Eve M. Cohen

The recent trend in shooting 8K video is accompanied by very large storage needs and from a cost perspective it is important to know if this resolution is necessary for your production. Eve explains, “The files generated from the camera you are using and the estimated number of hours filmed, will dictate how much storage is required. Feature 2lms typically generate larger more robust files, but a finite number of hours, versus a feature documentary that might have smaller file sizes, but many more hours of footage.” She continues, “New productions require three different kinds of drives: shuttle drives, editorial drives and backup drives. Each of these necessitates a different feature set at a different price point. Features to consider are transfer speed, drive speed, physical size and capacity — an SSD wouldn’t be cost effective for my backup drives, however the transfer speed of the backup drives wouldn’t be sufficient for downloading camera media on set.” Eve keeps her files in the SanDisk Professional family of Thunderbolt™ 3 and USB-C™ connections, for shuttle drives she uses G-DRIVE SSD as they need to be physically robust and do not require large capacities; and for editorial and backup she uses G-DRIVE or G-RAID devices.” Film productions are constantly pushing the limits of how technology can save on time and money. Intelligent storage decisions are crucial to saving money without sacrificing performance and convenience.

Eve says that for her, G-DRIVE SSDs sell themselves as shuttle drives, “I physically put the G-DRIVE SSD into producers hands, and they can feel the lower cost of shipping; I show them the file transfer speed on the computer and they see how much time they save.” In addition to the bene2ts of transfer speeds and physical size, SSDs also can withstand more severe conditions. Eve has worked on documentaries around the world and it is essential for the drives she uses in the 2eld to hold up againstextreme environments, unpredictable handling and trans-continental shipping. “If the SSDs can safely make it back to the US from remote villages in Africa or India, I am con2dent they can make it across town in Los Angeles."

Eve practices what she preaches. Her personal archival storage setup includes multiple G-DRIVE SSDs, G-DRIVE Pro SSDs, G-DRIVE and G-RAID Shuttle 8. The 2TB G-DRIVE SSDs are her choice for daily use as they are extremely durable and lightweight; she keeps a pair of them in a bag that goes everywhere with her. The G-DRIVE Pro SSDs are reserved for copying feature dailies on set or the 2nal export from the colorist. Everything from the SSDs is then backed-up to her G-RAID Shuttle 8 and on a mirrored set of G-DRIVEs as an archive, the SSDs are reformatted to be used over again.

Perhaps still smarting from the loss of her early footage, Eve is emphatic about the importance of having a current archiving strategy. "Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t have the right impressions about the best ways to archive, and it changes constantly. What was the best method a couple of years ago is not necessarily the best method now. If you’re working with an archive solution from 10 years ago, it might not be sufficient. That’s why staying educated is one of the most important things when it comes to storage.”

In particular, she points to the common misconception that USB 3.2 and Thunderbolt protocols are the same from a performance standpoint. They’re not. Thunderbolt connectivity, now available on all modern Mac workstations and notebooks, offers up to 20Gb/s throughput. Thunderbolt 3 doubles that. This speed difference can be essential to maintaining a fluid workflow during real-time editing. In contrast, USB 3.2 tops out at 20Gb/s, and this may be constricting when dealing with 4K and higher multi-stream workflows.