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Author Topic: Workflow  (Read 4545 times)

geoffmead

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« on: December 18, 2008, 09:32:19 am »

I've used LR for some while (version 1, 2 and now 2.2), but can't settle on a workflow that really suits me. What I would like to do is follows:-
1. Import new images to my hard drive, with backup to an external hard drive.
2. Write a further backup to DVD only when I have a "dvd-full" (i.e about 4.5 Gb) , so the DVD, will not be exclusively one shoot (some shoots may be less than 1Gb and to burn, and more importantly, store, mostly-empty DVD's is impractical). I still need to keep track of what's on the DVD, ideally in LR.
3. Work up my new images on the internal drive (faster), but when I've finished (results delivered to client), say a month later I want to move the files, with their XMP files to an external drive, but still keep them in my catalog.

So my questions are:-
Ref item 2 above, do you only burn DVDs "per shoot" and do you include DVDs in your catalog? isn't it rather along list of offline files?
Ref item 3 above, What is the best way to move folders from my internal to an external drive while still retaining the photos in LR.

Sorry it's such a long question, but I'm pretty confused!!
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Farmer

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« Reply #1 on: December 18, 2008, 03:21:19 pm »

Quote from: geoffmead
I've used LR for some while (version 1, 2 and now 2.2), but can't settle on a workflow that really suits me. What I would like to do is follows:-
1. Import new images to my hard drive, with backup to an external hard drive.
2. Write a further backup to DVD only when I have a "dvd-full" (i.e about 4.5 Gb) , so the DVD, will not be exclusively one shoot (some shoots may be less than 1Gb and to burn, and more importantly, store, mostly-empty DVD's is impractical). I still need to keep track of what's on the DVD, ideally in LR.
3. Work up my new images on the internal drive (faster), but when I've finished (results delivered to client), say a month later I want to move the files, with their XMP files to an external drive, but still keep them in my catalog.

So my questions are:-
Ref item 2 above, do you only burn DVDs "per shoot" and do you include DVDs in your catalog? isn't it rather along list of offline files?
Ref item 3 above, What is the best way to move folders from my internal to an external drive while still retaining the photos in LR.

Sorry it's such a long question, but I'm pretty confused!!

1. Do you have a specific need to use DVDs?
2. What operating system are you using (Mac or PC)?

On a PC, I have a RAID 5 NAS as my "working" directory.  This could easily be a simple single drive - I'm just using RAID and NAS for uptime and convenience of being shared over the local network.

I think have a single drive backup (because RAID is *not* backup) connected via eSata for speed and then another identical drive offsite for further backup.  Those two drives are swapped regularly to keep the offsite backup up to date.  This could be done with just 3 drives rather than the RAID as I said.

For file copying on the PC I use Synctoy 2.0 64bit from MS.  It's absolutely fantastic at keeping the various drives synchronised.  For the Mac, I don't have a recommendation but I'm sure there will be software of similar utility.

Compared to the time, cost, risk, lack of convenience of DVDs, I really don't think you can beat using hard drives these days unless you have a very specific need for the DVDs.
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Phil Brown

geoffmead

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« Reply #2 on: December 18, 2008, 04:15:57 pm »

I'm on Mac OS10.4.11 (should have mentioned that originally)

I'm using DVDs because I imagined a cost issue. But, as you point out, hard drives are getting really cheap per byte and are probably the way to go.

Thanks for your comments.

[quote name='Farmer' date='Dec 18 2008, 08:21 PM' post='245505']
1. Do you have a specific need to use DVDs?
2. What operating system are you using (Mac or PC)?

On a PC, I have a RAID 5 NAS as my "working" directory.  This could easily be a simple single drive - I'm just using RAID and NAS for uptime and convenience of being shared over the local network.

I think have a single drive backup (because RAID is *not* backup) connected via eSata for speed and then another identical drive offsite for further backup.  Those two drives are swapped regularly to keep the offsite backup up to date.  This could be done with just 3 drives rather than the RAID as I said.

For file copying on the PC I use Synctoy 2.0 64bit from MS.  It's absolutely fantastic at keeping the various drives synchronised.  For the Mac, I don't have a recommendation but I'm sure there will be software of similar utility.

Compared to the time, cost, risk, lack of convenience of DVDs, I really don't think you can beat using hard drives these days unless you have a very specific need for the DVDs.

