Transfering Data in the Field with Android (Media Card to Hard Drive)

I wasted pretty much a whole day figuring out how to transfer data from a CF card to a USB stick and/or hard drive using only Android.  I say “wasted” because I was trying all these things that in the end I found out I *DIDN’T NEED TO MESS WITH!*

All the research I had been doing regarding “dumping cards in the field using Android” (simply transferring data from a CF or SD card to a hard drive for back up and card reuse) led me to believe this was a very involved process requiring special cables, apps, altering the functionality of your device, etc., etc.

Almost none of that is true, or at least, it’s not ANYWHERE near as big a deal as people would have you to believe.

Long story short, if you plug a powered hub with a CF reader and USB ports (I’m using the Unitek USB3.0+Card Reader :: Y-3123) into your device via an OTG cable, it will probably work right off the bat (wish I’d have just tried that first!).

So why did this take me all day?

I thought I was being all clever rooting a Galaxy S5, installing CyanogenMod 12.1, and then downloading various apps that in combination would allow the transfer happen.  I thought I needed [root]StickMount. I even purchased the Pro version.  But at this point, I really have no idea what StickMount is even for.  Your device will likely read a USB stick as is.  There is no need for this app (or rooting your device for that matter).

In the end, the stock Samsung TouchWiz Lollipop OS worked great.  The stock OS on my LG Gpad (Kit Kat) also worked great.  In fact, with the Lollipop on the S5 (from Verizon), there is a really nice little area in “My Files” that allows me to easily pick between USB Storage A (the CF card) and USB Storage B (a USB drive)… though “My Files” doesn’t allow me to see my 750GB NTFS drive (see below for that bonus action).

This set up also works like a champ with my stock LG Gpad 8.3 (Verizon Kit Kat).

This means BOTH my devices, as stock (Lollipop and/or Kit Kat), are able to transfer data from a card to a thumb drive (either FAT32 or exFAT) via a hub (you may need a powered hub, depending on how much power your device puts out and how much power your card and USB stick require).

Here’s the bonus: if I use the Paragon Technologies GmbH plugin for Total Commander, my Galaxy S5 and LG Gpad 8.3 WILL allow me to read/write to/from the 750GB NTFS drive and it doesn’t even require root access to the device (very cool)!  I have found that I actually need to install two plug-ins for Total Commander to make an NTFS hard drive, a card, and a USB stick all work together.  You need USB Stick Plugin-TC by Ferenc Hechler to use both NTFS and FAT32/exFAT.  For some reason, if you install the NTFS plug-in, Total Commander treats everything plugged into the hub as NTFS, thus non-NTFS drives (CF card and USB drive) are not recognized.  Installing the Stick Plug-in restores Total Commander’s ability to see the card and USB stick with the NTFS drive.

If your device is rooted, there is actually a patch that someone on the XDA Developers forums has come up with that will allow Android to read/write NTFS, but the installation is a little more involved (dropping files and modules into particular directories on your device), so going the Total Commander route is just a little easier in my opinion.

All said and done, the actual data transfer takes a while, but by transferring directly from card to hard drive (or USB stick) you eliminate the extra step that a lot of people are going through when they transfer from a CF reader to their device’s SD Card and then back out to a Portable Hard Drive (though if your device’s SD card is big enough, leaving a copy of the files on the SD card offers additional back up).

On my LG Gpad 8.3 tablet I dumped 9GB from a 16GB SanDisk Extreme (160MB/s) CF card containing RAW files and .MOV files (from a Canon 7D) to a USB 3.0 (not that it matters –the connection is USB 2, thus that’s the speed limit) 16GB Transcend USB stick in roughly 23 minutes (not awesome, but probably fast enough to transfer while you’re shooting another couple of cards).  Later that day, I transferred a full 16GB CF card (600x Transcend) to a 5400RPM 2.5” portable HD formatted exFAT, and it actually took less than 23 minutes.

To reiterate: I am confirming that with both the Samsung Galaxy S5 and the LG Gpad 8.3 I can use a powered hub to plug in a 16 GB CF card (FAT32), a 32GB USB drive (exFat), and a 750GB external NTFS hard drive… all at the same time… and transfer data between all three devices (not to mention the device they are all plugged into).

