As creatives, we need to work on the velocity of thought. We need to transfer rapidly from our concept to the display, and we wish our know-how to work simply as quick, perhaps even sooner, whatever the codecs we use, the decision we shoot in, or the scale of our pictures.
Alongside that speedy artistic journey, we wish a artistic companion, human or in any other case. A Watson to your Holmes. A Robin to your Batman. A favourite lens in your favourite digital camera. Or, on this case a tough drive in your artistic endeavors.
The Samsung Transportable SSD T7 Defend USB 3.2 is a artistic companion you can toss right into a bag. And I do imply toss. The unit is IP65-certified to be mud proof and waterproof. As well as, with a 9.8 foot drop certification, it ought to survive a hefty drop must you miss mentioned bag. A word from the Samsung web site: “Examined to resist 9.8-ft (3 meters) drop underneath managed situations. Drop resistance functionality might range relying on the precise environmental situations.”
The unit has a learn/write velocity of 1,050/1,000MB/s, and to additional the velocity testing, we put the exhausting drive by means of the Blackmagic velocity take a look at paces and dove into Blackmagic’s advisable media.This specific unit was paired with the Blackmagic Cinema Digital camera 6K and formatted as Mac OS Prolonged straight by means of the digital camera. The fabric shot was 6K open gate in Blackmagic Uncooked at 23.98 fps.
In keeping with Blackmagic Design’s Help Middle, the Samsung T7 Defend SSD is advisable for the Blackmagic 6K Professional digital camera for 6K Blackmagic RAW 5:1 as much as 50fps, 6K 2.4:1 Blackmagic Uncooked 5:1 as much as 60fps, and a couple of.8K 17.9 Blackmagic Uncooked 3:1 as much as 120fps. Though this cell exhausting drive can be utilized with the brand new iPhone so as seize ProRes at 60fps, the T5 Defend is listed for 4K DCI ProRes HQ as much as 60fps, however not the T7. The T7 is listed for 1080 ProRes 422 HQ as much as 120 fps.
The Blackmagic Disk Velocity Check gave blended outcomes for ProRes 422 HQ at 4230p60 (you will notice a inexperienced examine mark, and a crimson x, for Write). That mentioned, at $99.99 for a 1TB mannequin, snagging one in every of these exhausting drives to check it out earlier than a shoot, can be a reasonable a part of your analysis.
Talking of the Blackmagic web site, the Cinema Digital camera 6K is displayed alongside the notorious Sandisk Excessive SSDs, the topic of a number of lawsuits, exhausting drive failures and firmware updates. For many of us, the T7 grew to become our subsequent cell exhausting drive funding i.e. our subsequent artistic companion. Certainly, with my very own highschool college students, we bought, delivered, and simply arrange 20 T7s for movie modifying. And regardless of their greatest efforts, and extreme ability in strolling across the classroom with the unit dangling from their laptop computer by a “thread” aka the USB-C twine, we had no failures or points.
The phrase I take advantage of most frequently with the T7 is all the time. It all the time hundreds, all the time ejects rapidly besides when in use by an software like Resolve, all the time is straightforward to arrange, and simple to edit off of. It’s zippy, and one in every of them (full disclosure: I’ve three personally) is all the time in my bag.
The Defend does have just a few quirks value highlighting. Whereas the Defend rubber does make the exhausting drive sturdy, it additionally tends to gather mud, glitter, or no matter else you might have round (I discovered a small white feather on it as soon as). On an iMac, it’s doable to eject the exhausting drive whereas working in Premiere (No error was prompted by the working system). Whereas working with 6K materials and a number of layers of supplies similar to textual content, Resolve is usually a bit gradual with out 50% high quality playback enabled (once more this was on a 2020 iMac).
Method again within the day, everybody had a GoPro of their digital camera bag. It was the sturdy digital camera you simply tossed on the journey to each shoot. At the moment, the fixed artistic companion is a cell exhausting drive, and it might be, maybe needs to be, the T7 Defend. Seize one for 100 bucks, belief your artistic instincts, and know you might have a approach to switch materials even within the snow. It’s your new artistic companion.