We are in the process of writing up a 'Thunderbolt roundup' from IBC, but thought this was worth a special post. LaCie has released a drive that can convert into an HDD/SDD combination for faster speeds.
Apple's Fusion drive is a brilliant idea, couple a clever SSD cache with a hard disk and you get fast speeds with a decent amount of storage for a good price. But that's the boot drive and as we all know, storing lots of media on there isn't a good idea.
At IBC 2014 LaCie announced the d2 Thunderbolt 2 and USB 3 drive. The newly designed enclosure is an aluminium unibody that reduces noise and dissipates heat. It also has a full length rubber foot to dampen vibration. On the back panel you will find dual Thunderbolt 2 ports as well as a single USB 3 port, a Kensington lock slot and the power connector. The Tpiece on the bottom is for cable management so that connectors don't pull out by mistake.
Intermally there are three options for disk size. The 3TB retails at $299, the 4TB at $399 and the 6TB at $499. All drives spin at 7200 RPM and will give data transfer speed of up to 220 MB/s.
Now, here comes the really clever part!
LaCie also sell a $299 128 GB SSD upgrade which slots into the back of the unit. When first installed, the SSD and HDD will appear as two separate drives with the SSD giving 1150 MB/s reads.
LaCie give no information on how to coupe these two drives into one, but a quick bit of Googling proves that to make a Fusion style drive all you need to do is enter a few lines of code in the Terminal.
Apple's Fusion drive is of course much more complex than a quick HDD/SDD join. The LaCie combined drive won't do smart moving of data based on how often files have been accessed. What it will do though is speed up general data rates and provide much larger (faster) data capacities externally.
A very interesting development in the storage market and we can see more manufacturers buffering their HDDs with SSD in the future. Hopefully we will get a unit on test so that we can join the drives and see how they perform with video files. It will be good to see how fast a file larger than 128 GB will take to read & write.
I am the Editor-in-Chief of FCP.co and have run the website since its inception ten years ago.
I have also worked as a broadcast and corporate editor for over 30 years, starting on one inch tape, working through many formats, right up to today's NLEs.
Under the name Idustrial Revolution, I have written and sold plugins for Final Cut Pro for 13 years.
I was made a Freeman of Lichfield through The Worshipful Company of Smiths (established 1601). Though I haven't yet tried to herd a flock of sheep through the city centre!
Current Editing
2020 has been busy, the beginning of the year was finishing off a new property series (cut on FCP) for Channel 4 called The Great House Giveaway. I also designed and built the majority of the graphics as Motion templates. It has been a great success and the shows grabbed more viewers in the 4pm weekday slot than any previous strand. It has been recommissioned by C4 for 60 episodes, including prime-time versions and five themed programmes. The shows have also been nominated for a 2021 BAFTA.
Although both were postponed to later in the year, I worked again on ITV's coverage of the Tour de France and La Vuelta. 2020 was my 25th year of editing the TdF and my 20th year as lead editor. The Tour was the first broadcast show to adopt FCPX working for multiple editors on shared storage.
BBC's Snooker has played a big part in my life, I've been editing tournament coverage since 1997. I'm proud to be part of a very creative team that has pioneered many new ideas and workflows that are now industry standard in sports' production. This is currently an Adobe Premiere edit.
Covid cancelled some of the regular corporate events that I edit such as trade shows & events. I was lucky however to edit, from home, on projects for Amazon Kindle, Amazon Black Friday, Mastercard and very proud to have helped local charitable trust Kendall & Wall secure lottery funding.
As for software, my weapon of choice is Final Cut Pro and Motion, but I also have a good knowledge and broadcast credits with Adobe Premiere Pro, MOGRT design and Photoshop.
Plugin Design & Development
I'm the creative force behind Idustrial Revolution, one of the oldest Final Cut Pro plugin developers. It hosts a range of commercial and free plugins on the site. One free plugin was downloaded over a thousand times within 24 hours of release.
I also take on custom work, whether it is adapting an existing plugin for a special use or designing new plugins for clients from scratch. Having a good knowledge of editing allows me to build-in flexibility and more importantly, usability.
FCP.co
Now in its 10th year and 4th redesign, running FCP.co has given me knowledge on how to run a large CMS- you are currently reading my bio from the database! Although it sounds corny, I am pretty well up on social media trends & techniques, especially in the video sector. The recent Covid restrictions has enabled live FCP.co shows online. This involves managing a Zoom Webinar through Restream.io to YouTube and Facebook.
The Future
I'm always open to new ideas and opportunities, so please get in touch at editor (at) fcp.co. I've judged film competitions, presented workflow techniques to international audiences and come up with ideas for TV shows and software programs!
