Best budget storage solution for large film project.

Hi All,

I am planning a shoot overseas for a two hour narrative piece. From research and the (much appreciated) feedback from more experienced BM shooters on this forum, I am looking at around 12 – 14tb of disk space on location(s) to store the entire shoot. I will be filming on the BMPCC4K at Q5 or 5:1 BRAW 4K Film settings.

Back home, my editing PC is this:

i9-9900KF CPU
32GB RAM
C: 1TB SSD (also running Win 10 professional 64bit and Davinci Resolve)
D: 2TB Normal HD Drive used for general storage.
USB 3 ports – no thunderbolt (or anything similar)

On Site, capturing footage with a 500Gb SSD:

I will be capturing daily footage from a Samsung T5 SSD 500Gb which is big enough for all daily shooting needs. Then offloading via a lap top to a larger storage device back at location headquarters.
What is the best and reliable larger storage solution(s) on a budget?

E.g – would a large 5200RPM HD storage solution – such as a WD My Book 10TB disk be ok? Given that traditional HD space is so cost effective, two 8-10tb HD drives have me well and truly covered.

Then what about editing back at home?

This is my biggest dilemma; let’s say I have one or two full, say 8tb, normal hard drives holding multiple daily folders filled with 4k footage, can I plug these into my editing PC (as per the PC specs above) via USB 3 and start editing?

If this is possible, are there any actions I can take to make things more efficient for the computer? – e.g. create the project Davinci database, project and cache folder to the SSD, C drive? Albeit footage is being sourced from the external hard drives?

Alternatively, if my perceived work-flow above is not possible from a data management / computer perspective, how do other film makers manage to handle large projects that consist of 10tb+ of 4k material? i.e. feature film projects on a limited budget?

Sorry to be so naïve – but I am still really foxed with how larger form projects can be managed on a sensible budget that doesn’t require a super-high level of computer know-how.

If anyone has had experience with such matters or hard drive recommendations – be sure, I will be very thankful to hear from you.

Many thanks again in advance,

Lee

With a 5200 rpm drive for offloading to, I hope you have have extra cards/ssd for the camera. That might take awhile. Been there, done that, won’t do again. Slow drives and slow “dumping” stations cost time and money....especially if you need those cards (which you shouldn’t as they should be a backup to your backup) More cards/ssd, the better....I’m old school though... and older...I like backups of backups...


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That is my point:

I see the issues. So what are the feesable solutions? Even if I did use T5 drive after T5 drive (let alone cost to do this) you would still have around 28 small ssd drives for all 14tb of footage. Even then how would you off load that and to what storage solution to begin editing once back home? Imagine doing this with SD cards - that’s stupidly convoluted.

Or is there a “middle road” such as LaCie make 4tb and 8tb 7200 rpm drives at feesable costs. Then with the two full drives, could you connect both of these via USB 3 and would they be fast enough to edit footage?

I'm with Patrick on the 5200rpm drive for dailies. It took me long evening hours offloading and I won't do it again.

On-location.... if assuming you're recording on T5's 500, have one T5 for each shoot day, and then 2 extra T5 so when the DIT transfer overruns, you're safe. On the DIT transfer system (location PC), get a 7500rpm HDD and dump each day's content on it. We use a structured folder where a subfolder called "Source" will have subfolders with each date of the shoot. The content gets dump them. We also secure the used T5.

Back home, review the clips with the director (or someone who will have a say) which content that has the best take to use. Create a spreadsheet and log the filename, folder name (date of shoot), and scene/shot/best take) for all the best takes. This will substantially reduce the amount of content in terms of file counts and storage size. My last project had around 7Tb of source but after we sorted what will be needed for editing, it came out to about 3.6Tb of content so we got a 4TB SSD and copied all those there. If that is expensive, or need more that 4TB, then a fast 7200 or 10000rpm HDD will be sufficient (as long as you have a large enough SSD cache setup) - On that machine we used for editing this project, we had 2 x 2TB SSD RAID 0 for cache.
Use the 4TB or the fast 7200/10K rpm drive for your source when you edit at home.

We got another 4TB SSD to have a backup of the drive use in editing also (for safety). So to give you an idea of what it cost us from a media storage standpoint for a 14 day shoot:

16 x T5 500 SSD ($90 each) - $1440. (on location)
1 x 12Gb 7200rpm HDD - $ 300. (on location HQ)
2 x 4Tb WD SSD - $1100. (back home - not including SDD drives used for Resolve cache)

Total estimated cost (excl shipping/taxes) was about $2,840.

Should you spend this much? Well that really depends on what your budget is and how important is time over cost and safety is to the overall project. You can save a lot with just getting 2 x T5 500 SSD and rotate it after it is dump on the location HQ drive. But if your location HD drive craps out or the dump takes forever to transfer, well you'll have to calculate the risk. You could also just use external fast 7200 or 10K RPM HDD instead for the home drives that will hold the best takes as mentioned above. It will be workable, obviously it will be considerably slower than SDD.

We didn't have issues at the location but I had an issue with the 1st 4Tb WD SSD during the edit with a seek failure and luckily I have a clone drive so I switched to that while we got the other drive replaced.

Are you taking a PC laptop to manage copying any drives on your trip? Or do you need a self-contained storage solution that can run without a PC? There are multi-bay readers where you can plug in an SSD and copy it to another SSD.

