sot: video files on usb thumb drives?

ushere wrote on 12/22/2010, 6:16 PM

just wondering if anyone has experience or thoughts regarding 'shipping' large video files on thumb drives?

i work remotely with a number of clients sending small usb hd's backwards and forwards. most times we're looking at max 20gb of material (though some files can be 15gb on their own, like finished master m2t).

with the advent of 32gb thumb drives it would save postage, etc., just to drop one in an overnight mail bag.....

are they reliable (ntfs formatted) enough?

thanks

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 12/22/2010, 7:00 PM

Seems to me they should hold up to the rigors of shipping better than a mechanical drive would. No moving parts, nothing to get shaken and scratched inside them.

reberclark wrote on 12/22/2010, 7:04 PM

I successfully delivered my short film to a film festival on a 16GB memory card - I don't see why a thumb drive would be any different.

musicvid10 wrote on 12/22/2010, 7:09 PM

They are fine. I regularly carry around a few DVDs on a thumb drive for casual viewing.
Even HD plays fine as long as you:

-->> Don't buy bargain basement or rebranded USB flash drives. They are often way too slow.

Get a known brand and expect to pay a bit more. 64 MB drives are also available, for around $160.

farss wrote on 12/22/2010, 8:45 PM

I use the Express Post envelopes with those in them, cheaper than the bags.

They can be 20mm thick so I cutout a well inside two pieces of corrugated cardboard, tape together and slip that inside the envelope. Not lost one yet. With fuel and tolls being what they are cheapest way even if its across town.

Hopefully the NBN will get rid of a lot of this snail mail. Just bumped my connection to 20 / 1.0 Mbps with 500GB / Month.

Bob.

Spot|DSE wrote on 12/22/2010, 9:14 PM

I've delivered several masters on thumbdrives, slow and fast both.
Once in the replicators system as an iso or ddp layer 0/1 file, speed of the drive doesn't matter.
One of my clients delivers up to 100 thumbs a day as part of their SDH workflow (although this isn't the same as masters). They render to 1280 x 720 10MBps mp4 files.

ushere wrote on 12/22/2010, 9:36 PM

thanks everyone, much appreciated - though not happy with bob's little gloat ;p)

living 'rurally' i've got a laughable adsl+ connection of 3mb / 265kb, which as you can well imagine isn't much cop for video. the so called NBN bob mentions (national broadband network) promises 100mb EVERYWHERE. well, i'll believe that when i see it. truth is, i reckon bob's 20/1 would be perfectly satisfactory for my present needs, (that is, unless there's another sea change in formats!), but i doubt i'll ever see that here.

i can't understand why we don't simply capture all the governments hot air and do away with coal fird power stations (mini rant /off)

a very sincere wish for a great new year for you all.....

leslie

farss wrote on 12/22/2010, 9:56 PM

"not happy with bob's little gloat "

You want to trade places?
I'm good so long as a mobile phone doesn't work on your property.

Bob.

John_Cline wrote on 12/22/2010, 11:06 PM

USB Flash Drives can be formatted as NTFS but assuming that the recipients are running either Vista SP1 or Windows 7, perhaps a better choice might be to format them as "ExFAT" which is basically FAT64. It allows for files greater than 4GB without all the overhead and complications of the NTFS file system.

Formatting as NTFS requires changing a setting in Device Manager for the USB drive. Here's how:

http://www.ntfs.com/quest22.htm

Also, if you leave write caching enabled for the NTFS formatted drive, it pretty much requires ejecting it by using the "Safely Remove Hardware" procedure to avoid data loss.

ushere wrote on 12/23/2010, 1:09 AM

thanks jc, that's really interesting!!!

i actually haven't got a drive to play with at the moment - on win 7 how do i go about formatting ExFAT?

is it an option in the "right click > format" command?

duh! google:

http://www.ehow.com/how_5878184_format-exfat-formatting-windows-7.html

LarryP wrote on 12/23/2010, 10:58 AM

A cautionary note.

I've had 2 cases where I copied a file to my computer from two name brand thumb drives and there was a silent error in the file. In both cases I was able to verify the error with SHA1.

Use em but always have a backup.

Larry

robwood wrote on 12/23/2010, 11:46 AM

as long as these files are individually under 4gig USB should work great.

if individual files are over 4gig, like John said u may need to plan ahead depending on whether its PC>PC or PC>Mac.

USB sticks do die, i've had a number of 'em go south over the last couple years (we use sneaker-mail a lot depending on how happy our network or IT dept is that day), but it's usually after 100's of uses, so this probably not be a concern for you.

and i'd definitely trust their portability more than any hard drive if it was being shipped in the mail... but do make sure your client can transfer files that are on NTFS drives :)