On the road with a TouchBar Macbook Pro, Resolve and a G-Technology Thunderbolt RAID
By Jim Bask
…Travelling with G-Tech’s RAID
I travel with the RAID for several reasons, shooting in 4K RAW for file transfer, file transport and editing on the road. I tried a 1080 workflow with proxy back to 4K but always seemed to have problems. In my opinion, the camera is shooting 4K and I want to use the media it generates for the best possible grade, so transcoding is not an option for me either. I have started shooting with the Canon C700 recently, using the Codex recorder and to give you an idea: with a 1TB Codex drive, transfer to a standard single-disk Thunderbolt drive takes around 2.5 hours. The six-drive RAID I tested took 22 minutes.
To transport my original Thunderbolt drive I had a road case built, but it still felt vulnerable and was a pain to handle without grips once out of the case. The first thing that struck me on the G-Technology G-Speed shuttle XL that I was trying was the case and built-in handle. It felt like something I would have on set, rugged with quality components; a professional piece of filmmaking equipment that gives you a sense of reassurance just from its build quality. I did not have the optional case which comes in two flavours, but would certainly get it for transport. It’s a great idea and with the drive not being too heavy, makes it easy to handle…[continue reading]