If you already plan to take a laptop then the cost of having all these SSDs is significant and you might consider taking a USB3.2 Gen 2 Type C 48TB RAID Pegasus32 R6 drive unit and format it RAID10 so you get effectively 24TB usable space with fast transfers and backup in one box. If one drive fails it’s very quick to recover the lost data. For example, if drive 2 fails, the RAID will recover the data from drive 5. The advantage of this more costly approach is that you don’t need to cull through all your takes, just mount the RAID on your edit station and begin editing.

Or less safe, and still costly you could go for a R4 and load 4 4TB SSDs for a total of 16TB storage without additional backup. You would not need to RAID0 that if you configured it as JBOD. You would retain your original small SSDs as the backup.

You want to save some money, cut those 120 pages down to an indie 75 and you've saved 40% on media and production costs.

12TB of footage is 40+TB when you're talking feature film.

2 TB capture media (Cfast or SSD)
24 TB 2x cold backup copies (spinners)
12 TB working copy (SSD or spinner raid)
2-? TB system overhead/cache/render/proxy/etc., (SSD spinner raid)

If I ran the zoo I'd shoot C-fast on the day and transfer to bus powered 4TB SSDs and spinners. In post use the 4TB SSDs for the media partition on the system, lock the spinners in a vault. Media is the most important piece of the puzzle (for the non Buddhists), you only care about the cost until it fails, then you'll gladly spend thousands to recover the info on a $100 drive.

Good Luck

Unless you've got three copies don't count on it being there.

Something I found useful for editing is a bank of M.2 drives. 4 Intel 2TB 660P NVME M.2 Internal SSD (239.00 each B&H) on an ASUS Hyper M.2 x16 V2 Card (54.99 B&H)(remember to set the slot from 1x16 to 4x4). This provides 7.44 TB of fast storage for editing. These drives are fast and cheep and I don't worry about the information on them because the are only temporary for the editing. I have two WD 10TB Gold (now Ultrastar) 7200 rpm SATA III 3.5" Internal Datacenter HDD (289.99 B&H) each with the same footage on them. Then on a separate computer I have four more of those WD 10TB in a raid 0 with the same footage and two spares. If I had clients footage I would also have storage on another computer at a separate location. Currently this storage has one project on it. A couple more small projects are on the raid but I have some other individual 10TB drives for those as well as some drives for other stuff. So three copies stored plus another on the temp drives. I also have a Samsung 2TB 970 EVO NVMe M.2 for cache and optimized clips, a Samsung 2TB PRO NVMe M.2 for the database, stills and some temporary offloaded footage, and a couple more smaller Samsung PRO NVMe M.2 for the system and temp/page drives. (The 60 lanes of the AMD Threadripper is nice.)

I like working off the M.2 way better than any raid and they are great for 4K and mulicam. The 660P are fast and cheep.

I will be capturing daily footage from a Samsung T5 SSD 500Gb which is big enough for all daily shooting needs. Then offloading via a lap top to a larger storage device back at location headquarters.
What is the best and reliable larger storage solution(s) on a budget?

If I put myself in your place, I would see this as a matter of copying up to 500GB of data each day to three external drives:

1. copy 1 treated as the original,
2. copy 2 stored locally,
3. copy 3 stored off-site (if necessary, it could even be your car).

To my mind, the key is to use terminal commands or a commercial programme that will confirm the integrity of the copies. There is lots of information on the internet about how long the copying will take for a given type of drive. It comes down to how patient you are.

I would be inclined to see copy 1 as the eventual working copy and use faster drives for this copy.

You say that you will be shooting "overseas". This raises the question of whether you want to transfer footage to your home location before the shoot is over, either by physical delivery of drives or via cloud storage. If you'll have a good data connection, I think that there's an argument that cloud storage could replace one of the three external drives mentioned above.

Lots of great alternatives here. I wonder what the client will accept in terms of budget for media and storage? You may have to explain the importance of having dual backup at a minimum to the actual recording media. Hopefully you’ll never use any of the backups, but you have to play it safe. Some recommend triple backup before they’d feel comfortable. Depending upon the sophistication of the client, it might be a struggle of money.

At home I’ve used dual backup but given you are traveling, triple does sound like a good idea and don’t have everything packed on the same container! The Cloud approach is very good plan if that’s an option but be careful you find a cloud service that has a large bandwidth; going cheap on the cloud will be a very slow transfer and you need as fast as possible so you can sleep well.

Lots of great alternatives here. I wonder what the client will accept in terms of budget for media and storage? You may have to explain the importance of having dual backup at a minimum to the actual recording media. Hopefully you’ll never use any of the backups, but you have to play it safe. Some recommend triple backup before they’d feel comfortable. Depending upon the sophistication of the client, it might be a struggle of money.

At home I’ve used dual backup but given you are traveling, triple does sound like a good idea and don’t have everything packed on the same container! The Cloud approach is very good plan if that’s an option but be careful you find a cloud service that has a large bandwidth; going cheap on the cloud will be a very slow transfer and you need as fast as possible so you can sleep well.

Hi Rick,

Maybe I'm wrong, but my reading of the original post is that the intention is to reuse the recording media on a daily basis. Hence why I'm talking about three drives, one treated as the original.

On a project this large, I would want the original plus two copies, one off-site. If someone questioned that, it would be very easy to show that it is standard backup practice, and to point to many discussions about the reasons.

I should add that when I say that an off-site copy can be in a car if necessary, I mean at night, not during a summer day :)

Thanks all for your insights and advice - really appreciated.

