Blog Archives

Storage is critical to all media editing and I’ve written a lot about it. So much so, that it is hard to find where to start and which articles are important to read. To help, I’ve collected the important ones here …

I’ve gotten a lot of questions recently on USB 3 vs. Thunderbolt, so I wanted to share what I’ve learned.  (By the way, I updated this to provide clarity on USB 3 speeds.) Thunderbolt and USB 3 are both protocols …

I bought a new 27″ iMac when they went on sale Friday, specifically for video editing. And, because I’ve had a lot of requests recently, I wanted to tell you what I bought and why. WHAT SIZE IMAC? I bought: …

What are RAIDs, SSDs, or The Cloud? And how do you use them to get the best performance from your editing system? This article explains what you need to know.

Since I wrote my blog on the MacPro (read it here), Apple presented its keynote at this year’s WorldWide Developer Conference. Shortly after that, when the Apple Store reopened, not only were the new Mac portables listed, but the MacPro also …

The Digital Production Buzz is getting ready to cover the 2012 NAB Show in Las Vegas. Here’s an overview of what we are doing and the gear we are using for our coverage.

Sal Guarisco sends in a personal story on how he configured an LTO-5 tape drive for media archiving on his Mac.

It was not your normal day. Before the doors to MacWorld opened, I had the chance to sit down with Gary Adcock, founder of Studio 37, who lives somewhere beyond the high-end of today’s market. “So, Gary,” I asked, “is …

[Updated 12/13 with clarification on Promise and more info on the incremental cost.] I needed to buy more storage for my editing system – as if needing more storage for video editing is a surprise or something… Anyway, I decided …

‘TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE SUPERMEET I’m writing this at 9:50 PM from my hotel room at the 2011 NAB Show (National Association of Broadcasters) in Las Vegas, Nevada. In less than 24 hours, we will know what the next version …

A few days ago, I wrote about my frustrations in finding archiving solutions that work on the Mac for protecting our video assets. (You can read that blog here — some of the comments are VERY interesting!) The day after …

It shouldn’t be this difficult. NOTE: This blog grew out of my webinar last week on how to archive Final Cut Pro projects. If you are interested in archiving, click here to learn more. The process of creating films and …

[ The following article was taken from my FREE Final Cut Studio newsletter for February. Subscribe here. ] The release of any new hardware is exciting; as we saw last week with the release of the new MacBook Pros. However, …

The following is taken from my free, monthly Final Cut Studio Newsletter. Subscribe here. I’ve had the pleasure of testing a variety of truly high-speed RAIDs over the years, and I’ve spent a lot of time worrying about whether I …

The good folks at Accusys sent me an 8-drive RAID to test recently. (You can read my review of their ExaSAN A08S-PS unit in the next issue of my newsletter; coming out later this month.) However, what I want to …

I’m a member of the IMUG mailing list, which has lots of interesting discussions on media, gear, and life. This morning, Carey Dissmore, Principal of Carey Dissmore Productions, Inc. and a co-founder of the IMUG, sent out a post that …

Just a very quick note – as it is now about 11:58 PM – that our podcast, the Digital Production Buzz is located on the trade show floor at the 2010 NAB Show as the official podcast. We are right …

In less than 48 hours, the Digital Production Buzz will start broadcasting from the floor of the 2010 NAB Show. (Currently, I’m surrounded in boxes, cables, and packing crates as we get our gear packed up and loaded it. You …

Earlier today, Data Robotics released the new Drobo FS. Drobo is a hard disk RAID family that I like a lot. Last week, I had a chance to talk with Mark Fuccio, Senior Director of Business Development for Data Robotics …

One last report from London’s Broadcast Video Expo 2010. As I was leaving the Object Matrix booth, I met Paul Phillips, the U.K. Managing Director for Active Storage. When Apple decided to get out of the RAID business a few …

Often, the best new gear is hidden in the corners and back areas of a trade show. As I was walking the aisles of the Broadcast Video Expo in London last week, I discovered a company called Hocus Products. They …