Furthermore (and obviously the easiest way to go), if you format an external hard drive using exFAT or FAT32, your Android device will almost certainly allow you to dump data from a media card to the hard drive without making ANY modifications and by simply using the stock file explorer on your device!

I will also state (though I have no good reason for this), the transfer seems to work most consistently, without glitches, without having to try several times, on Kit Kat (with my Gpad).

While we’re on the topic, let’s explore this magical “OTG cable.”  It’s a cable that has a male micro USB B to go into your device, and the other end has a female type A USB.  That’s it.  The only thing special about this “OTG” cable is that pins 4 and 5 are jumpered.  In fact, as shown in this Makezine article, if you’ve got a micro USB cable and a USB 2.0 cable lying around, you can splice them together to make your own OTG, just be sure to jumper pins 4 and 5 (because: “When the sense pin is connected to ground, the USB OTG device attached to the cable enters host mode. If the sense pin is left in its usual disconnected state, the USB OTG device will remain in slave mode”).

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Clearing the Android Clipboard on Samsung GS5 Running Lollipop

Clear clipboard… get it? HA!

Since I started using crazy long, unmemorable passwords for just about everything, I started using KeePass on my Galaxy S5.  The problem is, when you copy a password to the clipboard to fill in a password field, Android holds that password in the clipboard. Even worse, the clipboard actually holds multiple items!  This means simply hitting “paste” will populate any field with the password you are trying to keep secret.  It also means those copied passwords (multiple passwords) are being stored on your Android clipboard.

KeePass has a setting that allows you to set the time that Android should keep the password on the clipboard (settings: “Clipboard Timeout” with options 30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, and never), but the setting doesn’t seem to do anything (it simply doesn’t work).  My GS5 running Lollipop will keep a password on the clipboard indefinitely, even though I have “1 minute” selected in the KeePass settings (and have tried all the other options as well).

Supposedly Lollipop has implemented new API functionality that allows programs to copy/paste a password without using the clipboard.  I learned this from a post about 1Password which stated:

In Lollipop, 1Password can fill your information directly, without using the clipboard. Therefore, it isn’t possible for a third party to obtain your passwords by snooping on what 1Password’s doing.

The problem is, KeePass doesn’t seem to have implemented this “cool feature” yet, and my password is left hanging on the clipboard (to be accessed by malware, a user, or a clipboard manager).

In researching this issue, most posts on the topic say that you can simply long press in a text field to access the options “paste” and “clipboard” (or something similar), but on my device, this is not the case.  When I long press in a text field, I only get the “paste” option (thus, no option to clear my clipboard).

Other posts state that you can access the clipboard via an icon on your keyboard, however, the Google Keyboard has no such icon or accessibility (there is no button that gets you from the Google Keyboard to the clipboard).

If I switch to the Samsung Keyboard (which I hate), I can long press the second button to the left of the space bar (which can be assigned several different options), and one of the options is an icon of a clipboard.  Pressing this button does in fact gain me access to the clipboard (and quite a long and disturbing list of things stored there, including 10 or so passwords!).  WTF?!

So… I guess the problem is that the Google Keyboard ignores clipboard access functionality.  In order to access (and clear) your clipboard, you need to use a NON-Google keyboard, or a clipboard management app.

Obviously the best solution would be if KeePass just started using the Lollipop API that allowed for “non-clipboard” copied password storage… not to mention actually clearing the copied password after a certain amount of time like it’s supposed to.

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ACL Settings in Thecus NAS Prevent Connections

Yesterday I set up protections on shared folders in my Thecus N5550 NAS using the ACL settings (you can set permissions for specific users created in your NAS GUI).  Today I tried to access these folders on my NAS, and Windows 7 wouldn’t let me!  There was no option to enter the login credentials I created for the folders yesterday, and no way to make the NAS recognize my Windows credentials.

I searched for a while and found this (mysterious and not very solid) answer on the Thecus Forums:

1. Opened Network and Sharing Center
2. Opened Change Advanced Sharing....
3. Changed the last setting to "Use user accounts and passwords..."
4. Closed that and changed my active network type from "home" to "work"

Not sure exactly why it worked, but it did. Now I can enter my username (no need to add @thecus.com after the username) and pw to browse my ACL protected folder.