Tell me if this is a workable plan for a 4k BRAW Feature film shoot on a seriously small budget:

1. Favoring the Q.5 constant quality option for the majority of filming - this lowers the memory usage considerably and from my experiences, it looks great.

2. Going to heed the advice of duplicate copies - going to use multiple Samsung T5 1tb SSD drives for the shoot.

3. Then going to backup dailies onto a WD Mybook Duo 16tb in Raid 0 format.

- I now have all footage on the Samsung T5's
- I have a backup of all footage the WD Mybook Duo Raid 0
- Because the backup is in Raid 0 format, I have this as the source drive as it is fast enough to edit from when back home.

Questions:

- will a WD Mybook Duo Raid 0 be fast enough to edit with Davinci Resolve via USB 3.0? I do not have thunderbolt.

- I have an internal 1TB SSD (that includes operating system) in my editing PC, is this big enough to cache a feature film? There are no special FX or anything fancy, just straight forward narrative filming and editing.

- Is the above doable? Or am I missing something?

Thanks as always to the BM community. I am cutting my teeth on all of this at the moment and the help I receive from more experienced filmmakers is really appreciated.

Hi Lee,

If you look at discussions about backups, you’ll find that Raid 0 is not considered to be a backup. Raid 0 doubles your risk of data loss.

This is a data backup issue rather than a filmmaking issue. You may find it helpful to check articles about data backup on what is, and isn’t, considered good practice.

Hey Lee,
+1 on Rob's comment. IMO, you should not risk a back up with a Raid 0 just so you can use it when you get home for editing. Even though you have originals on those T5s which technically can be your backup, a backup of your originals is a must have (or even call it dual backup). You're traveling too and you can never tell what exposure those electronics and magnetic media have going through detectors, humidity, handling, etc. Basically, you're paying a little more for insurance, buying another WD16 for your editing bay - that you can make into a Raid 0. It easy to spend a few more dollars than to lose footage that you cannot recreate (well without massive cost). With that said, I wish you all the best and have fun filming your picture.

As to performance, the Raid 0 is a benefit but your data path weakest link is your connection. It will just be as fast as the USB 3.0 and bus will allow. But don't worry about this. I have clients who brings their 7200rpm external HDD USB 3 drives to me that I used as editing drives (in fact I have one now) and it's fine. I usually generate optimize medias and do my editing with it. It does slow me down when grading but if it's not too complex of a grade, no or very little VFX, it seems to be okay.

Get some fast SSD for your cache drives and make that RAID 0.

Hey Ellory,

Thanks for your feedback.

I too got Rob's point - apologies as I didn't realize media management and options were so involved. I have researched backup options and media management until my eyes hurt, however due to my lack of knowledge, each time I discover something new, it subsequently raises additional questions. e.g. I only discovered what RAID was yesterday - lol!

So at the risk of being indulgent (and budget minded) - what about this rationale:

1.) On location - WD My book Duo 20TB Raid 1 (cost effective and it works). This way I have two mirrored copies of all dailies shot on site. Potentially, I can save $$$ on not having to buy too many T5 1TB SSD's as I already now have two copies of all footage.

2.) Back home, purchase another RAID Drive and use this in RAID 0 (I now understand this isn't technically RAID) but at least I have a source drive that is pretty fast (and I already have two backups) or would it be better to buy internal hard drives?

Question:

Quote: "Get some fast SSD for your cache drives and make that RAID 0." - is this external or internal? and how much SSD memory for a cache drive for a two hour movie? Or is my existing 1TB internal SSD enough?

Apologies; I really didn't think my initial question would "evolve" into such an in depth exploration of media management.

Kind Regards,

Lee.

So at the risk of being indulgent (and budget minded) - what about this rationale:

1.) On location - WD My book Duo 20TB Raid 1 (cost effective and it works). This way I have two mirrored copies of all dailies shot on site. Potentially, I can save $$$ on not having to buy too many T5 1TB SSD's as I already now have two copies of all footage.

Of course this is an option, and so are other 10 ways to the highway. But you've got to keep in mind what is crucial for you. (1) Backup to reduce potential risk of data loss and (2) Efficiency.
(1) Having the T5 SSD set for the originals and another Backup drive cut your risk rate. A Raid 1 reduces your risk further but actually does not reduce the failure rate. To me, the Raid 1 is optional but good if you want to do that. But there is a drawback - it's takes longer to write to it.
(2) Efficiency - Backing up multiple 1 TB SSD to a RAID 1 drive will be slow. So it will take a while to transfer files. That's why I said, to me, RAID 1 is optional. I also wouldn't use 1TB SSD. T5 500Gb is much better. It's half the time to transfer and you can switch quicker if you so choose to have less T5s. It's also just safety for me to have 2 500's with data so if 1 drive fails, not all the data is lost. On 1 1TB drive, if it fails, you're up creek. This may be overly cautious but that's me and my personal experience with media failing on locations.

On the HDD, I'll just mentioned there is RAID 10 - which is RAID 0 + 1 which could be a blend for on-location backup and at home editing drive. But I won't go adding more things for you to think. It's too much to consider, I know. As I said, there's 10 ways to the highway.

Question:
Quote: "Get some fast SSD for your cache drives and make that RAID 0." - is this external or internal? and how much SSD memory for a cache drive for a two hour movie? Or is my existing 1TB internal SSD enough?

