So we just wrapped our film, Failsafe. And as of right now, we have this film spread across all these different drives. Some SSD drives that I'm editing off of, and then other drives that I just have for backup. And I've tried my best to organize all of these drives and had to quickly just look at something, you know, with, like, some tape. I put some tape on here, I wrote a little note. However, I just switched over to this unified drive u p six,
and it just completely changed my workflow, not just from an editing standpoint,
but even on set as a sort of DIT solution.
Today, we're gonna break down what this drive is and why it's so great. But most importantly, we're gonna talk about how it could save you on set and revolutionize
your post production workflow.
So like I said, we just wrapped my film fail safe, and we were shooting this on the Pixis 12 k using CFexpress
type b cards. And I usually work with a small to medium sized crew. And on most of these productions that we're shooting on, even with this film, we don't have the budget for a dedicated DIT. And if you guys aren't familiar with what DIT stands for, it stands for digital imaging technician.
On bigger productions,
this is essentially either a person or even a couple of people that wrangle all the different media cards or SSDs that you're shooting on, basically manage all that data coming in and create backups, and essentially just streamline that process for you. That way, nothing gets deleted. Everything has a backup,
and you have a proper file management system when you are done shooting the film. But because we are working with a smaller budget, DIT becomes
my job. And when I'm sitting there hunched over my laptop with a bunch of different card readers, upload all of this footage, that workflow,
I've been honestly trying to fix because it takes me an extra forty five minutes to maybe an hour just to organize all of that footage at the end of the shoot or even at the end of the night, and that's why I'm excited about this new product. So really quickly, let's dive into what the u p six is.
In short, it is a portable NAS system designed
for filmmakers. Now NAS stands for network attached storage,
basically a shared storage server that multiple devices can access all at the same time. Usually, NAS systems are like a big, bulky, mess of a machine with a bunch of internal hard drives in them. I have my old Synology system that had
seven or eight different internal hard drives. Now this particular system, I was able to put a 120 terabytes in, which is great, but it's so big and it's so slow that you can't edit off of it. Now the u p six takes that whole concept
and shrinks it down into something that you could literally throw into your back pack. Inside this thing is an Intel Corp Ultra processor,
support for up to 96 gigabytes of RAM and six m dot two NVMe slots that you could hold up to 48 terabytes of storage. That is
really insane when you think about the size of this thing and how lightweight it is. This u p six is so small and tiny
that I can literally just throw it into my bag, and I have myself a portable NAS system that I could bring on every single set with me. Now here's the thing. NVMe drives have become insanely expensive, but after a ton of research,
I found a pretty affordable solution, and that is this WD
black four terabyte,
which right now you can get for about a $120
per terabyte when you buy the four terabyte version. The four terabyte version right now is about $500
on Amazon. I'll leave a link down below. Now if you guys find something else that is cheaper,
please drop a comment down below and drop a link because I would love to share it with the community. Now one thing that I will say is that physically,
this drive is
solid. Like, it is really well built.
And if you see right here, it has, like, these little rubber corners. But these little rubber corners
just make you feel safe. What's also great about this drive is that it comes with its own personal carrying case that you cannot not only fit this drive into, but it comes with a little pouch to fit all of the cables in or any other drives that you might wanna fit inside of this case as well, which is cool because for me, I could just have my own little portable DIT station right there. For inputs and outputs, you've got a CFexpress
type b slot. You have an SD card slot. You have two Thunderbolt four ports on the front, and then on the back, you have a USB c, a USB a, an HDMI, and a 10 gigabyte Ethernet port. And then, of course, you have a DC barrel for power. Now shooting on the Pixis 12 k with the CFexpress type b cards, this was huge for me. I could literally just take my CFexpress type b card, put it in there, and right away, this thing is ready to rock and roll. And it prompts you on the screen whether or not you wanna back up that card. And that was a feature that made me realize this is a game changer because of how quick and easy it is to use on set. Let me paint a picture for you really quick. You wrap up on set. I take the card out of the camera, pop it right into this, and it prompts you that you could just back up the card with one click of a button. No laptop, no card reader, no tangled cables, no file explorer, just a tap of a button, and it is ready to rock and roll. And because you have the touch screen right there, I can monitor the transfer in real time and see how long it's gonna take. And then you could even take that a step further.
