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.'"

One big ad for Apple

[fruey]

And not in the Apple section (even as a subsection?)

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 laptop needn't have been a G4 either, and they stuck in iSight as well. What they SHOULD be telling us is whether these things were purchased at RRP, at big discount, or given away for free by Apple...

Style over substance?

[the_duke_of_hazzard]

Absolutely. Sounds like a waste of money to me when all you're doing is moving data around. Then again, one of the main criticisms of the iPod is that it is style over substance (short battery life, poor sound quality, overpriced), rather like certain films I could think of...

Wonder how much that cost.

[Anonymous Coward]

Must have been expensive... A half TB of ipods!

What does that cost, compared to tape?

Re:Versatile

[pldms]

Versatile indeed.

"Jackson then viewed those 1K-resolution QuickTime files on an Apple Cinema Display, tied to his G4 laptop, which drew directly from his iPod."

I've been warned against using the iPod in this way. It was designed (I was told) for brief disk access, i.e. pulling the next x minutes of compressed music into ram. Sustained access, however, will invite disk problems due to cooling problems. (Indeed I find mine heats up noticeably when copying large amounts).

Perhaps this quote is misleading. OTOH I guess their budget could cope with a few failures (unlike mine :-).

Re:Slow news day?

[Simon Garlick]

Who the hell modded parent as "Troll"? It's a legitimate comment. What next, Slashdot stories on the AI agents in the Battle of Helm's Deep? Sheesh, is there a Slashdot reader out there who hasn't seen the TTT DVD extras?

Re:Versatile

[Liselle]

Well, that's why it has the heat-conducting metal back. Take it out of the case, maybe point a fan at it.

Re:Versatile

[Anonymous Coward]

You regularly rewrite all 20 gigs of data back to your iPod? What a waste of time. I prefer to just sync up the songs that have been added.

Apple and the movie industry

[CdBee]

Recent industry comment on some sites sees now-distributor-free Pixar Inc teaming up with Apple to offer digital video distribution.

While this may not be the case, its small stories like this that make me suspect that apple does have a future in the movie industry that goes beyond Final Cut and iMovie

Apple is getting in with the consumer of media products as well as the producer, and that has to be a good thing for them.

Re:Seems to me pretty stupid too

[kzadot]

As far as firewire harddrives go, is there anything that doesnt need a whole computer to sit between it and a DV cam?

A while ago, I was looking for a portable hard disk recorder that I could simply plug a DV cam into via firewire, and push record. And later, plug it into a PC and push play to transfer it to the PC.

It seems I was able to find firewire drives that connect to a PC like a normal external hard drive, and I was able to find some consumer dvd recorders with hard drive and firewire connectors, but no simple, portable firewire hard disk recorders.

It seems like iPod is one of the view devices that can do this. Do you know of any others that can connect directly to a DV cam as opposed to a PC?

Re:One big ad for Apple

[jo_ham]

Apple never gives stuff away because of fame - you have to buy it like everyone else.

There was an article in (printed) MacWorld a while ago about a bloke employed by Apple to go round to professional musicians and demo Apple kit to them.

People like Paul McCartney and a few other big names have tried to blag Apple stuff for free, but they're always turned down.

Re:Seems to me pretty stupid too

[mbbac]

I bet the physical size was an issue for them as far as transporting the devices was concerned. Plus, the iPod is probably (I'm guessing here) more resistant to shock than your standard 200GB external FireWire hard drive.

Re:Versatile

[Eraser_]

I bet what the poster is thinking is the battery is made for this kind of use. Editing movies on my ipod w/o wall-power would drain the battery very very quickly (Use a 6-to-4 pin firewire cable). However with juice, the ipod runs just like a laptop.

I leave my ipod plugged into my windows computer all day long charging when the battery dies, and windows doesn't know how to spin down the disk. I come back and sure it's warm, but as another poster said, just flip it over and it cools right off. My mac does spin down the hard drive after a few minutes of non-use.

Re:One big advertisement

[mbbac]

How are they going to replace the iSight and iChat with cheaper technology?

While you're at it, explain the other three too. I bet it is much harder that just saying they could replace them with cheaper technologies.

Story I heard...

[sushi]

(direct from a person at Weta Digital) ... was that in London one of the production runners was walking from one central city location to another, carrying one of the (fully loaded) ipods.

Gang of youths approach him and try to mug him, they see he's got this ipod and really want it... the runner realises that he *cannot* lose the ipod, so puts up a good fight and then hi-tails it outathere.