The cache is for optimizing media that will improve playback during edit. It does little for grading. Just keep that in mind. If you use a highly compressed codec for your optimize media, then 1TB internal SSD should be enough. It really depends what kind of optimize media you'll generate and the number of clips being optimize. An internal SSD is so cheap now that I recommend just buying an additional 1TB internal SSD (exact same one you already have) and then make that RAID 0 and configure as your cache drive. That's also going to give you more runway for future projects or if you prefer to use less compress higher bitrate codecs for your optimize media.

Plenty of good advice here and I won’t repeat it but herein lies the major issue with a RAW workflow - the data mountain. Ask yourself if you really need to shoot RAW and could you get away with ProRes? If you are on a controlled set and I’m assuming you are a competent operator so you can nail exposure and WB ( which will also be a requirement for painless editing) I’m not sure RAW is going to help more that it’s going to create more potential problems. Talking from experience and even with seemingly carefully thought out data management systems it’s still oh so easy to loose data and the less data you have to handle the less the risk. The real risks come when you get near storage limits and have to start juggling the files to keep up with the space or to keep up with the supply and save. I’d go as far as saying there really is no such thing as ‘Budget storage solution’ other than to keep data sizes to a minimum via a non raw workflow. Data is all you have to show for your film and preserving it has to be top priority esp for a project that has zero reshoot potential.

Good point John.

I really need to get a handle on how much data BRAW Q5 will ACTUALLY take for the shooting of an entire feature. I only have comments made by others on the total amount of TB's used to shoot their long-form narratives, and many shot in higher resolutions and compression rates than I plan to do.

The one item I really like about 4k BRAW Q5 is that it is a comparatively small in file size yet still manages to allow for so much flexibility in post. I'll have to explore other formats.

So - if anyone has shot a feature in Q5, let me know how many TB it actually took!

AFAIK BM publish storage size vs time vs image size vs FPS.

The other 'data management' system with RAW is to edit on the go and delete takes or footage you are not going to use.

I only discovered what RAID was yesterday - lol!

So at the risk of being indulgent (and budget minded) - what about this rationale:

1.) On location - WD My book Duo 20TB Raid 1 (cost effective and it works). This way I have two mirrored copies of all dailies shot on site. Potentially, I can save $$$ on not having to buy too many T5 1TB SSD's as I already now have two copies of all footage.

2.) Back home, purchase another RAID Drive and use this in RAID 0 (I now understand this isn't technically RAID) but at least I have a source drive that is pretty fast (and I already have two backups) or would it be better to buy internal hard drives?

I think that you should forget about Raid. It sounds like a great idea when one first learns about it, but it isn’t for your purposes.

On location, Raid 1 places two copies of data in a single drive enclosure with no practical benefit. If that drive enclosure, or one of its drives, fails, it is going to be a hassle retrieving the remaining drive or drives and getting operational. If there’s a catastrophic failure (loss through virus, malware, theft, fire, etc.) you lose both drives. Meanwhile, Raid 1 has given you no improvement in efficiency when copying data to it. Nor does Raid 1 mirroring replace the need to verify the integrity of the data on each of the disks.

You may find it useful to read this Wikipedia article about Raid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels Note the statement in the second paragraph that Raid “cannot replace a backup plan”. More generally, Raid was a fad, and recent discussions about it tend to be more wary and balanced than a few years ago.

I would like to repeat my earlier suggestion that you keep a copy of your data off-site. This is basic backup practice when one is talking about critical data. There’s an argument for a day or two lag time on this copy to provide time for any virus, malware or data integrity problem to manifest itself on the other drives.

I would maintain the same regime when back home and editing, which means an original working copy and two backups, one off-site. I would not configure my working copy as Raid 0 unless there were necessary performance gains over available alternatives, I was prepared to accept an increased risk of drive failure/data loss and I had an aggressive, frequent backup strategy. Given current storage technology, I see this use case for Raid 0 as a last resort, and I wonder what it will accomplish as a practical matter given that your computer has a 1TB SSD.

My original suggestions, including comments about verification of data integrity and the possible use of cloud storage, are 15 posts above.

If you haven’t already, this would also be a good time to choose, and get experience with, an app that will take care of your copying and data verification for you. If you were using MacOS, I’d suggest something like Carbon Copy Cloner. Unfortunately, I don’t know what the Windows equivalents are, but perhaps others have suggestions.

The RAID 0 is great for big storage space + speed. The mechanical 3.5" HDD is pretty reliable on static installation. I have used RAID 0 for 2 and 3 disk configurations for past 7 years, some of the original disks and not had a problem. That of course does not mean anything. It is a fact that one must multiply the failure rate by 2 or 3 compared to normal HDD. These HDD's are though used 24/7 on data centres, my usage is really minor compared to that.

The resent development on SSD disks is great but for 10TB+ the are still very expensive. Also the low cost SSD disk have great data rates only at the start of the transfer, it drops close to 100 MB/s on big transfers https://www.pcworld.com/article/3322947 ... eview.html

3 x 3.5" 8TB HDD on RAID 0 just keeps going about 400 MB/s, 24 TB instantly available. It requires packing up, but not constantly loading the projects to the fast disk.

Yes, but he’s editing video footage on a computer with a 1 TB SSD, not running a data centre. I can type 80 words per minute, but I can’t write an article anywhere near that fast. The questions Raid 0 raises are both specific to the individual’s working style and empirical: what actual increase in performance will he get from a Raid 0 working drive, and does any increase in performance offset the risk? This should be assessed in conjunction with the need, and time it takes, to frequently make two backups. Does he even need all of the footage to be on the working drive?

