The Creation Studio — Optimize Your Creative Game

When you’re a creative, there’s no separation between who you are as a person, and the work you do as a creative professional. You are your work, and your work is you.

With the continuing evolution in how art and entertainment are created and consumed, what are the most pressing concerns for Creative Professionals today? How are these changes impacting the goals, expectations and needs of Media and Entertainment (M&E) organizations?

This week at CES we’ve been exploring the many facets of The Data Games and how to win them. As a creative professional, you know managing and controlling an enormous amount of data — your work itself — is central to staying creative and productive.  The massive amount of data generated on creative projects makes managing that data almost like a game — data Tetris on steroids. So we’re demonstrating the Capture > Ingest > Edit > Deliver workflow live at the show, and talking about how our newly announced products can help optimize it.

Whether you’re designing a new video game’s characters, generating and rendering complex worlds, capturing drone video for VR experiences, editing 4K video for a commercial client, or shooting and manipulating photos for magazines or wedding clients, check out this video from our CES Creation Studio, where we demo a full movie production workflow starting with green-screen capture all the way down to post-production.

 

“What’s cool about this demo is it’s actually live compositing,” says Clement Barberis, LaCie product marketing manager. “In the old days we used to do compositing in post-production — it would take hours of processing. But now with the setup we have here, and thanks to LaCie and Seagate technology, all of this can be done real-time, and save a lot of time for our creative professionals.”

Matt Jefferson, director of developer and third-party relations at Blackmagic Design, agrees.

Seagate CES Creation Studios“Green screen capture is becoming really important to the industry because it’s cutting down on production cost,” Jefferson notes. “Data really plays an important role in that. For example, in this green screen demonstration we’re using an URSA Mini Pro 4.6K camera. It generates over a Terabyte of data for every 20 minutes of video capture. And when you’re running on set doing movie production, you’ll shoot for 12 to 18 hours, and to be able to capture a whole day of video shooting, you’d be very well served with the 6big LaCie product because you’d be able to capture almost 20 hours of video data.”

Creatives and M&E pros know the film industry moves fast. Files are huge and users need to stream them faster, more efficiently, and to more people. As camera quality increases, choosing a system to manage this data that’s not just lower priced, but offers better total value, is critical. The hidden costs of complex management and system downtime can destroy production budgets.

“When I first started, 4K wasn’t even a thing — and especially raw footage,” says Aaron Grimes, filmmaker and Adobe evangelist. “Now we’ll create a Terabyte a day easily, whether we’re shooting with the Red or the Inspire. Speed is incredibly important, because Premiere will natively support Red 8K footage, so it’s crucial to be able to keep up with that high volume of data.”

Capture and edit in the field and in the studio

With ultra hi-res cameras driving up file sizes, Creative Pros and drone users in studio or in the field need fast, efficient processes for ingesting and editing content they capture in the field. Streamline your creative workflow by capturing 360/VR footage with DJI drones, transferring footage with LaCie CoPilot, and editing footage in Adobe Premiere and After Effects.

This year we’re proud to launch the LaCie DJI Copilot, which provides 2TB storage for over 60 hours of 4K video. Creative professionals are raving about its direct computerless ingestion from drones, cameras, and memory cards. The DJI Copilot boasts mobile file management, it’s a power bank with charging capabilities for USB rechargeable devices, and it allows users to view saved footage in full resolution on their mobile devices — without the need for a laptop. It has a drop, splash, and dust resistant enclosure.

LaCie DJI Copilot

“DJI customers are capturing massive amounts of data when they fly. You end up running out of storage very quickly,” says Michael Perry, DJI managing director for North America. “So working through that data management workflow in the field is a constant challenge for creative professionals. Starting last year, DJI and Seagate started working together to solve that data management challenge. Now with Copilot and the Seagate DJI Fly Drive, you’re actually able to ingest all the information out in the field, using a durable, high-capacity storage solution.”