If you wanna
on the footage and make sure, double check that everything is there, you can go through, click on it, watch it, have playback,
and it could all play from this screen, which is wild. And that's the thing. Because this has an HDMI, you could actually plug this into a monitor,
to a computer, to a TV, and review the footage right from the unified drive. You could play it back from there. So if you're on set and you have a client or you have another crew member or you're working with a director that wants to see the footage and just double check that you guys have everything,
you could actually
transfer it on here,
have them watch it,
shooting something else with the card in the camera, and be able to allow other people to monitor the footage. Now let's just say that you're on location. Right? And you don't have any power. Well, this Unifi drive has a UPS battery. Now this is huge for two reasons. First, if you're transferring the footage to this Unifi drive and the power cuts out,
you have up to two hours
of time to transfer all of that footage. That means that it saves you from your files getting corrupted mid copying,
which is priceless. And then second, when I'm shooting on remote locations and need to quickly transfer the footage and either don't have my laptop or maybe something died, I know that at least two hours I have to transfer everything, which in most cases is more than enough time to transfer
even two terabytes of footage straight to this drive. Now here's something pretty cool. If you guys are shooting somewhere with no Internet, and I shoot in those places all the time. If you take a look at this shoot right here, we were out in the boonies and we had no Internet. This is a place where this unified drive would really come in handy because the u p six has something called AP mode.
And, essentially, it turns this device into its own local Wi Fi network.
So now as we're shooting something, any one of my team members can pull up footage from from their phone. They can dump their files straight into
this NAS system. Even if there's no Wi Fi, you could connect to that NAS system's Wi Fi. Typically, I use the NAS system for backup and to send out to either clients or send out to other video editors just to download off of. But this is where the unified drive really revolutionizes
my workflow.
I've actually been editing fail safe, my film, directly off of this for the last couple of days now, and it works better
than my portable SSDs.
Right now, I have this set up on my Mac Studio plugged directly into the UniFi drive,
essentially like an external SSD.
And here are the read and write speeds that I'm getting out of this drive. Here's the write speed,
and then here's the read speed. Now I'm gonna change the drive and just for context, show you guys what other SSD, like your basic external SSD is gonna look like in terms of read and write speed. And as you guys can see, there is a huge difference between the unified drive and the SSD. The unified drive is significantly faster.
But, of course, those are just specs. Right? How does it actually work in a timeline? Does it really work? Can you really edit off of it? Well, if you look right here, I'm gonna scrub through this timeline,
and
it's not skipping a beat. I'm able to quickly scrub through the timeline. I'm able to play it back. I'm able to make adjustments, make cuts, all editing right off of this drive,
which is the same drive other editors can access and download off of. Now, of course, this wouldn't be a modern device if you didn't have some sort of AI feature.
The u p six has an AI powered search that allows you to find any clip that you want just by searching for something
involved in that clip,
such as
if I wanna type in boat
or ocean, I could quickly find exactly what I'm looking for just by quickly typing in into the NAS system. If you're thinking about who this device is for, it is not for YouTubers or content creators.
This device is for professionals.
This device is for somebody who is investing in something that they know that storage is a cornerstone of their business, their workflow as a filmmaker, and somebody who is serious about storing their files and organizing their stuff and knows the importance of not losing their films or not losing the content that they shoot on. This NAS system cost $1,600,
and it ships diskless,
meaning that it has no drives included.
So you have to bring your own NVMe SSDs into this. I personally wouldn't buy anything less than a four terabyte drive, the one that I'm recommending here, because anything more than that or anything less than that, you end up spending way more per terabyte. So let's just say you got the four terabyte drive. You're looking at $2,000
just to get started with four terabytes of storage inside of this thing. What is incredible to me is all of the features that you get. Like I said, the only thing that I could say is that for fail safe and my workflow as a filmmaker and an editor,
it has been a game changer for me. I'll leave a link to this unified drive down below. You guys could check that out as well as the WD and VME drives that I recommend that you guys at least check out. If you guys find drives that are more affordable,
please put them down in the comments below. Share the love because
we need to figure out a more affordable solution, like, real. But I wanna thank you guys so much for stopping and hanging out. My name is Alex Zarfadi, and I'll see you guys next week. Deuces.