As I said above, I wouldn’t rule out Raid 0, but it sure wouldn’t be my first choice.

Lee, I wouldn't worry about setting RAID 0 for your data drive in editing. With the 1TB for cache, as I said if your optimize media are small enough, that should suffice. I do see a very good performance gain with having 2 x SSD RAID 0 for cache (against a single SSD non-RAID) but that's how I tested and got my system already. You might not need it so I suggest just start with the 1TB SSD for cache.

What does it mean?

"SSD for cache."

Is that some Windows cache or what?

Resolve cache drive (also called scratch drive).

RAID 0 is the obvious choice for fast access to large amounts of data until solid state storage increases in size or reduces in cost. If you are editing you need to be able to playback your footage smoothly even if you are just reviewing it before pulling it into the media bins so having it on single big spinning disks is not going to let you do this. Sure when you have selected your footage you can use media management and copy or move the clips to an SSD. Make sure you have a 50% overhead with spinning disks to avoid the transfer rate slowing when disks fill up. Never had a drive fail yet in RAID 0 after daily commercial use for 15 + years. Always backed up daily to multiple single drives which you will need to do anyway with whatever you are working from so I just don't see any downsides.

My paid work is commercials, I’ve put lots of time into weekend short films for aspiring writer /directors around Philly and buying a few dedicated drives for a single project is common.

I generally buy two of the biggest 3.5” disks I can afford for travel or on site DIT. 2x Seagate 16tb 7200rpm are a good option. You can buy Thunderbolt or USB 3.1 enclosures.

I put the drives in pelican cases with foam padding around the drive.

I plug both drives into a MacBook Air and use Resolve’s clone tool to transfer the day’s clips to both drives overnight or during the day on breaks.

When you get home you can remove 1 of the drives from the enclosure and place it directly into your computer and use it as an edit drive for 2 copies of the data.

For 3 copies of the data, install a 16tb drive into your edit computer and use the clone tool to move all the clips onto it.

Friends have often become on set DITs for me, Resolve’s clone tool is simple and extra people who have shown up to help are always quieter and more invested when they are watching what was just shot and can often review clips while it is copying.

I own and use (6) 256gb Komputerbay Cfast 2.0 cards instead of the t5 drives but I mainly work with the URSA Mini.

Sounds like pretty good practice to me for low-budget projects.

Thanks All,

Things are becoming much clearer.

I am reassured by Ryan's comments about using two 7200 HD's on location and using Davinci's clone tool. This sounds tried and tested. Something also to be said about the simplicity.

I'll heed Rob's advice about RAID 1 not being the ideal solution to backup problems. The above sounds simpler and safer.

Back home, I'll use one 7200 HD copy as the source drive and use the internal 1Tb SSD as the cache disk. If this is fast enough, then I only need to worry about backing up the project as I have another copy of all identical footage stored elsewhere. If it isn't fast enough (new to all of this) then I'll look into a RAID 0 HD alternative as the source drive.

I think this is the best my budget and skill level can accommodate. Worst case, I am back home with two drives with two copies of all source material. That is achievement in itself for me.

I generally buy two of the biggest 3.5” disks I can afford for travel or on site DIT. 2x Seagate 16tb 7200rpm are a good option. You can buy Thunderbolt or USB 3.1 enclosures.

I put the drives in pelican cases with foam padding around the drive.

I plug both drives into a MacBook Air and use Resolve’s clone tool to transfer the day’s clips to both drives overnight or during the day on breaks.

When you get home you can remove 1 of the drives from the enclosure and place it directly into your computer and use it as an edit drive for 2 copies of the data.

For 3 copies of the data, install a 16tb drive into your edit computer and use the clone tool to move all the clips onto it.

Friends have often become on set DITs for me, Resolve’s clone tool is simple and extra people who have shown up to help are always quieter and more invested when they are watching what was just shot and can often review clips while it is copying.

I own and use (6) 256gb Komputerbay Cfast 2.0 cards instead of the t5 drives but I mainly work with the URSA Mini.

This is pretty much my standard media solution when shooting low budget shorts or indie feature. Although I have been talking about using T5 for recordings in this post, I actually use 256gb CFast 2.0 cards with my cameras. It's far more expensive than the T5's. You can buy 3 500gb T5's for the price of 1 256gb CFast 2.0 card.

So not much different from what Ryan posted except that I use a RAID 0 SSD on my editing system.

I dump the days capture into a 7200rpm 14Tb drive using a software called FreeFileSync. You can definitely use Resolve clone tool but I found FFS to be much faster. Then I duplicate what's on the 14Tb drive to another 14Tb drive, again using FFS. A log of best takes is kept by the script supervisor and I get a copy of it.

When I get to the editing studio, the director (or whomever has the authority to sort out shots) and we go through the log, pick out the files of best takes (and alternate best takes) and copy those files on a 4TB SSD drive. Kid you not, almost all of the time, a 12-14tb of on-location recordings just come down to 2-4tb of usable footage that goes into the picture project in Resolve. With a 4Tb SSD drive for data during editing, and a 2 x 1TB ssds RAID 0 for scratch, it's super efficient for my workflow.

