GEAR. STORAGE
are using now. Camera cards are storage media, but you can’t really store material on them for long, as the camera operators need them back quickly.” ALL THE RAID Nigel Gourley, founder and managing director of Outpost Facilities, which does the post for After Life on Netflix and Call the Midwife on BBC One, explains how storage requirements are quite different for moviemakers and producers of episodic drama. “Over the course of a series, they are generating hundreds of terabytes of media, and for that, people are using G-Technology, Lacie and Areca,” he says. “The RAIDs drama people use are
big boxes – the size of a proper computer – and they often have two of them.” Gourley explains there are some affordable options out there, if you’re prepared to compromise. “Spinning discs are pretty cheap at the moment,” he explains. “An 18TB disk is pretty big and easy to get. The trouble with them is the size, they’re as big as a computer and not portable, so for documentary makers it’s not so ideal. They tend to be in and out in a day and don’t have a data wrangler on-site. For them, single drives are better because they are not generating so much media at such high quality.” Then, of course, there’s the cloud. When budgets are being
squeezed and the cost of hardware is only increasing, coupled with the uptake of virtual workflow, some production houses are considering cloud storage. While Gourley says the go-to drives such as Sandisk, Lacie and SSDs can be expensive, he’s not convinced the cloud is a better option in its current state. “People are generating a few terabytes a day – uploading that is not easy,” he claims. “A facility then must be able to download it, because they can’t play it from the cloud. It’s not yet ready for the volumes of data. On-site storage is better – once you’ve bought your device, if you get another year’s usage out of it, it’s free. Cloud storage is never free.”
FAST AS LIGHTNING With read speeds of 1050MB/s, the Extreme Portable V2 is a quick machine (below)
Blackmagic
The Cloud Store Mini from Blackmagic Design can handle large media files shared between multiple users for editing, colour correction, audio post and VFX work – it’s made to suit film and TV. Small and portable, the drive has four M.2 flash memory in a RAID 0 configuration, while the built-in 10G Ethernet allows multiple users to collaborate on video editing in software such as DaVinci Resolve. There is also a Dropbox and Google Drive sync, so units can be synchronised across different geographic locations. What’s more, the very low latency means users don’t even need to store files on their local computer. The Mini features a compact rack mount design, there’s also an HDMI monitoring output to watch a live graphic view of the storage operating on a TV or monitor. blackmagicdesign.com
SANDISK
The Sandisk Extreme Portable V2 is for design professionals who need a storage solution that can handle directly editing high-res photos and videos while in the field or the office. Coming with two nine-inch cables (USB-C to USB-C and USB-C to USB-A), this SSD can transfer 4K and even 8K videos files quickly – provided that your computer supports USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 and its
“A storage solution for editing high-res video in the field” take less than five minutes, but this length could increase depending on how you format your drive. Once done, you’ll be able to use the SSDs at full capacity. westerndigital.com lightning-quick read and write speeds. To transfer content stored in your Sandisk Extreme Portable V2, simply plug it into your computer and a Sandisk drive icon appears on your desktop. If it happens to be your first time using it on your computer, you’ll need to format the SSDs. Western Digital says the process should
SKY’S THE LIMIT Blackmagic’s Cloud Store Mini 8TB is a seriously connected storage device (below)
64. DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
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