Thanks to user jonathan.morris for posting!  I too am not sure why this works, as I have not set up the ACL on the folders with my Windows credentials, nor did I enter the NAS user credentials I set up yesterday, but suddenly there is no issue accessing the NAS Share Folders directly via Explorer (which has me wondering how effective the ACL setting could be since I’m accessing the folders without entering any user/pass).

Windows advises that you should let it monitor and control your home network, but if I can’t USE my home network to access my NAS, Windows certainly isn’t doing its job correctly.

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Cheap LED Kino Type Lighting

As a filmmaker builds his/her kit, one usually starts with whatever is available (cheap) and then moves up to “real” equipment over time.  As such, I have a lighting kit that consists largely of things cobbled together from what I could buy at Lowe’s and Harbor Freight and on eBay and Craigslist.

Halogen work lights are the easiest way to get a lot of light, but they consume a lot of energy (500 watts per light for the regular sized ones and 250 or 150 watts per light for the smaller ones), so you’re really drawing a lot of electricity from each circuit at your location.  You’ll also be white balancing for tungsten, which I often actually prefer (shooting warm) because it’s easier to incorporate practicals (lights already present on “set”).  The higher wattage of halogen work lights also means you’ll need more dimmers, or more expensive dimmers that can handle higher wattage.  The highest “cheap” dimmer from the local home store goes for around $10 and handles 600 watts (so only one big light).  You can use a router speed control unit from Harbor Freight ($25 but often on sale for $20) as a higher wattage light dimmer (15 amp x 120v so just shy of 2k at around 1,800 watts), but the output control isn’t as precise as an actual lighting dimmer.

I have started using more Chinese manufactured four socket CFL bulb lights with soft boxes.  While they are cheap, cast a nice, soft light, and consume far less energy, they take a while to warm up for full light output.  Not only that, but when shooting at high shutter speeds (like 240fps) you run the risk of getting a lot of flicker.  Also, with fluorescents, dimming is best with just on/off (number of bulbs on), because dimmable CFL’s are quite expensive… and they cause even more flicker when dimmed.

Recently I ran across “LED Shop Lights” from Feit on sale at Costco.  They are basically a four foot shop light replacement intended for garages and work shops.  As LED, there is “no flicker” (like a cold fluorescent) and no warm up delay, period.  They are normally $39, but on sale they are $33.  The same light goes for around $60 on Amazon, so this is nearly HALF the cost (and I don’t see anything else listed that’s even close).  Even at full price ($39) they seem like a decent deal.

Each “bulb” has 60 LEDs, so each light has 120 LED’s and are rated at 3700 lumens and 4100K temperature (“cool white,” though not daylight, which is 5600K).

Direct comparisons to other kinds of lights are kind of difficult.  It seems like LED light drops off a lot faster than incandescent and fluorescent (the light gets dimmer more quickly the farther you get from the source).  Thus, when a light is rated 3700 lumens, I think it depends a LOT on how far from the light you are taking the measurement (and less so with halogens, for instance).  So even though the packing says these lights put our 3700 lumens, you have to keep the lights MUCH closer to your subject than you would with fluorescent or halogen/incandescent.

I’m also having a hard time putting together a cost comparison of these lights and the strip-on-a-roll kits you can purchase from eBay and Amazon.  With those, you would have to figure out how to mount and diffuse, which is not hard, but ads to the cost.  You also have to purchase plugs/converters, etc., whereas this shop light just plugs into the wall.  The strip-on-a-roll would seem to be cheaper at first glance, but I have a feeling that once all is said and done, this shop light is a pretty close price point when purchased for $33.

The housing for the shop light is metal with plastic over the electronics.  The LEDs are actually mounted to a metal strip, not a flexible plastic strip, and that metal strip slides extremely securely into the plastic diffuser tube, which is opaque on the back half and translucent on the front.

Most LED strip kits I’ve seen require giant transformers (like you’d use with a laptop), so the fact that this shoplight has very small electrical components (easily hidden) is great.  You could definitely reduce the size of the ends (where the electronics are housed) if you wanted to.

