I Future Proofed My Entire Workflow.

0:00 Over the last eight-ish months, the scope of my work and the tools that I use to do that work have changed quite a bit. Now, I'm still doing YouTube as a full-time job, but I'm getting hired more and more to do traditional client work. That's like campaigns and commercial work and a lot of documentary. Now, these jobs, the workflow for those jobs is quite a bit more intense than my YouTube stuff. And I think you guys can see that because now, more than ever, I'm getting asked to share that workflow with you. And I think a lot of that has to do with storage cost, the rising storage costs. So, that's what we're going to cover in today's video. From start to finish, all of the nerdy details, whether it's media, card readers, SSDs, and the computer I use to edit on, today we're covering workflow.

0:56 The workflow machine. It starts with the media, the cards that are coming out of the cameras. That is then fed into a computer system. And then finally, from there, we talk long-term storage. In terms of media, my main video cameras all share CFexpress Type B, which is convenient, it's fast, it's small, it's reliable. And I will also say that, just out of pure dumb luck, I was able to get cards, these cards I bought all of them but one before the price hike. So, I was able to get bigger cards, like 1 TB cards, when they were still cheap. They were never cheap, but they they were cheaper. I also have four different brands that I've been using, or I have used, and I've had no issues with any of them. So, I would consider that very lucky. I have Angelbird, Novachips, great card, 4 terabytes. They gave me this for a video we did a few months back. There's no way I could afford this now, so I consider myself very fortunate to have such a big card. I just shot a huge campaign for Leica.

2:11 Everything went on here, no issues at all. NKI, a lesser known brand, but again, no issues, 512 GB card. And finally, OWC. I'm kind of moving towards OWC on a lot of things because they offer exceptional speeds and reliability. This is my fastest card at 3,000 MB per second that sustained write speed. So, great cards. These ultra cards now though are like three times as much as they used to be, which is a huge bummer.

2:43 There are four links in that speed chain when we're talking about ingesting footage. Obviously, you have the media, but then you also have the cable, and you have the reader. Let's talk about the readers for a second. So, I do have the OWC reader, and I also have these ProGrade cards. Each of these are 40 GB per second. So, they're very, very fast.

3:14 that is I want to say 3,000 MB per second. Those are the same speeds, USB 4.0 or Thunderbolt 4. The reason I like these ProGrade cards, they are smaller than the OWC, and they are magnetized. So, OWC, this is a really handy feature, actually, and I I would love to see you move towards that in the future. But, the reason I use the OWC reader more is because of not just the speed, but real reliability. That's the second thing that I I have to have in my workflow just like anybody else I think, reliability. you get that in the form of the software that the reader uses.

4:03 That's right. It's got its its own software. It's OWC software. It's called Energize. And there's three main features to the Energize software. The first one is basically if it needs an update, if your media needs an update, this will recognize it and it will stall install that update, which is really nice. As you use the card, the card eventually will degrade and get to a point of failure. This card and that software, or not this card, this reader and that software will help identify a card that is on the verge of failure. There would be nothing worse, like if I shot this like a campaign, and we get to a point and then the card dies or fails, and now all of that footage that I shot is just stuck on it. That would suck so bad. So, this this reader and that that software helps me avoid that, which I think is amazing. Lastly, is the sanitize feature on the software.

4:59 Basically, when you format a card, there are times where little teeny tiny chunks of data don't get fully wiped, and it can end up slowing that card down. Sanitize is like an industrial grade format for your card, restoring it to factory like reset settings. So, basically brand new out of the box settings. So, between those three things, not only do I get the speed that I want, but I also get the reliability. November 2025, after rocking the go-to M1 Max MacBook Pro forever, I upgraded to the Mac Studio. I actually talked about this in my desk setup video not too long ago.

5:41 So, if you want to learn more, go and check that. And I'm not going to be doing a full-blown review. That's just not my jam. I have no interest in doing that on a computer. But, here are the specs. And the reason I upgraded is one, I could just see the performance of the MacBook Pro starting to dwindle, especially now that I was using codecs and resolutions like from the Monstro and the Z R that were just a little too much for the MacBook Pro.

6:11 I also upgraded because I needed the ports. I was like running a bunch of different like port hubs off the MacBook Pro and it was just annoying as hell. So, having all of the Thunderbolt 5 ports integrated, the 10 gigabit Ethernet, the USB-A's, the two USB-C's on the front, huge upgrade. I will say the only thing I might be regretting is not getting the M3 Ultra Studio because of those extra Thunderbolt 5 ports, but I digress. To make up for that, I actually bought a Satechi Thunderbolt 5 hub.

6:49 It does kind of suck that it requires external power. It's just another outlet that I have to find, but anyway, it gives me three extra Thunderbolt 5 ports, so I totally dig that. I also got it because I wanted to see a massive increase in in editing speed. I wanted to decrease my time editing and exporting. And I will say that the in real time experience of using the Mac Studio to edit compared to the MacBook Pro, it's really not that big of a jump.

