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.'"

Comments

Dailies almost got stolen, too

[jokkebk]

I watched Two Towers extras where the fellow who was doing the transportation of iPods to Jackson's hotel told that he was almost robbed by two thugs following him one day.

Thankfully the guy was pretty quick sprinter, so the dailies (and I even seem to recall that they exceptionally had the whole version on iPod that day) narrowly escaped the London underworld.

As a funny sidenote, I don't think any beautiful women offered to plug their earpiece into iPod while waiting traffic lights, too bad for them. :)

Re:Versatile

[mj_1903]

As someone who writes software for the iPod all day, I can say without reservation that iPod's can stand up to this usage pattern. My iPod 5gb has been running basically non stop for 16 months in this mode with no adverse affects.

My tips for cooling:
- Keep the metal side up (the dock is fine)
- Never cover your iPod while connected to your computer
- Never place it metal side down while connected to your computer on a blanket/pillow or something similar
- Place a small fan on it if you are very concerned

I have not had my iPod go above touchable temperature (any of my iPod's, 5gb, 15gb, 40gb). Touchable from memory is around ~55C and hard drives can usually handle 60C quite fine.