When shooting digitally, footage is transferred off the camera storage media, and the media are recycled. A program that performs a checksum or verification must be used to ensure that all copied data files have been accurately transferred to the local RAID storage before the camera storage media are reformatted and reused.
After the footage is downloaded or transferred, it must be thoroughly reviewed for any corrupt or missing data, files, or shots. The failed download of one or more clips is an all-too-common occurrence, and no effort should be spared to ensure the footage has been downloaded successfully at this stage, since all backups will be based on this set of files.
Key to this strategy is to make sure that the production has enough camera media and drive storage to keep operations smoothly running. If enough media are not available, production can slow or stop for downloading, backup, or verification before media can be reformatted and reused for shooting.The best practice is to verify visually that the camera storage media and the clone on the RAID have identical numbers of clips, and the file sizes of each copy of every clip are exactly the same on both storage devices. After this step is completed, each clip on the RAID set should be viewed in its entirety to verify its integrity. If time constraints or the capabilities of download station do not allow for playing back the clips in real time, at the very minimum each clip should be scrubbed through to ensure that no large sections are corrupt.
If corrupt clips are discovered on the camera storage media, the camera department must be notified immediately to resolve the underlying issue before more clips are affected.
Rushes should be quality checked as well, providing feedback to camera department.
In 2D, conduct visual verification that shots are in focus with correct exposure, are corruption free, and that the camera is operating correctly.
In 3D, the DIT station should have appropriate 3D monitoring to check 3D synch and camera genlock. The DIT should also check for matched focus, matched alignment, matched image size, matched exposure, etc., in addition to the 2D checks made independently on each eye.
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