We’re also debuting the LaCie Rugged Secure, which is equipped with an SD card slot reader and uses Seagate Secure technology to self-encrypt your data. With Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 256-bit hardware encryption that complies with the Open Trusted Technology Provider Standard (O-TTPS) — it renders the drive impenetrable even if it’s removed from its enclosure. Thanks to this technology you can transfer and transport your sensitive data with no concerns for unauthorized access or intellectual property theft. Plus, you get the universal compatibility of Thunderbolt 3, USB-C, and USB 3.0 along with a rain, drop, shock, and crush resistant enclosure.

And adding a new level of value for creative professionals who want to try out the latest graphic design and video editing software from Adobe Systems, an expanded partnership between Adobe and Seagate now provides limited-time, no-cost access to Adobe’s latest applications bundled with popular Seagate and LaCie drives. Two new offerings available immediately include two complimentary months of the “Adobe Creative Cloud Photography plan” (worth $19.98) — which features the new cloud-based photo service, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC — across the full range of Seagate Backup Plus and LaCie Porsche Design devices, as well as packaging one complimentary month of the “Adobe Creative Cloud All Apps plan” (worth $74.99) — which features Adobe Photoshop CC, Adobe Illustrator CC and much more — with all LaCie Rugged, LaCie d2 and LaCie big devices.

The boutique studio and the global media powerhouse

For M&E professionals, whether you’re at a boutique studio or a global media production house, having Seagate products as part of a video management system means you won’t have to endure extensive setup and configuration, ongoing maintenance, or heavy-lift upgrades.

Struggling to deal with copious amounts of data from ultra hi-res cameras? The LaCie big series offers breathtaking speeds, multi-drive capacities up to 144TB (using 12TB internal drives) and RAID for pro reliability, and universal compatibility with Thunderbolt and USB.

For integrating in large production studios’ server centers, we’ve also unveiled the Seagate High Density 5U84 Storage System. This system is expanding our high performance input/output and streaming capabilities to our ultra-high density drive enclosure that supports up to 84 high capacity Seagate drives in 8, 10, and even 12TB for over 1PB of storage in one enclosure.

Seagate Systems for media and entertainment professionals

“Seagate systems address the challenges of expansion and security in M&E post-production workflows,” says Rachel Zerilla, Seagate Systems marketing analyst. “Studios need scalable storage solutions to access large amounts of data for HD workflows, 4K video footage, and advanced technologies that are constantly evolving. In addition, these studios also need to ensure end-to-end security. Seagate systems offer this by integrating our security features from the device to the system.”

The Seagate technology inside the most popular creative studios systems is high performance, and allows virtually any number of users to access any asset instantaneously. Our end-to-end systems provide far better input/output performance and streaming speeds than similarly priced alternatives. They’re also proven to exceed in features and capacity as compared to competitive products.

Your data, your creation is you — it’s irreplaceable

Seagate Creation Studios at CES 2018You put yourself on the line every single day by stepping out and daring to share your vision with the world. So if you end up losing your data because you’re using unreliable drives, you’re literally losing parts of yourself. Hours upon hours of work — gone.

“A few years back, your movie would fit in a 1GB flash drive probably, but the data is exploding,” says Iman Anzari, Seagate Systems technologist. “Now you have 4K and 8K quality. So you want to store it to someplace secure, you want to have fast access to it, and you want whatever the storage media that you use for that to be reliable.”

As creators ourselves, Seagate employees understand and have a genuine interest in making sure your data stays intact. In fact, we have 1,600 employees involved in quality control. That’s how serious we are about safeguarding your data, which represents your life’s work. Because we understand that your expensive equipment can be replaced, but your invaluable data cannot.

Creative professionals deserve reliable, long-lasting storage solutions built specifically for their industry needs and working environments. LaCie and Seagate products provide a full range of storage options that enable creative professionals to capture, ingest, and edit footage in the field, edit in the studio, and deliver dynamic works of art.

2019-03-12T12:18:46+00:00

About the Author:

John Paulsen
John Paulsen is a "Data for Good" advocate, with more than 20 years in the data storage industry. He's helped launch many industry-firsts including HAMR technology, 10K-rpm and 15K-rpm hard drives, drives designed specifically for video and for gaming, Serial ATA drives, fluid dynamic HDD motors, 60TB SSDs, and MACH.2 multi-actuator technology.