Samsung: The ultimate storage stress relief
Posted on Nov 30, 2021
Faced with many hours of high-res files and a day-long turnaround, Will Fielding reached for the Samsung Portable SSD X5. He discovered an end-to-end workflow, smoother than ever before
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High-pressure situations are the name of the filmmaking game, but some are more demanding than others. Good results require a cool head, plenty of proficiency and kit that won’t let you down. This month, Will Fielding tried his hand with Samsung’s fastest external SSD – and found a seamless addition to his extensive bag of tricks.
“I’ve worked in film for the last seven years, doing a mix of camera operation, videography and motion graphics work,” explains Fielding. “The projects are primarily for commercial clients, and the two I’ve put the Samsung Portable SSD X5 to use on were no different.
“A few weeks ago, I produced a video for a London bar, shooting and covering the full post-production package. More recently, I was brought in for some on-site editing on behalf of a conference.”
Can a creative like Fielding use just one external storage device across such a range of tasks? When it’s one as powerful as this, you bet he can.
“I use a cinema camera, which shoots in all flavours of Raw codec. A good storage device has a direct impact, because it allows me to opt for something with less compression. Further down the line, that means I’m able to pull more out in grading, and deliver the best possible results.
“The clips supplied to me for the second project were 4K ProRes Raw, and they were hours long,” Fielding continues. “Even with those, you get a sense when you’re scrubbing through the timeline that the drive is really instant and responsive. There’s no lag in the footage, when you want to skip to a certain part of it. It speeds up the workflow dramatically – it’s incredible.”
The Samsung Portable SSD X5’s blistering speeds are down to an NVMe interface and Thunderbolt 3 connectivity. They were dual firsts for Fielding – and respective read and write speeds of 2800MB/s and 2300MB/s were startling.
“Going into my second shoot, I knew the client wanted the edit finished and returned within an hour,” he says. “That was a real nervous point for me. I wasn’t sure if the large, long event clips coming my way would take a real toll with the editing software, or if I’d be waiting so long for the export that the client would start to become restless.
“The edit was smooth, once again, and seeing the media encoder blaze through the export of an hours-long video was a real ‘wow’ moment. It made the day a lot less stressful.”
No storage technology out there will offer comparable performance in such a stylish, portable and compact package. That could only be Samsung. It’s not a factor lost on Fielding.
“In terms of fitting into a camera bag and being taken to locations and sets with ease, the Samsung Portable SSD X5 is extremely convenient. Any portable drive that delivers this kind of performance is a real asset.”
After a trial by fire, Fielding is impressed with the portable drive’s capabilities, and looks forward to shooting with it more in the future.
“The Samsung Portable SSD X5 enables me to be more creative, simply because the less time I’m waiting for rendering, exports or transferring footage, the more time I can divert to critical thinking and creative decision-making. A tool that gives you more space for those is going to be highly beneficial for any business.”
Visit the Samsung website for more information.