So in summary, my media kit would comprise of
8 x 256Tb CFast 2.0 cards - which I already own & bought over time (For recording on UMP G2, etc.)
2 x 1Tb SSD Internal RAID 0 that I have on one of my editing station (For Resolve scratch/cache drv)
2 x 14Tb 7200rpm Seagate External HDD (For copy and backup)
1 x 4Tb SSD External (For best take files only that will be used in edit workflow)

I've used other media solution too like the one I mentioned earlier in this post - depending on what the project is. But if I was doing this for a weekend indie project, my setup is almost similar to Ryan's.

Oh, Ryan brought up a good idea. Get a waterproof hard drive case with foam to store those drives like the Pelican cases or similar. They're worth it and not that expensive - about $30-40.

I've shot a bunch of multiple camera feature documentaries using BMD cinema cameras on a tight budget where we had to figure out how to handle a ton of footage with minimal drive cost.

This is the setup I used:

1TB of card storage per BMD camera (these days the cards I use are all Cfast 2.0, but used to be SD cards or SSD on the original BMCC). I didn't have time to dump the cards in the field, it all had to be done at the end of the day. Recording to 4K BRAW Q5 you should be able to record at at least 9 hours with 1TB (I used to shoot ProResHQ in HD, and it's amazing that the data rate for that is about the same as BRAW Q5 in 4K!). These days I use Hedge for copying off the cards with checksum verification. I can offload a full 512GB card to SSD in less than 20 mins.

At the end of the day I copy everything to a single 2TB SSD (or up 4TB if there were 3 or more cameras running). Why just one really fast drive? Because I can dump all the cards to that quickly, and then dump that single fast drive to cheap slow 8TB HDD (or 10TB or 12TB or 14TB) — one master, one backup (and sometimes a second backup) overnight while sleeping. In the morning, all the previous days footage has been backed up to all the slow HDD drives, then I could wipe the cards and the SSD and shoot again. Rinse, repeat. If you plan to shoot 12TB total, you would need two (or three) 14TB drives. On those feature docs I typically racked up 40TBs or more. But usually not more than about 12TB per shooting trip. The master drives and the backup drives would travel back separately and always kept in separate locations.

Once in post, I never edited directly from the those slow HDDs, because I didn't edit with the camera original files at all. I put those originals from the slow HDD drives into Resolve and rendered everything to HD ProResProxy for fast and easy editing. It also meant I could edit in whatever NLE the project required (and previously that meant Final Cut or Avid or Premiere Pro, because Resolve didn't used to be an NLE....)

By making proxies, I could edit on a super fast HDD or SSD RAID that we didn't have to spend a lot of money on because all it needed to hold were the much smaller HD ProResProxy files. I'd get a cheap slow HDD of the same size as the RAID to use as a local backup for the proxy RAID drive. Since the edit files were lightweight ProRes files it usually meant I also didn't need a very big cache drive either as I often didn't have to render to get realtime playback. All the project files (not the media, just the project file) would get copied to cloud storage daily as well. Also, on a couple of features we had more than one editor. Rather than having to get a big expensive NAS, by only cutting with the proxies, we could cheaply provide each editor with their own small RAID, all mirrored.

At the completion of the edit, I graded in Resolve by relinking to the original files on the slow HDD drives, conformed the sequence and consolidated only the bits used in the picture locked sequence to fast SSD RAID. In most cases, this SSD RAID only needed to be at most 2TB, so it didn't have to be expensive.

When the grade was complete and all the masters + deliverables exported, I archive everything to LTO. I do also keep those slow HDD drives in the archive too, just because they are easy to keep around and less cumbersome to access than LTO.

That's the cheapest and most efficient way that I've found to manage drive storage for a feature. I don't have a documentary feature in production right now, but I will use that same storage workflow again whenever this lockdown ends and we can start shooting again.

I've shot a bunch of multiple camera feature documentaries using BMD cinema cameras on a tight budget where we had to figure out how to handle a ton of footage with minimal drive cost.

This is the setup I used:

1TB of card storage per BMD camera (these days the cards I use are all Cfast 2.0, but used to be SD cards or SSD on the original BMCC). I didn't have time to dump the cards in the field, it all had to be done at the end of the day. Recording to 4K BRAW Q5 you should be able to record at at least 9 hours with 1TB (I used to shoot ProResHQ in HD, and it's amazing that the data rate for that is about the same as BRAW Q5 in 4K!). These days I use Hedge for copying off the cards with checksum verification. I can offload a full 512GB card to SSD in less than 20 mins.

At the end of the day I copy everything to a single 2TB SSD (or up 4TB if there were 3 or more cameras running). Why just one really fast drive? Because I can dump all the cards to that quickly, and then dump that single fast drive to cheap slow 8TB HDD (or 10TB or 12TB or 14TB) — one master, one backup (and sometimes a second backup) overnight while sleeping. In the morning, all the previous days footage has been backed up to all the slow HDD drives, then I could wipe the cards and the SSD and shoot again. Rinse, repeat. If you plan to shoot 12TB total, you would need two (or three) 14TB drives. On those feature docs I typically racked up 40TBs or more. But usually not more than about 12TB per shooting trip. The master drives and the backup drives would travel back separately and always kept in separate locations.

Once in post, I never edited directly from the those slow HDDs, because I didn't edit with the camera original files at all. I put those originals from the slow HDD drives into Resolve and rendered everything to HD ProResProxy for fast and easy editing. It also meant I could edit in whatever NLE the project required (and previously that meant Final Cut or Avid or Premiere Pro, because Resolve didn't used to be an NLE....)

