Post Magazine

A nyone working with HD footage knows the pains associated with it: storage space. Capturing a 60- minute tape can end up being 30-plus GB of media. As you can see, space will get eaten up rather quickly. While external hard-drive prices are dropping like crazy, many ill-informed editors may be lured in that direction. Almost im- mediately you will find yourself locking up when tr ying to edit HD via FireWire, or worse, USB 2. Although a FireWire 800 may suffice, once you have tried a drive con- nected via SATA, you won't ever go back. G R E AT A LT E R N AT I V E Fade in on a solution to your woes: Son- net Technologies' Fusion D800. The Fusion D800 I tested came with a massive 8TB of storage space, a PCI Express card for SATA connections and a mid-size tower that had lock-enabled doors to protect the drives. Connecting the RAID to my MacPro was simple. The PCI Express RAID controller was a quick install and I was working in min- utes. Sonnet really makes the process simple and allows the artist to get to work fast. S P E E D The Fusion D800 is Speed Racer-fast. With 500MB-plus on the read times and over 600 on writing, I am a bit surprised exhaust smoke didn't fill my room. I stored 1080p footage on the drive and was able to work in realtime without a glitch on my MacPro. I got the RAID at the same time I was working on a new reality pitch and de- cided to place all my precious footage on the RAID. I never blinked once. This was in RAID-0 configuration. The Fusion D800 also has RAID-5 capabilities with equally fast speeds. P E R F O R M A N C E I tested the Fusion D800 on a variety of nonlinear editors, including Apple Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 and Avid Media Composer. The footage used was captured via a Blackmagic Design Intensity Pro card. Editing in all the apps went with- out a hitch. Playback was realtime and only once did I get an error, but that was the editing program's fault. As I brought some of the greenscreen footage into Apple Motion to key and com- posite, the continuous playback was blazing once Motion cached. I have done this with FireWire drives and have gotten nowhere near the same performance. A H H , T H E S I L E N C E Ok, maybe it's not silent but the Fusion D800 is extremely quiet. Designed with an ultra quiet and swappable fan module, this baby is 80 percent quieter than a standard case fan. Pretty impressive since a lot of data is moving around in there. When the RAID is turned on there is a brief warm-up noise, although not much, then the silence begins. In a normal shop, with a lot going on, the noise isn't a problem. But for the indepen- dent content provider working out of the home, this can be an issue. I wish other companies would follow Sonnet's lead and make their machines quieter as well. P R O S I loved using the Fusion D800.The abil- ity to swap out the modules and purchase more from Sonnet makes this highly ex- pandable. It is easy to set up and get up and running quickly. C O N S The price of this magnificent machine is not for the faint of hear t. Coming in at just under $5,500 makes the D800 something that would leave a lot of independent folks out. There are other more affordable solu- tions out there. Some, although not many, may have PCI Express slots available. F I N A L T H O U G H T S If you can afford it and do a lot of HD editing, then this will definitely pay itself off. The D800 is a keeper for years to come. It is highly expandable and will not become obso- lete in the short run. 64 Post www.postmagazine.com By DAVID BASULTO Producer/Director/Editor Clarity Pictures South Pasadena, CA dave@claritypictures.net V I T A L S T AT S R E V I E W Sonnet's Fusion 800 RAID PRODUCT: Sonnet's Fusion 800 RAID WEBSITE: www.sonnettech.com PRICE: 4TB $3,995; 6TB $4,495; 8TB $5,495 · Speed Racer-fast · no hitches working in all editing apps · it's quiet Starting at $3,995, the Sonnet Fusion D800 offers fast read and write times, as well as quiet operation.

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