I tried hooking these up to my incandescent dimmers (which work fine with my LED PAR38 bulbs) and the LED’s in these shop lights definitely freaked out; I’m not sure how they’d work with LED specific dimmers (hopefully I’ll get a chance to test that soon).

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Windows Doesn’t Always Load ICC Color Profile for Monitor

I recently installed a new EVGA GeForce 750Ti video card in an older machine.  I had some points on a credit card that would make a card in the sub $200 range “free,” so I did some research on video cards and upgraded my rather ancient GTX 260 (which I actually used while cutting our feature film in 2009!) to decrease my rendering times and allow for a bit more oomph when utilizing CUDA processing for effects and on-the-fly rendering in Adobe Premiere.

The GeForce 750Ti is basically the “sweet spot” for cost/power in gaming cards, which are the poor man’s video-editing cards (though, as of this posting, NVIDIA has released the GTX 960, which is the new sweet spot in this category).  I would have loved to install a higher-end “Adobe Approved” Quadro card(s), but this option is cost is prohibitive at the moment (we’re putting money into camera equipment), so this is a decent band-aid for this particular editing rig.

We use Xrite EyeOnes (i1) with EyeOne Match 3 (v.3.6.2) software to calibrate our monitors.  However, after installing the card, I kept getting the dreaded “pink screen” hue almost every time I’d reboot the machine after calibration.  The most common cause for this malady is a bad video cable (I’m using a super-thick (24AWG) and fairly long 15 foot DVI Cable, so this was definitely a possibility).  However, I checked my cables (using DVI, HDMI, and even Display Port), and the cable was not the issue.

I also checked my system defaults to be sure Windows was calling up the custom i1 color profile as the profile for the monitor.  The profile was marked as the default and appeared to be the active profile in the color settings, so I assumed it was being used.

I couldn’t figure out what was going on, so I thought maybe it was the card.  I RMA’d the card, and Amazon sent a new one.  p.s. I really appreciate their policy of sending a replacement before they require you to send the defective unit back.  They give you a month to return the item once they send out the new one, so I didn’t have to go without a video card while waiting for the replacement (yes, I could have put the old one back in, but I was enjoying the decreased rendering times too much).

The new card arrived. I installed it and ran color calibration on the monitor.  For a couple of days, everything seemed great, until one day… the dreaded pink screen had returned.  I spent three more days researching the issue before I finally came across the solution.

It turns out there are not one, but TWO places where Windows 7 64-bit has settings for loading the monitor’s ICC color profile.

Yes, you can set your monitor’s ICC color profile at Control Panel>Appearance and Personlization: Adjust screen resolution>Advanced settings>Color Management (tab)>Color Management (button), but there is another place you need to do some tweaking in order to tell Win7 to actually USE these settings.  How stupid is that?!

So on the Advanced tab where you can select your defaults, there is a button at the bottom called “Change system defaults…”

In that panel, there is an “Advanced” tab, and at the bottom right of that panel there is a box called “Use Windows display calibration.” You must tick that box to get Windows to actually use your ICC monitor calibration setting each time it starts (even though it would appear, from the previous panel, that Windows IS using the default).  Unbelievable.  Why even have the option to set a default if the system isn’t going to USE that default without this “secret setting?!”  It’s not really a default if you aren’t using it, is it. Grrrrrr.

Many thanks to user “badspell68” for posting the solution to this problem in this thread:

http://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/162431-color-profiles-calibration.html

p.s.  I think it’s worth nothing that the “pink hue” we experience when the EyeOne custom ICC profile isn’t properly being utilized is a result of the physical monitor settings.  I usually just calibrate the monitors using the “easy” setting in the EyeOne software, but at one point I actually went through the “advanced” setup which involves calibrating your calibration device to the ambient light in the room (our room is currently fairly warm on the color spectrum) as well as adjusting the physical settings on the monitor (not just changing the settings using software).  When I did this, EyeOne had me set the red hue of the monitor higher than it had previously been (higher than what looks good to the eye), thus when the custom color profile is not being utilized (when the monitor is displaying “as physically set”), the screen has a pink (red) hue in the white areas.