By making proxies, I could edit on a super fast HDD or SSD RAID that we didn't have to spend a lot of money on because all it needed to hold were the much smaller HD ProResProxy files. I'd get a cheap slow HDD of the same size as the RAID to use as a local backup for the proxy RAID drive. Since the edit files were lightweight ProRes files it usually meant I also didn't need a very big cache drive either as I often didn't have to render to get realtime playback. All the project files (not the media, just the project file) would get copied to cloud storage daily as well. Also, on a couple of features we had more than one editor. Rather than having to get a big expensive NAS, by only cutting with the proxies, we could cheaply provide each editor with their own small RAID, all mirrored.

At the completion of the edit, I graded in Resolve by relinking to the original files on the slow HDD drives, conformed the sequence and consolidated only the bits used in the picture locked sequence to fast SSD RAID. In most cases, this SSD RAID only needed to be at most 2TB, so it didn't have to be expensive.

When the grade was complete and all the masters + deliverables exported, I archive everything to LTO. I do also keep those slow HDD drives in the archive too, just because they are easy to keep around and less cumbersome to access than LTO.

That's the cheapest and most efficient way that I've found to manage drive storage for a feature. I don't have a documentary feature in production right now, but I will use that same storage workflow again whenever this lockdown ends and we can start shooting again.

Thanks Jamie, lots of good advice here and not just for big projects.

Yes, excellent advice!
Just let me add for those who use PCs, that you can replace Cineform for those proxies (or DNxHR, but I like CF better). A fast SSD for the editing proxies is still good advice since the access times are so much better.

For collaboration, it's also a good idea since even with a relatively slow connection those same files can be put on a cloud service. More important now than ever…

For fast annotation, backups with checksum, and even generation of those files on older machines I can recommend Kyno.

For fast annotation, backups with checksum, and even generation of those files on older machines I can recommend Kyno.

I've looked at Kyno before. There were a couple of things that was not on my checklist like RAW support which it did not have then that I decided to just hold off. With that said, do you know if the current Windows version (1) support BRAW and (2) transcode from any format to Prores on Windows. That would be awesome.

Here is an article that seems to be relevant to this thread among others. Scroll down for the discussion on cameras, lenses, codecs, wrangling data and backup:

https://www.fdtimes.com/2020/05/07/into-the-rising-sun/

With that said, do you know if the current Windows version (1) support BRAW and (2) transcode from any format to Prores on Windows. That would be awesome.

Version 1.8, which will be out soon, has BRAW support, and Apple-certifies ProRes transcoding for Windows.

With that said, do you know if the current Windows version (1) support BRAW and (2) transcode from any format to Prores on Windows. That would be awesome.

Version 1.8, which will be out soon, has BRAW support, and Apple-certifies ProRes transcoding for Windows.

Thanks Uli. I'll keep an eye for it. That's the way to go.

If you're on a budget, simply get some USB-C 6 Tb drives for offloading too.
Have your cache on an internal SSD on your computer and keep the dailies on the external drives.

Also, instead of the expensive T5 drives get some raw SSD drives that have been approved for the original production 4k camera, and a removable drive caddy. You can find these 500gb drives for around $70 each. This way you can be offloading on set, while shooting.

It may not look as sexy as a T5, but it absolutely works, as I've been doing it.

Today I tested redoing the color on an older project that I had archived to an external data drive.
I opened the project, pointed to the external drive, waired for it to build tephe cache in the Intel drive, and started work.
Worked without a hitch.
I too have a feature project I'll be shooting soon, and this is exactly I'm going to work.

Also, instead of the expensive T5 drives get some raw SSD drives that have been approved for the original production 4k camera, and a removable drive caddy. You can find these 500gb drives for around $70 each. This way you can be offloading on set, while shooting.
It may not look as sexy as a T5, but it absolutely works, as I've been doing it.

The T5 500gb are not expensive anymore and you can probably get them at Amazon or B&H for about $85 each. B&H had a deal zone on them several months ago where you buy 1 T5 and get 1 free (essentially 50%) off. I got 6 of them for about $255 with free shipping. . You can get a SmallRig cage mount for the T5 for about $28 and do away with figuring out how to rig a bulky removable drive caddy on your rig. Just keep an eye on them as there are deals. Even without the deal, they're just $85 and you don't need a caddy.

Also, instead of the expensive T5 drives get some raw SSD drives that have been approved for the original production 4k camera, and a removable drive caddy. You can find these 500gb drives for around $70 each. This way you can be offloading on set, while shooting.
It may not look as sexy as a T5, but it absolutely works, as I've been doing it.

The T5 500gb are not expensive anymore and you can probably get them at Amazon or B&H for about $85 each. B&H had a deal zone on them several months ago where you buy 1 T5 and get 1 free (essentially 50%) off. I got 6 of them for about $255 with free shipping. . You can get a SmallRig cage mount for the T5 for about $28 and do away with figuring out how to rig a bulky removable drive caddy on your rig. Just keep an eye on them as there are deals. Even without the deal, they're just $85 and you don't need a caddy.

Except the caddy isn't at all bulky and it takes under 30 secs to swap out a drive.
And unless you can get them for the deal you got, the t5 is still going to be more expensive right now

And unless you can get them for the deal you got, the T5 is still going to be more expensive right now

... okay by only $20 more at Amazon. That's reasonable. You can probably get it less someplace else like B&H, Adorama, etc.

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-T5-Porta ... 7a9c0027d0

To swap out the T5, just unplug the cable from the drive and attached another T5. How simple is that.
Well that's my opinion and you have the option to use and do whatever you want.