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Farmer

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« Reply #3 on: December 18, 2008, 10:02:07 pm »

Quote from: geoffmead
I'm on Mac OS10.4.11 (should have mentioned that originally)

I'm using DVDs because I imagined a cost issue. But, as you point out, hard drives are getting really cheap per byte and are probably the way to go.

Thanks for your comments.

No worries, Geoff.  I think Time Machine on the Mac would probably be an excellent tool for synchronising various drives - but someone with more Macspertise than me will probably chime in with a good idea :-)
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Phil Brown

Roy

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« Reply #4 on: December 19, 2008, 12:58:41 pm »

Quote from: Farmer
someone with more Macspertise than me will probably chime in with a good idea :-)

THE tool for backup and synching drives on a Mac is SuperDuper.
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Roy

Pete Ferling

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« Reply #5 on: December 19, 2008, 03:00:33 pm »

FWIW here's my workflow (and I use windows).  I have a pretty hectic schedule, and can have as many as five or six shoots in various stages.  Having one huge database (especially earlier in the beta days) was very slooooow and crashed often.  I needed a system to keep track of everything without having to pay attention to system more so than the work.

I have three hard drives.  One is a portable usb that I consider my active or working drive, which I take it with me wherever the job goes.  I have an external master drive via SATA on my workstation that I keep the master database on that hold the final images.  The third drive is a backup of the master drive that I update routinely as the drive fills.

1.  Shoot the project.
2.  create a new LR file just for that shoot.
3.  Capture the images and apply specific keywords and meta-data as needed.
4.  Work on just the images for that shoot.  The database is small and it flies.
5.  After making edits, adding meta-data and keywords, and picking selects (deleting the non-selects), I convert them to DNG (to house the meta-date within the image file -very convenient).
6.  I then open the master database and import the completed project using import from project feature.  This preserves all of my edits/metadata.  While doing so, I also assign a sequence file number to the images.  At this point they are no longer project specific, but now fall under general archive.  However, I do assign project specific keywords to the meta-data in case I need to search by job later on.
7.  Once the number of new images hits around 4gigs, I then burn them to DVD, before doing so I actually assign the DVD number to those images as a keyword for reference.  Should the image corrupt, I know where to find it on disk.
8.  I go back to the working drive, and move the project folder to a folder that I named completed.  Then I only have to focus on those projects that have not been moved it.  Sometimes I've had to wait a month before completing a few, and it's nice to have everything based on that project in it's own database.
9.  Once the working USB drive fills I purchase another (they are cheap).  I move the active jobs to new drive and shelve the old.  Now I have three locations for all my files.
10.  Once a month I make a complete copy of the master drive to a separate drive.

This all sounds anal, but I value my images.  Thus far I have recovered from ten crashed databases and a critical hard drive failure.  In most cases I'm back to square in a matter of minutes.  In the case of the crashed drive, I merely pressed the backup drive into service, and reimported a few projects that missed the last backup and was in business in an hour.  I then bought a new drive and make another backup.
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Mark D Segal

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« Reply #6 on: December 19, 2008, 09:44:47 pm »

Quote from: Farmer
Compared to the time, cost, risk, lack of convenience of DVDs, I really don't think you can beat using hard drives these days unless you have a very specific need for the DVDs.

Not only that, beware of the shelf life of the DVDs. I've heard from a very knowledgeable source that most of them degrade within a decade.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
Author: "Scanning Workflows with SilverFast 8....."

Jeremy Roussak

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« Reply #7 on: December 20, 2008, 04:10:33 am »

Quote from: Roy
THE tool for backup and synching drives on a Mac is SuperDuper.
It's certainly A useful tool, but there are others. I use both Synchronize Pro! (yes, with an exclamation mark) and ChronoSync, with no problems and good results.

Jeremy
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geoffmead

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« Reply #8 on: December 28, 2008, 04:35:47 pm »

Pete,

many thanks for taking the time to post a detailed reply. I have been contemplating your reply over the festive season, and I think is close to what I want. But  I think you have been using LR for much longer than I have, and are still on LR1, because you use the words "file", "database", "project", and "shoot", none of which are currently used by LR2,: there are only "catalogs" and "folders". I am guessing that when you use "file" you mean "folder" and when you use "project", "database", or "shoot", you mean "catalog". But in your (8) you refer to a "project folder"
In particular, do you make a new catalog, or just a new folder in an existing (current) catalog, for images from the latest job/shoot?
I would be very grateful for your clarification of the above.

Best wishes

Geoff
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