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7D WiFi with TP-Link and DSLR Controller

[1-14-15: see update at end of post]

I put my 7D on a 12 foot jib arm quite often.  I use a 25ft. HDMI cable to run video signal to my 7” Lilliput monitor.  This means I can see what I’m doing, but there’s no pulling focus or starting/stopping the camera.  Thus, I set focus (pull the camera down, adjust focus, push it up, check, try again, repeat) and when I finally achieve focus lock, I start the camera, then put the camera up in the air and let it run.  “Burning Film” isn’t that big a deal in this age of ultra-cheap storage, but leaving the camera running kills battery and and the focus thing is a major PItA.

Thus, when I saw DSLRController (a remote control for your DSLR via USB and your tablet or smart phone), I got very excited about the possibility of starting/stopping the camera remotely via a long USB cable.

To be sure, DSLR Controller does SO. MUCH. MORE.

But this post is about adding WiFi capability to your 7D… so you can use DSLR Controller WIRELESSLY.

I ordered my TP-Link TL-MR3040 portable wireless router on Amazon ($40), and received it in the mail a couple days ago.  I flashed the firmware on the router according to the easy to follow instructions on the DSLRController webpage, and in about 15 minutes I was up and running.

I am astounded by how well this set up works.  Not only that, but you can run HDMI out (monitor) and USB out (DSLR Controller) at THE SAME TIME.

Yes, I am confirming that you can monitor video via USB and HDMI at the same time.

Thus, I can run an HDMI cable to video village, while still having a 7” field monitor (my LG GPad 8.3) with touch screen controls for shutter, focus (yes, focus… even focus “a” to “b” with the push of a button), histograms, etc… In fact, most of the “everyday” controls of the camera can be accessed via my tablet touch screen.  Again… wirelessly.

Freaking fantastic.

I also glued a 1/4” nut from a hot shoe mount to the TP-Link with PC-7 epoxy so I can easily mount the TP-Link to the hot shoe mount on my 7D.

The battery in the TP-Link will likely last as long as I’ll ever be shooting on the jib, but to be safe, I also ordered an Anker® 2nd Gen Astro E5 16000mAh Portable Charger External Battery Power Bank and received the smaller Anker® Astro E1 5200mAh Ultra Compact Portable Charger for free (total cost for both, $40).  Thus, I now have plenty of power for my tablet and the wifi router when I’m in the field.

 

[UPDATE 1-14-15]  After using this set up for an 8 hour shoot last weekend, I would have to modify my glowing endorsement and qualify this as “not yet ready for prime time.”  I’m not where exactly the fault lies (the router, the tablet, the app), but often the link between camera and app would be lost, or (more often) the app would simply lock up and/or black out.  Since I was in charge of the shoot, it wasn’t the worst thing in the world to troubleshoot while working (especially since I expected some hiccups since I was using it “live” for the first time), but had I had a producer/director/cinematographer breathing down my neck while I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on, it would not have been a fun situation.

I had the 7D mounted to a 12 foot Kessler Crane.  I can’t imagine that the range was the problem (when it was working, it was working great).  It really seemed like either the tablet (LG Gpad 8.3) or the app was what was choking each time it crapped out.

Word to the wise: this set up is FANTASTIC when it’s working… but it doesn’t always work.

FWIW, my second camera said he had experienced similar problems with a GoPro and the GoPro wifi app… when it worked (during his tests at home) it was awesome, but when it fails on set and the production is burning more than $90/minute for cast and crew… no good.

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Movies I Play On a Loop Hoping They Seep Into My Brain to Permeate My Being and Work

Not even necessarily my favorite or the best movies of all time… just movies I want floating around in my head and heart (in no particular order)…

• The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)

• Raising Arizona (1987)

• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

• Adaptation. (2002)

• Brazil (1985) – director’s cut

• Rounders (1998)

• Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

• Amélie (2001)

• Being John Malkovich (1999)

• Delicatessen (1991)

• The Cell (2000)

• True Grit (2010)

• Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

• Ocean's Eleven (2001)

• Out of Sight (1998)

• The Usual Suspects (1995)

• The City of Lost Children (1995)

• CQ (2001)

• The Long Goodbye (1973)

• Blade Runner (1982) – director’s cut

• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

• Where the Wild Things Are (2009)

• Pulp Fiction (1994)

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