As a director/producer of content including several shorts, a theatre musical and an upcoming feature, I know from experience that $20 dollars here, and $20 there, quickly add up to literally thousands saved.
Hence my approach.
I always look for the most inexpensive solution that won't have any impact on the quality of the project.

As a director/producer of content including several shorts, a theatre musical and an upcoming feature, I know from experience that $20 dollars here, and $20 there, quickly add up to literally thousands saved.
Hence my approach.
I always look for the most inexpensive solution that won't have any impact on the quality of the project.

Well, that's good for you. I produce and direct too. But for me, if a production is counting pennies, I'd be thinking twice before doing any work with them. But that's me and I've not had a producer (financier) negotiate with me a few bucks here or there so suite yourself bud... and we don't need to debate further over this subject matter anymore. I'm sure the OP got your point in mind. Cheers.

Also, instead of the expensive T5 drives get some raw SSD drives that have been approved for the original production 4k camera, and a removable drive caddy. You can find these 500gb drives for around $70 each. This way you can be offloading on set, while shooting.

It may not look as sexy as a T5, but it absolutely works, as I've been doing it.

Hi Mark,

One of the arguments for Samsung’s T5 drives, not just in the context of a Blackmagic camera, is that the Samsung enclosures manage the heat well. When you use your own enclosures, how hot are the drives compared to a T5 drive? Acceptable?

Here is Richard Lackey’s approach to storage including backups:

https://www.richardlackey.com/best-stor ... w-backups/

I should mention that this article is based on using Kyno software which supports integration with DaVinci Resolve among other NLE apps. I think I’ll give that a try on my next narrative film project as it may be a welcome tool. If anyone who uses a different data management tool (for copying data and adding metadata) would like to comment, please do.

Also, instead of the expensive T5 drives get some raw SSD drives that have been approved for the original production 4k camera, and a removable drive caddy. You can find these 500gb drives for around $70 each. This way you can be offloading on set, while shooting.

It may not look as sexy as a T5, but it absolutely works, as I've been doing it.

Hi Mark,

One of the arguments for Samsung’s T5 drives, not just in the context of a Blackmagic camera, is that the Samsung enclosures manage the heat well. When you use your own enclosures, how hot are the drives compared to a T5 drive? Acceptable?

I haven't noticed any heat issues whatsoever. And I shoot a lot in the hot California sun.

Also, instead of the expensive T5 drives get some raw SSD drives that have been approved for the original production 4k camera, and a removable drive caddy. You can find these 500gb drives for around $70 each. This way you can be offloading on set, while shooting.

It may not look as sexy as a T5, but it absolutely works, as I've been doing it.

Hi Mark,

One of the arguments for Samsung’s T5 drives, not just in the context of a Blackmagic camera, is that the Samsung enclosures manage the heat well. When you use your own enclosures, how hot are the drives compared to a T5 drive? Acceptable?

I haven't noticed any heat issues whatsoever. And I shoot a lot in the hot California sun.

Thanks, that can make using your own enclosures an interesting, cost-saving proposition. It’s much easier to do than a lot of people realise. Indeed, it’s pretty much dead simple. Do you know offhand what enclosures you’re using? Are they aluminum or plastic?

Here is Richard Lackey’s approach to storage including backups:

https://www.richardlackey.com/best-stor ... w-backups/

I should mention that this article is based on using Kyno software which supports integration with DaVinci Resolve among other NLE apps. I think I’ll give that a try on my next narrative film project as it may be a welcome tool. If anyone who uses a different data management tool (for copying data and adding metadata) would like to comment, please do.

After reading Uli's earlier post, I checked out Kyno and downloaded the trial. I'm sold on it and the cost is reasonable. I didn't see any direct integration with DR but I was not being attentive on that so I'll check it out again. Uli did mention that Kyno v1.8 will have BRAW support and Apple-certifies ProRes transcoding for Windows. I'm just holding on until that version comes out. The BRAW and ProRes transcoding for Windows is already valuable. The LTOs are great solution but they're buko-bucks for small size post house and individual setups. As for camera media, C-Fast 2.0 is the way to go and like most of the pro folks here I'm on that bandwagon when it comes to paid projects. While the SSD (even the T5) had occasional drop frames and heat issues, I've not experience drop frames with the C-Fast cards I've owned.

Thanks, that can make using your own enclosures an interesting, cost-saving proposition. It’s much easier to do than a lot of people realise. Indeed, it’s pretty much dead simple. Do you know offhand what enclosures you’re using? Are they aluminum or plastic?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HDYM598/re ... UEbNMYCYCQ

Plastic

If you buy Kyno you get free updates for one year.
Looking at the past, it will not take them long to improve integration with Resolve.
It can use tape storage, but it can also copy with a checksum to four different target media of any kind.

Thanks, that can make using your own enclosures an interesting, cost-saving proposition. It’s much easier to do than a lot of people realise. Indeed, it’s pretty much dead simple. Do you know offhand what enclosures you’re using? Are they aluminum or plastic?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HDYM598/re ... UEbNMYCYCQ

Plastic

Thanks. Those are ABS plastic enclosures, probably with a strip of heat tape. It’s encouraging that you haven’t had any issues with heat.

If you buy Kyno... it can also copy with a checksum to four different target media of any kind.

True for the Pro version; the basic version is one to one copy. I’m not sure if would use the Pro features myself but interested to know how others feel about going to the Pro version.