Blackmagic Cloud Store Workgroup Ideas

In my previous post I reviewed the new Blackmagic Cloud Store Mini. (Click here for the full article.) Blackmagic Design has a track record of being disruptive with cool new ideas and products. Their cloud storage line is no exception. I am less interested in the Blackmagic Cloud, as I’m not a fan of either the Resolve database format for projects nor parking your projects in the cloud. However, the storage products don’t require the Blackmagic Cloud and that opens up a number of possibilities.

I’ve worked with shared storage (SAN and NAS) products going back to Avid’s first fiber channel MediaShare. Blackmagic’s Cloud Store and Mini are light years ahead of those early units. Yet the multi-user workflows developed back then are still in play today. This is especially true if you are a facility owner with a handful of workstations all connected over a network to the same storage pool. It’s also true if you are an editorial team working together on a feature film. Both are workgroups that can easily be serviced by one of the Cloud Store or Cloud Store Mini storage products.

Building the workgroup

I’m a fan of simplicity. Today’s edit suites don’t need all the gadgets that they’ve had in the past. Less is often more. Let’s envision four workstations running either Final Cut Pro or Premiere Pro. Resolve may be part of the mix, but not for collaborative editing. I’ll leave that discussion for another day. Mac-based, of course, but by personal preference since the storage also works with Windows. With those parameters, what would you buy?

For a fixed facility, the Mac Studio is a no-brainer. The Mac Pro makes no sense to me for most editorial work nor for most grading or audio mixing. A loaded M1 Max with a 1TB or 2TB internal drive is plenty. This unit already includes a built-in 10G Ethernet port. If the budget can’t handle four of those, then a loaded M1 Mac mini is another option. Just make sure to add the 10G upgrade.

What if the team needs to more portable, such as for on-site editing? In that case, go for one of the MacBook Pros instead. Since these do not include Ethernet ports, you’ll need add a Sonnet Solo 10G (Thunderbolt 3 to 10G Ethernet) converter for each computer in order to get 10G speeds.

External displays are required for the two desktop Mac models, but optional with the laptops. Equip each unit with one or two of Apple’s 27″ Studio Displays. An alternate option would be the Apple Store’s LG UltraFine 4K display. Don’t forget audio. Unless everyone is working with headphones, I would recommend a simple audio interface (PreSonus, Focusrite, Universal Audio, etc) and desktop speakers (M-Audio, KRK, Adam, etc).

This team is using 10G Ethernet. If you opt for the Cloud Store Mini 8TB drive, then you’ll need to integrate a standard 10G Ethernet switch to connect the four workstations with the Mini over a 10G network. There are a range of options, but at a minimum the switch will require that five or more ports supports 10G. There are many small combo switches on the market with both 1G and 10G ports. It’s easy to misread and think you have enough ports and then find out that most are only 1G.

In this hypothetical scenario, if you only have four workstations and are using the larger Cloud Store, then a switch isn’t needed, since the Cloud Store already has a 4-port 10G switch built in. And finally, you’ll need enough Cat 6 Ethernet cable for the cable runs between rooms. If any run exceeds 100 feet or passes alongside a lot of electrical wiring, then you may want to consider Cat 7 cable.

Storage strategies

Now that we’ve built out the body of the facility or workgroup, what about its heart? Blackmagic Design offers CloudStore with 20TB, 80TB, or 320TB capacities, and Cloud Store Mini with 8TB.

The type of work being done will determine which one is the best fit. For example, if you work with high-resolution media and commonly edit with native camera files, then you’re going to need as big of a unit as you can afford. On the other hand, if most of the media is smaller or you generally edit with proxy files, then the Mini with 8TB might be plenty. Remember that you can always add a large Thunderbolt array (Promise, OWC, etc) with spinning drives at a very reasonable cost as a local drive on one of the stations.

A feature film might have a large Thunderbolt storage tower connected to one of the workstations. It would hold all of the original camera media. Those files would be transcoded to proxy media located on the Mini 8TB. All four workstations would be able to edit with the common proxy files, because the Mini is shared storage. When the cut is locked and it’s time to finish, the unit with the Thunderbolt tower would relink to the original camera media for grading and output.

There are many variations of these scenarios. It’s just a few ways that Blackmagic’s cloud storage products can be used to build powerful workgroups with a very light footprint. However, a key part of this innovation is the ease of putting such a system together.

©2022 Oliver Peters