academy | Space race
Cheap storage that slows down might prove very expensive indeed
distinction might initially seem less important. Although an SSD fast enough to edit directly from or to store project files from your NLE is a sensible option compared to cheaper but slower HDDs. Time is money, after all. Scale up to several editors, multiple projects and enormous volumes of footage, however, and storage rapidly becomes part of an entire production infrastructure. Ciotti says factors such as ‘reliable performance, data security, workflow integrations, collaboration, organisation, automations and scalability’ should all influence the decision. In other words, cheap storage that continually slows down the people using it might prove very expensive indeed. Follow the rule Whatever your scale, there is one principle that hasn’t changed: if footage exists in only one place, it isn’t properly protected. Ciotti recommends the familiar 3-2-1 rule as the starting point for every filmmaker. “Every backup strategy should follow the rule of three copies of your data, on two different types of media, with one copy stored off-site.” That applies whether you’re a solo owner-operator or a production company with a sophisticated shared-storage system. Your camera media may be the first copy. After shooting, footage could be transferred to working storage and duplicated elsewhere, with another copy kept at a separate physical location or in the cloud. The important part is that these aren’t merely three copies sitting beside each other, such as on a hardware RAID on one desktop. Even if your master footage and two backups are all on different drives but in the same office, then theft, fire or another catastrophe could take out all three. A sensible, more sophisticated approach is to create different storage plans appropriate to different stages of production. “The best workflows accomplish this with a tiered approach to storage, moving media between tiers automatically so nothing gets lost in the hand-off,” explains Ciotti. SNS’s own EVO system, for example, can transfer or replicate media between online, nearline and cloud storage. Finished projects can then be moved into an archive while remaining discoverable through its media asset management system. The principle is arguably more important than the particular hardware, as your fastest and most expensive storage doesn’t necessarily need to contain everything you’ve ever shot. Current projects demand rapid access and fast drives. Recently completed material requires less expensive storage. Long-term masters can move to an archive. The trick is ensuring files remain protected and retrievable as they move through those stages.
Space invaders A
safe workflow could involve desktop and portable SSDs as well as cloud devices
50
September/October 2026
Powered by FlippingBook