Rings Digital Dailies Circled Globe via iPod

KD writes "During the making of the 'Rings' trilogy, Jackson and his crew upped the ante on Apple's innovative iPod storage technology, using it for filmmaking sessions during production on The Two Towers and The Return of the King. Media was transferred from Weta to Pinewood Studios in London. There Jackson then viewed the QuickTime files on an Apple Cinema Display, tied to his G4 laptop, which drew directly from his iPod. The director's setup was mirrored in New Zealand, and crew could step through shots with the help of their iPods, with Jackson's guidance piped in over a videoconferencing system. During the course of two movies and four months, 'Rings' iPods stored and served up nearly one-half terabyte of digitized footage from 'Towers' and 'King.'"

Versatile

[pb_boi]

Which goes to show how rediculously versatile the iPods are in relation to almost anything. A task that important, for which they weren't designed, and STILL they're used, and STILL they perform amazingly well. Impressive. pb_boi

Slow news day?

[rokzy]

not meaning to troll or anything, but surely anyone who cares about this kind of trivia (like me) would have known about it months ago when watching the TT DVD documentaries?

are the slashdot editors trying to have a competition of who can post the oldest story?

Not exactly exciting news.

[MountainMan101]

Someone uses a portable large (10-20GB) USB harddrive to transfer data. Okay, so it was non-Microsoft. This would have been news if it had been new hardware/software/protocols, but honestly. Is this worthy of Slashdot?

Batteries

[Davak]

If the ipods were really going to have battery problems, [ipodsdirtysecret.com] surely somebody would have noticed during all these transfers.

Anyway, chalk up one more iPod award...

Assisted in obtaining The Return of the King 11 Oscar nominations

All of that data transfer... and none of it got released to the public by "accident?" We should be ashamed at ourselves.

Davak

Quite frankly...

[DiscoOnTheSide]

I think this is absolutely amazing. Yes, we all knew you could do stuff like this, but you'd never think of it until you read stuff like this. Not only is it a great MP3 player (I've owned three as well as MiniDisc players, it's hands down the best I've used), it's an amazingly fast firewire drive (although I find that formated for windows it's not as fast, perhaps HFS+ is a better file system then most think?) and I've noticed that while I use my iPod for storing papers, projects and movies to watch at friends houses, it screams. I think after hearing this those 40GB iPods are going to be the new pro-video clip bin. Sure, you won't fit an entire three hour epic movie's worth of footage in DV format on it, but it's good for fleshing out whole scenes. Plus it's widely supported for Windows and Mac so no worries (and Linux can mount them as a simple firewire drive if I stand correct...) Neat stuff. Hopefully we'll get video iPods this year, to combat those foreboding MS portable media players...

Apple's next ad campaign?

[darnok]

I wonder why Apple hasn't made more of this in their advertising. It seems that having possibly the highest-profile series of movies in many years put together using your gear would be worth telling people about.

If the article is accurate, it's a great example of working globally that a lot of Apple's potential customers might want to hear about.

It'd certainly attract more positive interest than those ridiculous "HP Invent" advertisements - they're just laughable. Every time I see a new one, I think "What the hell am I looking at?" which I suspect isn't the message HP wants to be getting across.

Re:Not exactly exciting news.

[ernstp]

Just one thing.... its a FireWire mp3 player!

One big advertisement

[The Pi-Guy]

This article seems to read like one big advertisement. It mentions no less than four specific Apple technologies that are really nothing special and could be replaced by other cheaper technologies. I understand that it may be cool because it's on an iPod, but honestly, do you need to mention the Apple Cinema Display??

*sighs as his karma falls*

joshua

Re:Versatile

[vandel405]

Um, what about the first time you plug it into your computer and it syncs 20gigs?

I use mine in this fashion regulary.

Re:Apple's next ad campaign?

[Anonymous Coward]

Although iPod makes a useful and convenient portable hard drive, there are some real drawbacks to putting this into an ad.

