User Manual

128 Operation of the Camera
5 Verify data
6 Format
Format Before recording, the drives/cards must be formatted. The cam-
era always performs a blank format, which means that the me-
dia contain no metadata and are not assigned a reel number pri-
or to recording the first clip. The camera auto-detects media with
an invalid file system and asks the user to format the media. The
ALEXA uses the UDF file system for ProRes recording and the
Codex file system for ARRIRAW recording. Both file systems are
read-only for computer systems, which minimizes the risk of data
corruption.
Record When the REC button is pressed, the camera starts to write a
clip to the media. With the first clip, the camera also assigns a
reel number. There is more information on file naming later in
this chapter.
Copy After recording is finished, the footage needs to be copied to an-
other device in order to free up the media. The copy process
should be verified using checksum calculation to ensure that no
errors have occurred.
Backup The footage should ideally be copied to two physically separate
destinations. The first copy should be the "working copy", and
the second copy should be the "backup copy". These tasks can
be done in parallel, as long as the end result is verified data on
two independent devices.
Format Only when the data has been copied to two independent devices
and verified, should the drive/card be formatted to clear all da-
ta. We recommend that the person who verifies the primary and
back-up copies should also format the media. The camera crew
then always receives an empty card and does not need to worry
if the footage has already been copied from the drive/card. SxS
cards and CFast 2.0 cards can be formatted with any file sys-
tem, as they have to be reformatted by the camera anyway. SXR
Capture Drives and XR Capture Drives can be formatted with the
Codex software and do not require to be reformatted in the cam-
era.
NOTICE
SxS PRO cards and CFast 2.0 cards currently cannot be formatted on Mac OS X
10.11 (El Capitan) using the Disk Utility. To format these media, open the Terminal
and enter the following command:
diskutil eraseVolume HFS+ empty /Volumes/A001R1FM/,
where A001R1FM needs to be replaced with the name of your card.
File Structure for ProRes Recording
After an SxS card, CFast 2.0 card, XR Capture Drive, or SXR Capture Drive is
formatted for ProRes recording in the camera, it is named ARRI_UDF until the first clip
is recorded. Once a clip has been recorded, the name changes to the camera index
letter and current reel number, which can be preset in the PROJECT menu. Clips are
stored in a folder with the same name as the media.
In addition to the clips, recording writes an XML file and an ALE file.