Topic: SD cards and festival taping?

[Jeremy Lykins]

I'm just getting started taping and already one of my biggest concerns is what I'll do about taping my first festival in June (Wakarusa).  My big worry is not having enough memory to record everything that I want to tape.  If your recorder uses an SD card, what do you do at festivals?  Buy a bunch of cards?  Transfer shows to a laptop each day at the festival?  Something else? 
 

[cybergaloot]

I have two 4GB cards and one 1GB card. At the Bear Creek Festival last year I never used the 1GB card and copied the files off to my laptop each night. It was a bit of a pain because my laptop was acting up.

Since the price of SD cards has dropped I'll probably invest in at least a couple more before hitting another festival.

They do make devices that will suck the files off your SD cards to a HDD without using a laptop. I don't have any suggestions on make or model though. 

[datbrad]

I was thinking about taking a laptop and external drive to Floydfest later this year, but realized that if I get enough cards, I can just treat them like DATs and fill them all up at the fest and deal with it later. Last thing I would want to do is have some screw up in the field trying to transfer files just to free up memory cards.

These days, CF and SD cards run about $10 a gig, so why not get a few extras. Just figure how many hours each day you will actually be rolling and get enough card memory to cover everything.

[Jeremy Lykins]

They do make devices that will suck the files off your SD cards to a HDD without using a laptop. I don't have any suggestions on make or model though. 

I was hoping that something like that existed.  What are those things called?    

[Keyser Soze]

You're looking for something like a Sanho HyperDrive: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_e/102-8566090-8369709?url=search-alias%3Delectronics&field-keywords=Sanho+HyperDrive&x=15&y=22

Neat toy, but they're a bit pricey.  Many photographers use them while out in the field.

[stevetoney]

Honestly, if you own a laptop, to me that's the way to go.  I just hide it very very well locked in the deepest darkest place I know of in my car so that nobody will see it lying on the seat or whatever...hiding it in the darkness also keeps daylight heat from messing with the electronics of your PC.  Then take 30 minutes each morning before the music starts to offload the previous days music.  When you get home, the music is already on your machine and ready for mastering.

[cybergaloot]

There are some cheaper ones but what they are called is anyone's guess. There is no standard term for the device, every maker calls them something different. Search for digital photo storage, etc. I have a 20GB one called PhotoChute that I paid around $90 for a couple of years back. There are also devices that you can place between one of those USB thumb drive style card readers and a USB HDD to facilitate transfers. But I think the simplest, lightest and most transportable thing is to just buy more SD cards.

[Gutbucket]

I've done the dump to laptop thing, and juggled multiple small cards too.  My advice is to buy the biggest card(s) that you can afford, that work in your recorder and are somewhere near the price/size sweet spot.  Not having to worry about transferring, laptops, power for laptops & transfers, etc is worth the expenditure.. especially in a festival atmosphere when there is never enough time for everything.  8 gig or larger cards are important (vs many small 1, 2 or even 4 gig cards) because they can hold more music for the same storage space.  You maximize total usage. If you are using 2 gig cards, running 24/48 for example and record a one hour set you've used half the card.. then what if the next act's encore goes over the hour mark?  You'll end up with lots of cards that are only partly full.  keeping track of how much space is left on which card is a PITA. Big cards = piece of mind.

I recently bought a Transcend 16gig SDHC card bundled with USB card reader a couple months ago for $90.  Works perfect in the R-09.  At the time I considered nothing less than 8gigs minimum, now I'd buy no less than 16.  I was running two rigs and still juggling cards after I filled the 16 gigger, should have bought 2 of 'em.  Now I'll wait until my next big fest (likely early fall) and buy even cheaper. I'll get nothing less than another 16, maybe a 32gig by then. No swapping all weekend. 

Transfer when you get home and enjoy the fest while you're there.

[stevetoney]

I'll get nothing less than another 16, maybe a 32gig by then. No swapping all weekend. 

Transfer when you get home and enjoy the fest while you're there.

I answered earlier about using the laptop.  That's of course the low cost option. 

I'm not disagreeing with the two 16gb card option because frankly that is where I'm at too.  I'm using CF cards and Newegg has 16GB A-Data cards now for $50 that work great in a SD7XX, so it's really no biggie to have two of these and that will get you through a three day fest...might be pushing it for a 4 day though.

However, if you're limited because maybe your recorder doesn't accept one of the big cards, the laptop option might be more viable than buying eight to ten 4 GB cards.

[Gutbucket]

Good point.  Last festival I ran two rigs for a couple of the 4 days and underestimated my storage requirements.  I meant to bring the laptop with me just in case I needed to dump, but didn't in the rush to get on the road.  I was left with the option of choosing what to record and a fellow taper lent me four 2 gig cards for Sunday (thanks Malcolm!).  All in all I had the 16, four 8's and the borrowed four 2gigs.  At's'alota cards. 

My feeling was that the 16 gig was great, the 8 gigs fine, the 2 gigs a PITA (but very welcome) and I would have liked to have the laptop burried in the car even if I didn't need to use it.

[Jeremy Lykins]

With all of these conflicting answers I still don't know what to do.    It seems like the best/most cost effective option is to purchase a laptop.  That's kinda what I thought all along, but I wanted to see if anyone had any other ideas.  Hopefully I'll get my "Economic Stimulus Check" before the festival so that I can afford a laptop. 

[evilchris]

Buy/borrow/steal flash cards to meet your requirements.

For some festivals, leave a laptop in the car is an option.  For Bonnaroo, it's not.  The heat would make me nervous about leaving it in camp, the w00ks would make me nervous about leaving it in open.

If you're running 16/44.1, you can count on 700MB/hr and go from there.  For 24/44.1 (which is probably my new "standard"), count on 1GB per hour.

A single 16GB card is 16+ hours of audio ... that's a lot of music.  I'll probably pick one of those up and use my current 4GB card as overflow.  It don't see myself taping more than 20 hours of music without access to a laptop or something.

[Massive Dynamic]

Festival taping was the main reason I wouldn't even consider flash-based recorders. However, with cost of cards coming down, they are actually cheaper than a HyperDrive Space w/HDD. If you have a laptop w/ USB 2.0 port, I'd go with that - just fire it up long enough to download cards with a card reader.

For my Fostex FR2-le, I plan to buy 3 16 GB CF cards - one formatted @ 16/44.1, one @ 24/44.1, and one @ 24/88.2. I recorded 15 GB of 16/44.1 audio at last year's festival, but I'd like to capture some shows at higher resolutions. At current prices that's about $180. Can't get a used laptop or OTG drive for that.