The main problem is that it would confuse some less computer-savvy people. They would watch a 30 second ad (only halfway paying attention to it) and wind up unsure about what iPod is for, and how they are supposed to use it.

Re:Not exactly exciting news.

[Hast]

So? It's the same as any USB mass storage device, it just uses FW as a hookup. Virtually any USB flash based MP3 player can be used as a storage device for non-audio data. Colour me unimpressed.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:One big ad for Apple

[Mononoke]

Kudos to the fact it was indeed the iPod, but it would be cheaper to use a generic portable hard drive, since this is movie footage and not soundtrack data. The iPod wasn't used for what it was designed for.

The iPod was designed from the very beginning as a data storage device.

Where else are you going to find something that small, with that much storage and speed, that also looks (to the general public) like nothing more than an mp3 player? For that price?

The laptop needn't have been a G4 either, and they stuck in iSight as well.

Professionals in the movie business use Macs because Macs can reliably do the job.

If you want to get mired in the "needn't have been" excuses, well, they needn't have bothered to with digital dailies at all. In fact, why bother even making the movie.

Re:Not exactly exciting news.

[kfg]

There is a tendency these days for even the technologists to look at a core technology wrapped up in a shiney new shell and view it as something essentially new and more technologically advanced.

This tendency is "good" for the industry but financially draining for the customer. The entire software industry rests upon this tendency and the recent recession in the purchasing of software by business represents a crack in this point of view. Office 97 works.

In point of fact the core technologies of all office software have been in place since the release of Visiscalc. Database, spreadsheet, text editor. Everything else is just variations on these and the latest new feature of Word is nothing more than a text editor macro attached to a button.

It's akin to painting a disposable razor pink instead of orange and calling it "for women," a technique that works distressingly well.

A Perl script wrapped up in Royal robes isn't "new technology" and a portable HD is just a portable HD.

Maybe I need to make an iPod clone, put it in a titanium case and call it the "Movie Meister" or something.

KFG

Re:One big ad for Apple

[Saven Marek]

Exactly. It's a bit of an apple fanboy story, something I doubt the veracity of. It didn't have to be an iPod , didn't have to be a G4 laptop, and didn't have to be a cinema display. Telling us the equipment used for the film is quite irrelevant.

Would it have been the same story if it was a Dell DJ, on a Dell laptop, with a Dell monitor? No it wouldn't. I don't see what the fuss is about

Seems to me pretty stupid too

[Moraelin]

If you compare the price of an IPod to a 200 GB hard drive, it seems to me that for storing video footage it's the most stupid solution ever. An exteral USB or Firewire case and a couple of 200 GB drives would have been:

- cheaper

- faster (I don't think the IPod comes even close to a 7200 RPM drive)

- able to store a lot more data

Or here's another random thought: if they're sending data all the way across the globe, exactly what's the unprecedented advantage of sending an iPod instead of a DVD-R? No, seriously.

Of course, seein' the usual "even a fart smells sweet if it's got the Apple logo" crowd on Slashdot, maybe it's worthy of Slashdot after all.

Enforced DRM

[Scutter]

Just goes to show you what enforced DRM and EULA's will do. Hardware and software manufacturers should always let us utilize their products the way we need to, not the way they want us to. You start throwing DRM into the mix and that limits the usefulness of the product. Go iPod!

Re:Wonder how much that cost.

[MinutiaeMan]

Not necessarily -- they could easily be referring to the total amount of video transferred back and forth during the entire production process. In which case they just deleted the stuff from the iPod and placed it on some hard drive or backup somewhere.

Apple leads the way in the digital creative arts

[SPYDER Web]

They really know what the artist needs. Apple has become the art supply store for the world. Being able to take any work no matter what medium and help with its creation is truly a wonderful thing. I am not a big apple supporter but its hard to argue with the impact apple has from Pixar animation to Lord of the rings. Every musician, film maker, and digital artist has an apple for a reason.

Re:One big ad for Apple

[gobbo]

The fuss is about this: a trendy consumer appliance is being used as a mission-critical device. It's a nerdy change in consumer behaviour that heralds something significant about the way technology is crossing professional/consumer boundaries.

