Samsung Portable SSD T7 Shield excels in fast-paced Triumph shoot

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The roar power of Samsung’s Portable SSD T7 Shield pays off in a fast-turnaround shoot to celebrate a world motorcycle championship.

Triumph has built some of the world’s most desirable motorcycles for generations, with racing woven deeply into the British brand’s DNA. But one particular prize had always remained tantalisingly out of reach: a world championship.

That changed when Spanish racer Guillem Farrés made history by taking the world motocross crown, with his Triumph team-mate completing an extraordinary season by finishing runner-up.

Just two days after the championship finale in Australia, the team fought back the jetlag to fly back then descend on Triumph’s factory at Hinckley in Leicestershire. Waiting for them were 680 members of the workforce, along with motorcycle media gathered to document a landmark moment in the manufacturer’s history.

For filmmaker Gary Freeman, there wasn’t much time to join the party. Charged with capturing the celebration on video, working alongside the stills photographers and recording interviews with the riders conducted by a well-known television commentator, Freeman then had to turn everything into a polished edit ready to go out to the world. It was a job where the speed of the workflow mattered almost as much as the speed of the bikes.

Freeman’s principal camera was a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro, chosen because of its ability to record high-quality Blackmagic Raw footage directly to an external SSD via USB-C. And attached to it was the fast and rugged Samsung Portable SSD T7 Shield.

Torque of the town

Rather than being simply somewhere to store the footage afterwards, the portable drive was a major part of the acquisition process. With read speeds of up to 1050MB/s and write speeds reaching 1000MB/s, the T7 Shield has the performance required for demanding high-resolution video workflows.

For Freeman’s 6K Blackmagic Raw recording, it meant footage could go straight onto the portable SSD rather than filling camera cards that would subsequently need to be ingested before the edit could begin.

Once a section of filming was complete, the workflow saw the Samsung Portable SSD T7 Shield unplugged from the Blackmagic camera and connected directly to a fast laptop. Alongside the Blackmagic, he was also shooting with a mirrorless and a gimbal camera. The T7 Shield could therefore switch roles, recording directly from the Blackmagic while also providing a convenient destination for backing up material generated by the rest of the production.

“It meant all the footage was already safe on the Samsung portable drive within minutes of the shoot ending,” says Freeman. “Everyone was treated to traditional British fish and chips after the presentations, and I even managed time to have some myself while instantly reviewing the footage and show the client too.

“It’s slick, efficient and looks professional, which is really important when you’ve got a team on location.”

Performance tuned

Speed is only part of the equation for a portable SSD that’s going to spend its life attached to cameras and travelling between locations. The T7 Shield surrounds its aluminium body with a rugged rubberised exterior designed to shrug off everyday knocks. It is IP65-rated for resistance against water and dust and designed to withstand drops of up to three metres – valuable when the drive contains irreplaceable footage.

That aluminium construction helps manage heat during sustained operation, which is very relevant when a portable drive is handling prolonged Raw recording straight from the camera.

When a production kit already includes several cameras, lenses and all the accompanying paraphernalia, something that can disappear into a pocket has obvious appeal. The T7 Shield weighs just 95g and measures approximately 88mm long and 13mm thick, so is ideal. With the T7 Shield available in sizes up to 4TB, filmmakers can carry substantial amounts of footage on a device considerably smaller than a smartphone.

Pocket powers up!

An upgrade to the latest DJI Osmo Pocket 4P meant Gary Freeman needed a fast card to keep up and the new Samsung T9 256GB microSD card was the obvious choice. Providing 256GB of storage with sequential read speeds of up to 200MB/s and write speeds of up to 130MB/s, it has a UHS-I interface and is rated U3, V30 and A2, making it suitable for 4K UHD video recording.

And like the T7 Shield, it has protection to help guard against water, extreme temperatures, X-rays, magnets, drops and wear.

 

Doing the grunt work

In post, it works with Mac and Windows computers, while Samsung Magician software provides tools for monitoring the portable drive and managing features including password protection.

For a production like this, the biggest benefit is removing unnecessary stages between capture and delivery. This wasn’t a film destined to sit in post-production. Triumph had just achieved something unprecedented and wanted the world to see the celebrations straight away.

For Freeman, the T7 Shield helped keep that process moving from the moment the cameras rolled to the point the finished film was ready. A historic victory, world-class racing machinery and a job where everything needed to happen at full throttle. And the Samsung proved fast enough to keep up with the champions.

More information: samsung.com/uk/memory-storage/portable-ssd/

This article appears in the October/November issue of Definition