Proper preparation prevents piss poor performance!

[Paul G]

Gave myself a wake up call this afternoon when I discovered an issue trying to copy a large number of RAW files from Adobe Camera Raw to my DVD burner to send in (the disc) for a magazine submission.

It would now appear that (and unbeknownst to me from never having tried this before) Windows XP is not capable and does not support writing files to higher capacity DVD+ or -R discs even if you have a DVD burner (File system error 16389) - nope 700mb CD's is all it will do .

I have established that it is possible to copy to a DVD-R using Windows XP & Nero but it involves a slightly longer process which is inevitably going to result in me missing the post this afternoon and my deadline by a day.

The lesson here is know what your equipment will and won't do and keep at least one spare day up your sleeve. If I had checked this earlier in the week I could have made alternate arrangements - even as simple (but more expensive) as using a USB stick and mailing that in!

Oh well! We live and learn...

[Dan Cripps]

I'm interested in the reasoning behind sending RAW files to a magazine. Is that your choice or a publication requirement?

[Paul G]

It was at their request Zeke. I guess it gives them the greatest scope for their intended result and layout.

[I @ M]

Something strange there Paul, we use xp home and Nero to burn DVDs all the time.

[Dan Cripps]

It was at their request Zeke. I guess it gives them the greatest scope for their intended result and layout.

Thanks for the clarification, Paul. I'm not sure I'd be entirely comfortable with that arrangement, to be honest.

[Dan Gamble]

Hey Paul,

If they are RAW's then they should pack well into a zip file, -or two as you can span arcives over multiple discs- shouldn't they?

You have the option of lossless compression with most "zip" programs now and it's become a pretty universal way of packing large files for media storage. I like "7-zip" which is free and very very excellent for both packing and unpacking of ZIP, TAR, RAR and other archive formats.

Here's a link to the download page.

[Paul G]

Yeah I believe it can be done with Nero to DVD-R discs Andrew but from what I read earlier it seems XP won't copy and write straight from ACR to the DVD burner. It will write direct from ACR to a USB or External HDD but not to the DVD burner. At least I couldn't get it too!

[Paul G]

Dan thanks for that link. I've never really used zip files so I'll check that out.

[I @ M]

OK, I have never used ACR so I don't know but all I have ever done is to simply drag the files from whichever folder they are in to Nero and burn. Usually the unedited originals first as a backup as soon as they are downloaded from the card and then the final product when edited etc. Doesn't take long and it is a straight forward interaction between the windoze file directory and Nero.

[JM Tran]

Thanks for the clarification, Paul. I'm not sure I'd be entirely comfortable with that arrangement, to be honest.

standard practice for a lot of magazine and editorial shoots I might add, since its usually specified in the contract that you are hired by them hence all properties and rights belong to them in the end.

[Paul G]

Yep that's what I'm doing now but because it's RAW files I'm sending in I'm having to keep Bridge open to see the files and cross reference the file numbers so I know which ones to drag into NERO. Not a lot longer to do I guess but with my little 'cranky' episode this afternoon and looking for an answer to the problem I've wasted some time that could have been spent writing the photo captions, getting to the post office etc. Newbie errors .

[Dan Gamble]

Dan thanks for that link. I've never really used zip files so I'll check that out.

A good test for your own piece of mind if you're concerned about loss of info or pixel data when compressing would be to zip one of your RAW files with a different name and then extract it somewhere else on your hard drive. Open it and compare it with the original RAW in ACR or Lightroom.

I would exopect that you'll see no difference at all apart from a significanly smaller file size when compressed.

If the place you are sending them to says they can't unzip then you can create zip's with an EXE extension which they just run like any other program and it'll extract the files into a pre-determined directory for them automatically.

Good luck with it. Might save you time and media in the future.

[Paul G]

Thanks Dan. I'm a bit 'green' when it comes to some aspects of this. Sounds like I have some homework to do.

[soulman]

...I would exopect that you'll see no difference at all apart from a significanly smaller file size when compressed...

From what I understand, most if not all RAW files are already compressed. I just zipped a 38.4MB RAW (Canon CR2) and the ZIP saved only 900K. Another test on a 41.4MB file saved 1.1MB, so we're looking at around 2-2.5% which could be useful but isn't a big deal. On the other hand, a 126MB uncompressed TIFF ends up as 41.5MB, so I think we can be pretty confident that the RAW files are compressed already. And yes, there is no degradation in image quality - ZIP and all the other archive formats are lossless.

[JM Tran]

From what I understand, most if not all RAW files are already compressed. I just zipped a 38.4MB RAW (Canon CR2) and the ZIP saved only 900K. Another test on a 41.4MB file saved 1.1MB, so we're looking at around 2-2.5% which could be useful but isn't a big deal. On the other hand, a 126MB uncompressed TIFF ends up as 41.5MB, so I think we can be pretty confident that the RAW files are compressed already. And yes, there is no degradation in image quality - ZIP and all the other archive formats are lossless.

good point mate

another way to make your files smaller is to convert the native raw file ie. Canon CR2 to Adobe's DNG raw format

[Steve Axford]

Why not use a file transfer facility like yousendit. I came across this one for a US comp. You just register for free, then send the file via them to an email adress. The person at the other end gets an email, they have to register and receive the file. All quite easy and it is much better than sending a DVD. There is a charged version as well, which allows you to send multiple files up to 2GB.

[Dan Gamble]

From what I understand, most if not all RAW files are already compressed. I just zipped a 38.4MB RAW (Canon CR2) and the ZIP saved only 900K. Another test on a 41.4MB file saved 1.1MB, so we're looking at around 2-2.5% which could be useful but isn't a big deal. On the other hand, a 126MB uncompressed TIFF ends up as 41.5MB, so I think we can be pretty confident that the RAW files are compressed already. And yes, there is no degradation in image quality - ZIP and all the other archive formats are lossless.

Wasn't aware of that. I thought the nature of RAW was that is was a completely uncompressed and unprocessed format. Thanks for the info.

[soulman]

I thought the nature of RAW was that is was a completely uncompressed and unprocessed format.

Yeah, I thought so too until I started exporting files from Lightroom to Ps for processing - which means they have to get converted to TIFF or PSD - and found that they were all 3 times the size of the RAW. This is not all due to the compression, but it's the main reason for the difference in size.

[Redgum]

Yep that's what I'm doing now but because it's RAW files I'm sending in I'm having to keep Bridge open to see the files and cross reference the file numbers so I know which ones to drag into NERO. Not a lot longer to do I guess but with my little 'cranky' episode this afternoon and looking for an answer to the problem I've wasted some time that could have been spent writing the photo captions, getting to the post office etc. Newbie errors .

Paul, what sort of quantity (number of files) are you sending? Most major publishers now insist on FTP transfers. DVD has always been problematic for any serious work mainly because of time and security. Even the local rags insist on online transfer mainly for deadlines.

[Wayne]

The local paper here setup an FTP account for me, they are owned by Fairfax, but they are a cheap ass lot who would probably get you to do the legwork with a DVD if they could.