I have a co-worker who is directing/producing film and video and uses his iPod for just this purpose, both sneakernet and as a presentation external hard drive. Of course, he also loads it up with his music collection, and does the standard iPod-snob-ish "here, listen to this" sort of thing.

Another interesting thing in this story is how these things are damn reliable, damn fast, damn flexible, and very well integrated into mac users' lives. They're being trusted with more important tasks than consumer devices typically get, and at the end of the day it's just something to put on your head and bop around with.

No, I don't own one, but if I had to play large video files off an external portable drive, I wouldn't use a Dell, dude! Especially on a deadline. iPod + mac pc = time (and face) saved.

Re:Seems to me pretty stupid too

[Anonymous Coward]

Firstly, why transfer low res digital half way round the world (presumably using the internet) then copy the video onto a hdd storage device and courier this from pinewood to jacksons home? Surely jackson would have simply downloaded the footage straight of an ftp/secure website onto his notebook?

Secondly for vfx work 1k res quicktime is more or less useless in terms of the review and approvals process. In reality for approval sequences are rendered off into MPEG2, transferred globally via a networked device like a telestrem (www.telestream.net) or clipmail pro and then reviewed on TV at near DVD res via a hardware MPEG2 decoder / settopbox device.

This whole piece smells of marketing, pr and an exercise in brand association.

Re:Seems to me pretty stupid too

[Anonymous Coward]

An exteral USB or Firewire case and a couple of 200 GB drives would have been: cheaper, faster, able to store a lot more data

You left out "larger, more fragile, unable to multitask as an audio player and PDA."

Or here's another random thought: if they're sending data all the way across the globe, exactly what's the unprecedented advantage of sending an iPod instead of a DVD-R?

You're kidding, right? DVD's are far too small and take far too long to burn to be useful for something like this. Besides, after you're done with one, you have to throw it away. After you're done using your iPod for this, you've got... an iPod! A singularly useful device in and of itself.

Doing anything else would have been wasteful and dumb.

Re:Also

[danila]

I am happy that you enjoyed it, but the fact is - I didn't like the second and the third part. There are reasons for that and they are discussed all other the Net (various character and plot changes, which in opinion of some people, weaken the films and go against the ideas of Tolkien). The fact that we hold different opinions doesn't make one of us a troll.

I still think that Faramir's character was butchered by PJ, Arwen's subplot was unnecessary, conflict between Sam and Frodo was stupid, Aragorn was not kingly, dialog in TTT and ROTK was lame and contrived, the quality of special effects was not consistant (just think, why all agriculture in the movie was concentrated in Shire? PJ was too cheap to add a few CGI fields/villages/gardens to Gondor/Rohan panorama shots?). The movies sucked. Many people and critics enjoyed them, but they sucked.

That someone can downmod this comment doesn't change the fact that TTT and ROTK were just lame B-movies with expensive CGI.

Re:Seems to me pretty stupid too

[telstar]

"You're kidding, right? DVD's are far too small and take far too long to burn to be useful for something like this. Besides, after you're done with one, you have to throw it away. After you're done using your iPod for this, you've got... an iPod! A singularly useful device in and of itself."

• Something tells me that Jackson could probably afford an external hard drive AND an iPod without breaking the bank.

Re:Seems to me pretty stupid too

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't send 1k res quicktimes down a 'huge pipe'...

Re:Seems to me pretty stupid too

[kalidasa]

Size. It's a hell of a lot easier to carry an iPod as carryon than a 200 GB harddrive (which will get banged about in the overhead bin), or heaven forbid in checked baggage (where it will be delayed by 2-3 days every 10th flight or so). And if 200 GB is preferable for size to the iPod, how can you logically argue in favor of the DVD-R which is only 4.7 GB? You can't have it both ways.

Fact is, it's a nice formfactor and a good size/capacity compromise.

What advantage did an iPod give him?

