline, it just isn't efficient at all to be uploading. Even if it were, you'd still need to go to local storage to get it from a card to an HDD so it could upload in the background.

Tell everyone to bring a stick. The masochist that takes on the project of storing all the video can spend the night chopping out the 5 minutes before the door opens and the 5 minutes of canopy flight, store those edited clips in a single folder, and then deal with the slow xfer times to everyone's HDD over a USB3 multiport. It'll still be painfully slow, but it will work. Or, have everyone kick in 20.00 for the same guy to edit together an event video.

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