Blackmagic Forum

What are all the solutions for "ports" in which to upload your RAW BMC files through a new TB macbook pro?
I was hoping to get an idea of cheap to expensive for the pro's and the hobbyists, along with portability restrictions. (i do know all the BM products, just curious what else is out there in this vast abyss)

thanks

seagate goflex TB....takes any bare 2.5 SATA drive....works great, 95+50 for the cable....

Thanks!

and what is the time of offloading?? i've made my numbers and i got about 3 hours for a 256 GB full of Raw footage...

Jesuan wrote:and what is the time of offloading?? i've made my numbers and i got about 3 hours for a 256 GB full of Raw footage...

BMCC 2.5K 12-bit RAW CinemaDNG uncompressed video is recorded at a rate of 5 megaBYTES per frame. So, for example, a 250GB SSD can hold 30 minutes of this CinemaDNG footage.

I don't have a Thunderbolt-equipped computer, but for example on my 2 yr. old MacBook Pro, it takes 45-min. to copy about 213GB (equivalent to about 20-min. of CinemaDNG footage) via eSATA-2 to 7200rpm SATA-3 hard disk drives connected to the computer.

I estimate performing the same copy operation via USB-3 would take about 50-60 minutes. Via FW800 it might take about 90-110-min., and via USB-2 about 2-3 hours. These are rough estimates, but accurate enough for comparison.

Performing the same copy operation via Thunderbolt (on a newer, faster computer) should result in speeds at least 3-4 times faster. In other words, it would take about 10-15 minutes to copy the same file.

One last note: The BMCC can also record using excellent-quality 1080p 10-bit ProRes 422 HQ compression @ 220 megaBITS/sec. This is 1/5th the data rate of the BMCC's CinemaDNG mode, and can be easily & quickly handled by most any computer and software. For example, that means a 250GB SSD can hold about 2.5 hours of ProRes 422 HQ footage. A half-hour's worth of ProRes 422 HQ footage will copy from SSD to HDD very quickly (just take a minute or so) depending on the speed of the computer & connections. This is one of the reasons I'll shoot ProRes 422 HQ with my BMCC most of the time.

it really depends on the speed of the drive your transferring to dont be fooled by the connection speed of TB

Gbenjamin wrote:it really depends on the speed of the drive your transferring to dont be fooled by the connection speed of TB

I agree. In my previous post I'm comparing my older, slower MBP (with a eSATA-3 ExpressCard 34 adapter) to the latest Thunderbolt-equipped MBP Retina model.

My observation has been that a new MBP Retina connected to a SATA-3 7200rpm HDD in a well-designed Thunderbolt configuration can result in performance as I described in my post.

I expect we'll see apprpriately-configured Windows-based laptops & desktops with Thunderbolt yielding similar results very soon.

If worse comes to worse, I will just pop open my Mac Pro and attach the SSD to a sled and go from there.
I have the same set-up as Peter with the MBP and can afford a 45 min wait here and there.