This blog has been spending a lot of time discussing storage, and will continue to do so. This is, after all, perhaps the largest new workflow challenge with HD, 2K and 4K cameras, for those moving up from the SD world. I’ve already discussed archiving (offline storage) a bit, and I’m planning some posts on [...]

Early on, there was huge skepticism about what Red was doing. This came largely from people who had experience with traditional film and video acquisition, and they were skeptical with good reason. The RED ONE looks like a huge leap in technology, coming out of nowhere.

The crucial point many of these skeptics failed (and often [...]

Having basically ruled out optical storage, we’re left with two major archiving options: data tape and hard drives.

The leading high-end data tape format is LTO-3. Drives are available from many vendors, and you can expect to pay upwards of $3500. Tapes are 400 GB, and cost around $55 if you shop around, though you have [...]

The RED ONE is clearly going to generate a very large amount of data, even using REDCODE compression. At the 28 MB/s rate quoted for 4K, a minute of footage will be about 1.65 GB.

How do you deal with all of this data? This will be the first in a series of posts discussing archiving; [...]

Can a cheap camera change the economics of feature production? I’ve thought a lot about this, and the answer I’ve come up with is “sometimes”.

If you’re making a $100M movie with tons of visual effects work, A-list actors, etc. then even if your camera and your film stock and processing costs were free you’d probably [...]