7:22 There is some notable difference depending on how big that project is. As soon as it starts getting over 29 minutes, it doesn't run as smoothly, but anything smaller than that, it's quite a bit faster. However, like I said, I'm super impatient. When it comes to export times, the Mac Studio rips. Like the amount of time I save using the Mac Studio is huge and I love it. Along with the 4 TB that I have in the Mac Studio, I had two 4 TB NVMe SSDs. They were 990 Samsung Ultras.

7:58 They were hella fast and I put them in a a Beelink enclosure. So, it gave me 8 TB additional storage that acted basically like native Mac hard drives because they were so fast. However, that enclosure failed all the time. It caused me nothing but problems and actually almost cost me a few projects. So, I ended up throwing that away and I repurposed those NVMe SSDs. We'll talk about how in just a second, but just know avoid that Beelink enclosure at all costs.

8:34 Now, the advantage of the MacBook Pro was its portability, just like every other laptop in the world. and so much of what I do is on the road that I kept it. However, a couple months ago, I just got to the point to where all of this stuff that I had upgraded to in terms of speed was no longer compatible with the MacBook Pro. It was giving me problems and it just seemed to be on its last leg. So, I upgraded Do I really want to pull it out? I will.

9:07 I'm going to pull it out for you guys. That sounded weird. The Mac the MacBook Pro, the M5 Pro MacBook Pro. I did not go with the X the the the Max. I didn't really feel like I needed to completely spec this thing out. I didn't feel like I needed to, plus the extra money just didn't seem like the cost-to-benefit ratio was there. So, I got the M5 Pro and I'm extremely happy with it.

9:39 The biggest upgrade for me by going to this laptop were the Thunderbolt 5 ports. The extra speed that I get out of those ports is huge. for me when I'm on the road, let's say if I go to Hanksville and I shoot a bunch of stuff and now I need to dump that footage so I can get back to shooting like if I I've run out of storage the time it would take to dump that footage onto the MacBook Pro, the M1 Max sometimes was in the hours.

10:12 I ended up doing a podcast with a friend a couple of months ago before I had upgraded and I had to dump about a terabyte worth of footage. And I sat there for probably an hour and a half, 2 hours out in the sun just waiting on this thing and I was like, "My gosh, this kind of sucks." Like I said, I'm impatient. I know that I'm very fortunate and lucky to have these things that I can deal with that impatience by throwing money at it and making it faster, but I hated that. I hated that.

10:42 Now the speeds that I'm getting when I need to transfer footage is crazy and it's amazing. The disadvantage from using a laptop though, especially when we're talking about video editing is the size. God, I hate editing on a laptop. Even when you go from a 14-in to a 16-in, you're still cramped and confined into that little space. I really don't like it. That's where my Apple Vision Pro comes in. This is something I've been using for a long time even when I had the MacBook the M1 Max. Now I use it with the new laptop.

11:18 The Apple Vision Pro connects seamlessly to either the Mac Studio or the MacBook Pro. Let's continue talking about the laptop. If I'm out on the road and I don't want to edit on this stupid little screen. I can throw that thing on there and the screen that I get dwarfs this 39-in ultrawide. I really just wanted to show you how easy it is to set up and what the workflow kind of looks like. So, I've got my MacBook Pro, Logitech mouse, Apple Vision Pro.

11:54 Set this into Bluetooth pairing mode. There's my MX Master 3. Cool. Pair. And I should There we go. And now you can see instead of having to do this, I now have control of my mouse, which is super nice. But here if you see it says connect. I connect. That screen goes black and now I have a screen that is this big, that is this bright. I have my mouse and it will act just like my computer screen.

12:32 But it doesn't stop here because I can grab this, move it, and make this so much bigger if I want. Now you can see this is my screen. It is this big, it's curved, it's wrapped around me, and this is the screen that I would normally have. Anyway, you can see just how big this timeline is. It's so much easier to work. So, there you go. You can see how much bigger of a workstation, a footprint you get to work in with the Apple Vision Pro and your laptop. it's been a godsend for travel.

13:09 Storage I break down into two types, short-term and long-term, and I break it down further into two locations that would be on-site and off-site. Short-term storage I would define for myself as anything like any project that I'm currently working on or I would need easy access to for maybe the next year of production. Long-term would obviously be beyond that or something that I just really don't need that often. Okay, so remember those Samsung NVMe SSDs that I mentioned earlier? Well, I repurposed those into these. These are 4 TB 80 GB per second enclosures. So, you can These are OWC.

14:00 You can either buy the enclosure off of OWC with nothing in there or they can put up to 8 TB of blisteringly fast 6,000 Mbps MBps per second NVMe SSDs if you want. For a premium, of course. It is pretty pricey. I wish I could do 8 TB, but I don't have the money. This is a huge win. The first time I was able to take these along with my laptop on a job and download like 3 and 1/2 TB onto this thing, the speed at which it did it I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is the greatest thing ever." It is I mean, it would take me hours previously and it takes I swear to God, it just felt like minutes maybe 10 15 minutes with one of these. Incredible. In terms of YouTube videos and some of the client work that I've done, not including documentary stuff, 4 TB really is kind of pushing the limit on a single project. So, these are big enough. I still wish I had 8 TB because then I wouldn't even have to stress about it at all, but 4 TB in this enclosure at that speed just freaking bananas. In terms of build, these things are rock solid. They are bigger, right? They're They're pretty huge.

