Post Production Workflow Follow-Up
I've had a few questions about my previous entry about my Post Production Workflow, and thought I'd take a few minutes to address them here.
Josh, thanks for your excellent write-up. I'm also looking for ideas for a rating system & your mention of being critical with ratings caught my attention. I'm sure you apply strict criteria for the 1-5 star ratings ... wonder if you could share that :)
I do indeed have a reasonably strict rating system I use, though I haven't actually sat down and written it out, so I'll try to here...
When I rate images during ingestion process, I only use 0, 1 or 2 stars for my images. Images that are pretty plain, boring, and otherwise uninspired get 0 stars. Anything above this, that I think has value to me gets 1 star. If there is a stand out in a series of images, it gets the second star. Some shoots gets a few one star images and nothing more, sometimes I'm passing out 2 stars like I'm a kindergarten teacher. Though I try to resist at this point, if I see an image that looks like a portfolio piece, it might get a 3rd star. If I'm shooting for a client, 1 star images are ones I will show to the client from a job, and 2 star images are the best of the shoot that I would recommend to the client.
Once ingested, processed to DNG, and added to iView, I'll re-sort the 2 star images into 3 or 4 star images, but only if they warrant it. Even with my growing archive of about 30,000 images, I'm still reserving the 5th star for down the road, and currently only have six 4 star images. I try to follow Peter Krogh's suggestion to have the number of images that get each additional star rating be 10% of the rating below. For example, if I have 10,000 1 star images in my archive, I try to have 1,000 2 star, 100 3 star, and 10 4 star images. This will keep the rating system working like it should. If you're passing out high ratings to too many images, the point of having a rating system at all goes out the window...
I'm also looking for ideas on how to manage offline backups. I appreciate that hard disks are getting cheaper everyday but so are file sizes as new (camera) bodies come out. The other thing is that hard disks can fail ... which is why we burn to DVDs etc. Could you also share how you catalog offline images?
As this topic can get pretty in-depth, I'll split it up into two sections for clarity:
1) Backups of my images
All of my DNG images are saved to a 500GB drive in an old Dual G4 PowerMac I'm now using as a file server/backup machine. This is the primary place my images are stored, and are "online" (as in accessible from my workstation) at all times, or at least when I'm in the office, and connected to the network. The files are always available to me to work on, view etc. I make a backup of this drive to a 500GB external drive every time I add new images to it (this is the 2nd copy of the files). I use a cool little app called ChronoSync to do this. You can have it do all sorts of cool stuff, but I use it to make an exact copy of this drive, so that if the internal 500GB drive fails, I can just hook up the external and get on with life (and eventually replace the internal drive and copy all the images back to it from the external).
As I am using the "Bucket System", I burn a DVD of each bucket as it fills, which becomes my 3rd backup copy, and I store this off-site. DVD's are an essential part of a good backup system because a) they can't be overwritten, and b) they aren't susceptible to viruses. DVD's are not an option, the are a requirement.
I backup my Working Files (images that are in the process of being ingested/rated/adding metadata, etc) in a similar way. I have another 500GB drive in the ol' G4 that is specifically for these files, as well as holding most of my other important files (Word Docs, etc). As these files change often, I have another 500GB external drive I leave attached to this machine all the time, and again use ChronoSync to make backups. You can schedule ChronoSync to run as often as you'd like (the options are near limitless), and I have it run a backup of this drive every evening. I have it set to move deleted/altered files to a special folder called "Archived_Files", so that if I accidentally delete a file from this drive, it will still be recoverable (as opposed to my main image backup, which is an exact mirror of the internal drive) from the "Archived_Files" folder.
(As the question was about offline images, iView will allow you to view offline images in an iView catalog. It even will allow you to store a screen res preview of the image in the catalog file itself. You can view all metadata, and even edit it, without actually being connected to the image file.)
2) Backups of my computers
All this image backup is great, but what happens if your main boot drive in your machine spins down? If you're working on an assignment and your computer goes kaput, how will you finish the job? I use another cool app called Super Duper that is capable of making bootable backups of your computer's hard drive. I have a 200GB external drive (lots of drives involved...) that I've partitioned to allow me to make bootable backups of all the machines in the office. If you have a boot drive failure, just plug-in the drive, press the Option key (Mac, of course) while you press the power button, and you will now be able to choose this drive to boot from. All of your e-mail, applications, preferences, fonts, etc will all be where they should be, just like nothing happened. Back to work you go, and deliver the job. Then you can replace the internal boot drive, copy the boot volume back to the internal from your backup, and it's as if nothing ever happened...
Bottom Line: Not cheap, not (super) easy, but absolutely necessary. Go run your backups!
Questions, Comments? Fire 'em below.