Tucked in a small corner at the Broadcast Video Expo 2010 in London was a brand-new product designed for independent producers to help them shoot in 3D — BinoRig. They were displaying a prototype of a camera mount that allows …

I’m spending the week at Broadcast Video Expo 2010 in London (well, Kensington Square, if you want to be specific.) This is the UK’s largest show focused on video production gear. If you listen to the Digital Production Buzz tonight …

This morning Apple announced a plethora of new hardware, some of which looks pretty interesting — as long as you aren’t interested in editing video. You see, Apple removed the FireWire port from the MacBook – again. A few iterations …

One of the questions I am constantly asked is “what’s the best digital video camera?” The problem is that while I understand video formats pretty well, I don’t shoot very much. So, I don’t have the experience to pick a …

Apple this week announced revisions to their 13″ and 15″ MacBook Pro laptop line. Most of the time, when these sorts of things get announced, I just nod my head, acknowledge the new release and move on. I’m not buying …

As the Official Podcast of the 2009 NAB Show, the Digital Production BuZZ produced 37 live news casts, and 12 hours of live programming and interviews. These were syndicated to more than 25 websites and reached tens of thousands of …

I posted this a couple of days ago to the Latest News section of the Digital Production BuZZ, but this is a big enough deal that I wanted to mention it here. When Data Robotics first announced Drobo, it was …

My friend, Nate Adams over at Media Distributors tipped to me a new asset management system being introduced by Media Distributors at NAB. Now, I know that the concept of a database for tracking assets can cause many people’s eyes …

Vendors are finally starting to take the archiving needs of small media professionals seriously. Tom Tomchak has been long-time reader of my newsletters and recently did a review of some new technology that will be premiered at NAB in a …

Brian Gary has written an interesting review of the CalDigit VR RAID. More important than that, he’s also started to take a closer look at the whole process of archiving media – something I’ve been writing about for a while. …

Eric Harnden, of Quintessential Studios, sent me the following: I know you’ve covered disk-based archiving vs. tape-based archiving before but I ran across this white-paper that I think is very interesting. http://edge.networkworld.com/whitepapers/nww/pdf/tape_and_disk_square_off.pdf This is a 12-page PDF document, published in …

The road to a product review is rarely smooth, but a review that I’m currently working on was especially rocky – mostly due to me – but the back-story is interesting, so I thought I’d share it with you here. …

It snowed four inches today in Dundee, Scotland, at the start of my first UK seminar. Still, we had close to 100 people brave the weather to turn our for our seminar. In spite of the weather, we still came …

Don Smith sent me the following, which I thought you might like to see as well. – – – I just watched the demo movie from MacWorld by JVC introducing the GY-HM100U camera.. http://pro.jvc.com/prof/attributes/features.jsp?model_id=MDL101845 JVC licensed the EX3 format from …

Philip Hodgetts sent me a fascinating blog post from Justin Evans, who is both a filmmaker and camera rental house owner. In it, Justin suggests that the total number of RED cameras currently in the market exceeds the number of …

John Bowling, from the City of Houston, Dept. of Aviation, sent me the following. – – – Just ran into a situation that I believe others should be aware of. I use a Mac Pro for editing and wanting the …

One of the nice things about getting back in the office after being on the road for a while is catching up on all the reading I didn’t have time to do while traveling. For instance, there is a fascinating …

As part of my weekly podcast – Digital Production BuZZ – I get to interview some truly interesting people. Sometimes, when I prerecord these interviews, I get more material than I can use for the show. This was the case …

The folks at NVidia invited the guys from MythBusters (Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage) to explain the differences between a CPU and a GPU. NVidia also gave them an unlimited budget. If you’ve been wondering what the difference is.. and …

IBC (the International Broadcasting Convention) in Amsterdam has been the source of a variety of exciting announcements that I want to bring to your attention. (Thanks to Ben King for doing the legwork and filing this report.) First, Adobe continued …