15:23 Easy to install yourself. There are simply like two screws on each side. You pull it off. Put the NVMe SSD in there, tighten it back up, and you're good to go. It is metal. I believe it's aluminum. It's this big to help with thermal regulation. It's basically just a giant heat sink in this. But, one of the big advantages of this SSD is the fact that it does not require an external power source to get you those speeds. So, while it's on the bigger side, it's actually really nice that I don't have to carry with me like a big DC power brick along with it. Now, if I'm working on a project that I know is going to be bigger than 4 TB, that's when I rely on my newest drive, the ThunderBlade X12.

16:13 Now, this drive was sent to me on loan by OWC to just try it. Like, John from OWC hit me up and just basically asked, "Hey, do you want to try for a while this crazy like DIT professional-grade storage system? we think you're going to have a blast with it. It's 12 TB, and it's >> >> the fastest like pro drive out there." Of course, I want to try it. And now I kind of regret it because when I do have to return it, it's going to suck. But, essentially, this thing is 12 TB. So, I have 12 TB of that same speed of NVMe SSDs.

16:53 Essentially, there are 12 1 TB versions of those. This thing is also a RAID. Like, you can use OWC's Soft RAID software and configure it however you would like. Mine is in RAID 0 cuz I just want the maximum amount of storage, but you could use RAID 5 if you wanted. Even though it's 12 TB, you could get up to 192 terabytes in the same size of enclosure with the same speeds, the same thermal performance, the same zero decibel operating, like it's completely silent, all in this tiny little package.

17:35 You'd have to fork out like $40,000 for it, but you could if you had it. And that's why it really is just meant for the absolute biggest, most professional productions. But for me, it's been an absolute godsend. So, anything that I'm currently working on that is fairly big from the studio that I don't need one of these for, it just automatically goes on there. So, all of my libraries, all of the project footage, etc. goes onto the onto the ThunderBlade X12.

18:07 Now, from there, we're starting to enter what I would call like the medium/long-term solution. I've talked about this before. This is my Glyph 48 terabyte Thunderbolt 3 black box RAID thing. It's got the longest freaking name in the world. Anyway, 48 terabytes. It's not as fast as the ThunderBlade X12, but it's certainly not as slow as my old HDD toaster that would take like days just to transfer a few gigs.

18:38 This thing is awesome and I thoroughly love it. I've had no issues with it. It is fast enough for me to use it in this workflow. However, it's crazy how fast I filled up 48 terabytes. So, I'm kind of in a bind in terms of bigger, longer-term storage. I am trying to upgrade to the ThunderBay 8 from OWC.

19:09 it can pack up to the same 192 terabytes if memory serves me correctly. But what I love about it is if you fill all eight drives, you can get up to speeds that are 2850 megabytes per second. So, plenty fast enough to actually edit from. I don't think I would trust the Glypth to edit from. Maybe depending on the codex and the resolutions and how small the timeline is, but anything bigger than that, probably not. Whereas with the Thunderbay 8, you can totally do it.

19:46 It's also a raid, which is fantastic. And it uses the Soft Raid software, that way you know your raid is good. But storage is storage, and it costs an arm and a leg no matter how you get it right now, whether it's HDDs or NVMe's. To pack that thing full of like enterprise level drives, it would cost me almost $10,000. So, it's going to take me a while to save up to buy into that. But that is kind of the one-and-done solution as I see it now. That kind of wraps it up in terms of short-term storage, long-term storage on-site.

20:27 Every good storage solution should not be entirely on-site. You should have an off-site solution, and that's where Backblaze comes in. Backblaze is a service that you pay for. It's 99 bucks a year, and with that 99 bucks, you get unlimited backup on unlimited storage that's plugged into your computer. So, if it's a NAS, you don't get it. But if it's any drive that's plugged into your computer, Backblaze backs it up. So, for me, if I come into Backblaze and I check out my Backblaze settings, you can see that the Glypth and the Thunderblade is both connected to the Mac Studio plus the hard drive that's in the Mac Studio. That gets up that gets backed up every single night. Now, if something should happen and I need that data, I can either be sent a file like a link and I can download all of those files or I can have them send me a physical drive, which is awesome. So, that's it.

21:33 That is kind of my workflow from start to beginning as it stands. I don't see it changing anytime soon unless I can get that big ThunderBay 8 or ThunderBay 4. That's a DAS, a DAS, not a network attached storage. Just so you're aware. Anyway, that's it. If you have any questions at all about this workflow, I am more than happy to answer. And if you found the video insightful, helpful, entertaining, please do me a huge favor and just hit the like button and consider subscribing. I think we do some pretty cool videos on this channel. And share it with somebody that you might need that you think might need some workflow help. Anyway, thanks again for watching. I will catch you on the next one. Peace.