Cheers, Josh
Copyright © 2008 Josh McCulloch.
More... Click here for full post and comments
Josh, thanks for your excellent write-up. I'm also looking for ideas for a rating system & your mention of being critical with ratings caught my attention. I'm sure you apply strict criteria for the 1-5 star ratings ... wonder if you could share that :)
I do indeed have a reasonably strict rating system I use, though I haven't actually sat down and written it out, so I'll try to here...
When I rate images during ingestion process, I only use 0, 1 or 2 stars for my images. Images that are pretty plain, boring, and otherwise uninspired get 0 stars. Anything above this, that I think has value to me gets 1 star. If there is a stand out in a series of images, it gets the second star. Some shoots gets a few one star images and nothing more, sometimes I'm passing out 2 stars like I'm a kindergarten teacher. Though I try to resist at this point, if I see an image that looks like a portfolio piece, it might get a 3rd star. If I'm shooting for a client, 1 star images are ones I will show to the client from a job, and 2 star images are the best of the shoot that I would recommend to the client.
Once ingested, processed to DNG, and added to iView, I'll re-sort the 2 star images into 3 or 4 star images, but only if they warrant it. Even with my growing archive of about 30,000 images, I'm still reserving the 5th star for down the road, and currently only have six 4 star images. I try to follow Peter Krogh's suggestion to have the number of images that get each additional star rating be 10% of the rating below. For example, if I have 10,000 1 star images in my archive, I try to have 1,000 2 star, 100 3 star, and 10 4 star images. This will keep the rating system working like it should. If you're passing out high ratings to too many images, the point of having a rating system at all goes out the window...
I'm also looking for ideas on how to manage offline backups. I appreciate that hard disks are getting cheaper everyday but so are file sizes as new (camera) bodies come out. The other thing is that hard disks can fail ... which is why we burn to DVDs etc. Could you also share how you catalog offline images?
As this topic can get pretty in-depth, I'll split it up into two sections for clarity:
1) Backups of my images
All of my DNG images are saved to a 500GB drive in an old Dual G4 PowerMac I'm now using as a file server/backup machine. This is the primary place my images are stored, and are "online" (as in accessible from my workstation) at all times, or at least when I'm in the office, and connected to the network. The files are always available to me to work on, view etc. I make a backup of this drive to a 500GB external drive every time I add new images to it (this is the 2nd copy of the files). I use a cool little app called ChronoSync to do this. You can have it do all sorts of cool stuff, but I use it to make an exact copy of this drive, so that if the internal 500GB drive fails, I can just hook up the external and get on with life (and eventually replace the internal drive and copy all the images back to it from the external).
As I am using the "Bucket System", I burn a DVD of each bucket as it fills, which becomes my 3rd backup copy, and I store this off-site. DVD's are an essential part of a good backup system because a) they can't be overwritten, and b) they aren't susceptible to viruses. DVD's are not an option, the are a requirement.
I backup my Working Files (images that are in the process of being ingested/rated/adding metadata, etc) in a similar way. I have another 500GB drive in the ol' G4 that is specifically for these files, as well as holding most of my other important files (Word Docs, etc). As these files change often, I have another 500GB external drive I leave attached to this machine all the time, and again use ChronoSync to make backups. You can schedule ChronoSync to run as often as you'd like (the options are near limitless), and I have it run a backup of this drive every evening. I have it set to move deleted/altered files to a special folder called "Archived_Files", so that if I accidentally delete a file from this drive, it will still be recoverable (as opposed to my main image backup, which is an exact mirror of the internal drive) from the "Archived_Files" folder.
(As the question was about offline images, iView will allow you to view offline images in an iView catalog. It even will allow you to store a screen res preview of the image in the catalog file itself. You can view all metadata, and even edit it, without actually being connected to the image file.)
2) Backups of my computers
All this image backup is great, but what happens if your main boot drive in your machine spins down? If you're working on an assignment and your computer goes kaput, how will you finish the job? I use another cool app called Super Duper that is capable of making bootable backups of your computer's hard drive. I have a 200GB external drive (lots of drives involved...) that I've partitioned to allow me to make bootable backups of all the machines in the office. If you have a boot drive failure, just plug-in the drive, press the Option key (Mac, of course) while you press the power button, and you will now be able to choose this drive to boot from. All of your e-mail, applications, preferences, fonts, etc will all be where they should be, just like nothing happened. Back to work you go, and deliver the job. Then you can replace the internal boot drive, copy the boot volume back to the internal from your backup, and it's as if nothing ever happened...
Bottom Line: Not cheap, not (super) easy, but absolutely necessary. Go run your backups!
Questions, Comments? Fire 'em below.
Cheers, Josh
Copyright © 2008 Josh McCulloch.
More... Click here for full post and comments
