Recording and Backup - Experiences when filming in 4K

Recording

The PXW-Z100 uses Sony’s XQD Series 180 MB / s cards. With a 64 GB you can record 16 minutes in Ultra HD format (50fps); the price is approx €230 .- / card.

The Panasonic Lumix GH4 use SanDisk Extreme PRO SDXC 1 Typ10 95MB/s. With 64 GB you can record approx 32 minutes in the Ultra HD format (25 fps); the price is approx. € 80.-/ card.

The prices suggest, that one never has sufficient cards for a several week trip, unless one invests as much money as for a mid-size car.

Backup

The transfer of larger amounts of data requires time, so we were looking for a notebook with large disk capacity and at least 2 x USB3 interfaces to be able to connect the card reader and external hard drives.

The XQD cards from Sony are connected via a special USB3 card reader.

We opt for HP. The notebook HP Envy 17-J145ng offers 1.5 TB of disc space for user data. It is equipped with an internal USB3 card reader and 2 external USB3 ports. Costs about € 999.-

We purchased a Sony 1TB external drive with data-reconstruction service in the event of data loss; Sony PSZ HA1T for USB3: costs about € 120,-

In addition, we had 2×480 GB SanDisk Extreme II Solid State Drive in the luggage which could be connected the notebook via a Sata / USB3 Converter Orico at the USB3 port. Price for SSD + Converter approx € 1000.-

As experience shows, one never has enough time, especially very little to back up the data on a journey. That’s why the transmission rate and with that the duration plays a crucial role.

Transmission rates

Card reader to HP internal disk approx. 70 MB/sec: Duration = 20 min
Card reader to external Sony disk approx. 110 MB/sec: Duration = 10 min
Card reader to external SanDisk SSD approx. 180 MB/sec: Duration = 5 min

Experience has shown, that we get up to 350 GB of data per day, equivalent to about 6 cards.

Depending on the type of transfer media, the backup to a safeguarding medium takes between 30 minutes and 120 minutes.

From a price / performance ratio, the external disk Sony is certainly the best solution. One needs max. 1 hour per day to safeguard data.

It is to be hoped that in the future there will be maybe 4 TB drives of the same type, in order not to carry so much weight and volume.

With a camera update in early 2015 there was a new decoder for Long-GOP. This means that the storage space problem has somewhat improved. A 64GB card lasts so for 54 min. In a 4-week trip the collected material was 2TB.