Choosing the right workflow for the Blackmagic Cinema Camera (3/3)

Choosing the right hardware to handle the Blackmagic Cinema Camera files

This is probably the most difficult part of this workflow, for us, as we were very limited by our budget. 

The first, obvious thing you need when you shoot with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera, is hard drives, and lots of them. 

We bought eight. Eight, 3tb hard drives. Yes, that’s 24tb of disk space. 

The break down is as follows: 

• Six 3tb Western Digital Red hard drives.
• Two 3tb Seagate Barracuda hard drives. 

The Red and the barracuda drives have different purposes. 

The Western Digital Red, being extra reliable, are our original file drives. Arranged in RAID 1, each drive is mirrored. We therefore «only» have 9tb of useful space, as the 9 other terabytes are back ups. Usually, one would advise to have three versions of your original files, however, due to our lack of budget, and the fact that having three versions of your files in the same place (since remote back up was not an option) seemed a bit pointless. If a fire eats up our main hard drive and its back up, it will surely burn the second back up as well.

The Barracuda are our proxie hard drives. Faster than the Red, they won’t be backed up. We’re FEARLESS. (Please please don’t crash...)

Now, how do you plug eight hard drives? Well, you don’t. Or we don’t. We actually don’t need to.

We bought this: the Icy Box RD3640SU3E2. This box can be connected to a computer via USB3, eSATA, Firewire 400 and Firewire 800, so basically, any computer. 

The box has four slots, which will be used as follows: 

• the top two are used to plug two Western Digital Red, in RAID 1
• the one bellow is for the Barracuda 
• the last one is for the SSD from the Blackmagic Cinema Camera

The Blackmagic Cinema Camera doesn’t allow two things: it doesn’t allow to transfer the files by plugging the camera to a computer, nor does it allow to format the SSD (which you should do each time you empty the SSD, to avoid deteriorate its performances and cause dropped frames). Therefore, you need to have a way to plug it to your computer. 

Precision: the SSD is 2,5’’ while the hard drives are 3,5’’. Since the box is a tray-less design (which I think is a mistake), you will need to buy an adapter where you put the SSD in to conveniently insert the SSD in the box. It is nearly impossible without it. 

To summarize: 

• In the box, which is plugged to the computer via the fastest connection available (in decreasing order: eSATA, USB3, firewire 800, Firewire 400), is connected 2 Western Digital Red hard drives in RAID 1, 1 Seagate Barracuda and 1 SSD. 
• The files are transferred from the SSD to the Red drives. The proxies created with DaVinci Resolve are exported directly into the Barracuda.
• Ideally, for speed purposes, the Barracuda drive(s) will be plugged internally for editing. 
• For grading, the red hard drives will be plugged in the box without their RAID companions. 

Some criticism

Our workflow is somewhat optimum considering our hard conditions, but it is far from perfect. 

• One backup is indeed not enough. If you can, it is better to have an off-site back up. 
• The box we used isn’t designed so well. I would have preferred a design with hard drive trays. 
• The box doesn’t allow to have the two Red in RAID 1 with the rest of the drives in no RAID configuration. Therefore, we must use software RAID. It is less reliable, and cuts the speed of the Red in half. 
• It would better to back up the proxie hard drives, although, if it fails, it would only take time to recreate the proxies, assuming the original files are still there.