[Experiment 626]

So, while I can certainly appreciate portable mass storage, what was the benefit of using an iPod instead of a regular USB or FireWire drive? It was plugged into a computer so the battery isn't a factor, he was using it for movies so it wasn't the MP3/AAC playback. Basically he paid twice as much for half the storage (compared to a 2.5" 80GB USB drive), but gets a lot of points from the Apple crowd for using one of their products.

As for the thing about him being chased around afraid robbers would get his draft copy of the movie, it sounds like the real story here is not the technology he used, but the technology he didn't use: encryption.

Why using an iPod vs external HD makes sense:

[Anonymous Coward]

Physical security. Half the planet would have loved to steal the dailies from LoTR and more than a few were possibly actively looking to get their hands on them.

- The iPod is smaller than most dedicated external drives and thus easier to conceal and transport.
- The iPod looks like, well, an iPod and might not raise suspicions that they are actually storing the dailies, if word does not get out.

While an iPod in itself is a huge thief magnate, it inspires more casual theft from lax owners than attracting the eye of a more determined, professional thief.

I mean, who would get suspicious of a bunch of movie types walking around with iPods?

Anonymous Joe

Wow, Apple is so great!

[skintigh2]

So, instead of paying $70 for a 40GB firewire drive, they spent $500. Talk about news! Or maybe the news is that the 614% more expensive device didn't fail?

Apple sure is amazing and superior and stuff.

Heck, for $500, all a lowly PC user could afford is half a terrabyte in firewire drives, and still have money left over to buy some pizza and beer, and catch a movie, and buy a CD. Not nearly as cool as a 40GB iPod.

But I admit, if I could convince my boss to transfer terrabytes of data on iPods that I could snake afterwards, I would do it in a heartbeat.

Re:Not exactly exciting news.

[Gumber]

On the other hand, there is a tendancy for technologists to look at new applications of technology and say: Thats no big deal, its just a perl script, or, thats no big deal, its just a portable hard disk. Bittorrent is nothing, its just a python script. This jaded attitude can blind them to the implications of technology change.

Perhaps there is nothing new about this, but I'd suggest that it is an extreme illustration of a change that may have real implications.

With the rise of the iPod, and similar devices, people are now in the habit of carrying around a significant amount of storage, in many cases, a 10 GB iPod is already enough to carry their entire corpus of personal files and settings, along with a decent sized collection of music.

One thing to consider, is that this effectively gives people dramatically more effective bandwidth out of their homes. How might we, as technologists, make use of that fact to do cool and useful things?

Re:Seems to me pretty stupid too

[kalidasa]

Both of the drives you point out are larger than an iPod - enough so to make carrying them in a pocket uncomfortable. The mobile drive (your first link) is 0.59 x 2.99 x 5.35 in. and .396 lbs. The pocket drive is 1 x 3.5 x 5.75 in. and 0.78 lbs. The iPod is 0.73 x 2.4 x 4.1 inches and 0.35 lbs. For size comparison, a "slim" jewel case is 0.13 x 4.86 x 5.63 in. I don't know about you, but I find a jewel case too wide to put in my pocket: but the only drive with both its "height" and "width" smaller than both the "height" and "width" of a jewel case is the iPod. So, no, those two drives from LaCie do not necessarily fit the bill. They're too big for a shirt pocket. The pocket drive is right out, at more than double the weight. So maybe it's not stupid that the producers decided to spend a little extra money on them to make it easier for the couriers to carry them. (Besides, they're recognizably music players, and that might make life easier with airport security.)

You can use what you want, but don't dismiss their choice as "stupid." If the marginal size and weight difference mattered - and I know that for me it would - then it might be worth the extra two eighty compared to the pocket drive (and I notice that the mobile drive doesn't have a price listed for 40 GB; apparently you thought the $139 price was for both the 20 GB and the 40 GB? Or for the FireWire, since they were using Mac desktops that didn't (only the newest Macs do) have USB 2.0? Which makes the Mobile drive pretty hard to use, no? That's ignoring the fact that these two products you're linking to are both described as "new" and the movies were finished some months ago (but then, so do my specs for the 40 GB).