setting up a shared high speed 10 gig network for video editing has just become accessible
for everyone i just purchased the blackmagic cloud pod to use with davinci resolve 18 shared
project libraries so today we're diving into the top five things i love about it
and a few of the opportunities to explore the unmet potential
if you're curious what the heck a blackmagic cloud pod is the simplified tldr explanation
is that it turns an off-the-shelf usb hard drive into a network shared storage volume that can be
mounted and used by several editors all at once so just one copy of the footage all inside one shared
project this helps you work faster to complete a video but it also helps boost the quality of your
masterpiece by sharing ideas and collaborating throughout the whole post-production process the
cloud pod it also connects to the internet to push and pull files to dropbox so that way you
can work from wherever you want in the world with another editor or colorist anywhere in the world
just think about the power this has to improve your quality of life pro 1 local collaboration
the blackmagic cloud pod has two usbc ports one is initially used to configure and update the pod
with the free cloud store setup driver but both will accept any disk as long as they're formatted
as mac os extended or exfat that means i have some reformatting that i need to do with my ssds
that are apfs that doesn't work so i use a pair of these ssds and plug them in for my initial testing
turning these direct attached storage drives into network attached storage is as simple as plugging
them in after connecting to the cloud pods 10 gig ethernet port to hopefully a 10 gig network switch
then your network switch should be plugged back into each of your computers now stay tuned towards
the end of this video to learn what specific gear i'm using in addition to the cloud pod
now the reason it's so simple to set up is because you can leave all your settings configured with
dhcp which means you don't need to learn how to assign a static ip address it's on automatic mode
side note if you need that control you can certainly enter a static ip and route your
traffic accordingly to mount a cloudpod volume on a mac just open a finder window and go to network
click on blackmagic cloud pod and then click the disk you want to use if it doesn't appear on your
mac desktop just go up to finder preferences and check the box for connected servers every computer
on the same network can mount these drives simultaneously and once they're mounted since
you can open a shared project using the blackmagic cloud tab enable multiple user collaboration and
work together in the same project at the same time the whole setup is this simple i tell you i've
been working in post for 20 years and resolve sharing tool set it blows all the other nle's
collaboration features out of the water so i have a free in-depth tutorial on all the collaboration
features built directly into dimension resolve 18 that you're going to want to watch after this
review pro 2 remote collaboration the next thing i love about the blackmagic cloud pod is the cloud
part of it and i can't talk about the cloud without proxies the cloud pod is excellent at
syncing proxy files to help enable collaboration in different physical locations that could even
be in different countries and what's unique about using a cloud store or cloud pod is the ability to
sync a proxy version exclusively which lives in a folder next to the camera originals and this saves
you bandwidth and cloud storage space speaking of cloud space it uses dropbox which has worked
fine but they're also going to have google drive support soon as well oh and don't worry if you
choose to only sync the proxies it'll also include all of your non-video assets in that synced folder
in contrast if you use the desktop dropbox app you're going to need to do some manual moving and
extracting of the proxy files now what are proxy files proxy files are low bandwidth easier to edit
and send over the internet stand-in video files for the larger camera originals they're enabled
by default under playback proxy handling drop down and they just work behind the scenes and
your exports are still going to use the full high quality resolution footage for exporting as long
as they're connected to your computer creating proxy files is super simple with a new free app
they included called blackmagic proxy generator you add a folder with video files pick a format
and it'll create six megabit per second copies of the original footage and it's gonna happen in
the background it could even process on another computer you're not using to edit with on the
same network so the cloud pod it's a set it and forget it tool when used in conjunction with the
blackmagic proxy generator app it won't tie up a video editing's workstation's resources with
another app running like the dropbox app because itself is hooked directly into the interwebs over
the ethernet cable premiere pro 3. that's it yeah this is acting as a nas so i open up in premiere
pro and it works what i wasn't sure about is if it will actually easily connect to the proxy files
created by the blackmagic proxy generator for smoother playback but it does to hook those proxy
files up which by the way in resolve it's just all auto magic is in premiere select the clips
right click to choose proxy and attach proxies now you can edit like a hot knife through butter
if you need to collaborate on the same project you could look into using premiere pro productions
i wouldn't recommend it when davinci resolve also exists but hey it's there did i mention
collaboration works with the free version of davinci resolve 18 and all you have to spend is
five bucks per month on a cloud project library and only one person on your team needs to spend
that and also your projects aren't stuck there so afterwards you can cancel the fee after a month if
you needed to oh and it's also backed up by their servers too anyways moving on to final cut pro 4.
see what i did there i'm awful the fourth thing that's helpful is that the blackmagic cloud pod
also works with final cut pro you just mount it like any other external hard drive and the proxy
files work there too to connect the proxies in final cut go to file relink files and choose
proxy media use the skimmer on the timeline and you can see the monitoring app start to dance
as it's reading and writing to the disk pro 5 silence i like a quiet space silence helps me
think and process ideas it's also helpful if you record youtube tutorials like this one and many
others i have here on creative video tips that are here to help you create videos that make a
difference and stand out so while you're thinking about and processing the idea of subscribing right
now just know that if you pair the cloud pod with a set of solid state drives that are silent and a
quiet laptop you're going to be a happy camper all right you get the picture i make tutorials
on davinci resolve my name is chadwick let's move on to the cons con1 usbc the blackmagic cloudpod
uses gen1 of usbc this puzzles me why they chose to use this because it maxes the usb throughput to
5 gigabits per second and the device advertises and has a 10 gigabit ethernet connection nvme
ssds like a samsung t7 are faster than 5 gigabits per second so we would have seen that improvement
i think this was an opportunity to explore the unmet potential maybe this was a cost savings to
us consumers but i would have paid a little bit extra for gen 2 in a faster usb port would you
let me in blackmagic know in the comments i'm really curious and the 10 gigabit speed
that's advertised on the blackmagic page is just misleading because it's only talking about the
ethernet port and you're never going to see 10 gig speeds from a genuine usb connected disk however
using the blackmagic disk speed test app i averaged around three to three and a half gigabits
per second over my 10 gigabit capable network this would be about half of the ssd speed if it was
directly connected to the macbook pro but and this is a big but that's really important to understand
when i'm working with proxy footage six megabit per second proxy footage or even my sony fx3 100
megabit per second footage i don't even come close to saturating a single gigabit worth of bandwidth
that's like six or a hundred out of three thousand bits available six or a hundred out
of three thousand so for small post teams of three to six editors i don't know that this is much of a
limitation and you can still push 80 gigs of video over this connection in just three or four minutes
but what is frustrating is that it's advertised with 10 gigs all over their website con 2 the
extra gear the second thing you need to be aware of is that the blackmagic cloud pod is not the
only bit of kit you're going to need to get the most out of it if you're not already set up with
10 gig networking a standard port or switch on a computer is generally one gig and that's going to
work but that's the most you'll ever get with a 10 gig router and thunderbolt adapter you're going to
easily triple that speed but it's gonna cost you so the gear i ended up purchasing was a pack of
five cat6a ethernet cables now cat6 is gonna work fine and it's really all you should bother with if
you're gonna go with a single gig connection then for the 10 gig switch i picked up this little tiny
ubiquiti usw flex xg so you i'll put that down below it runs around three hundred fifty dollars
and i picked this up over another popular option that's called the mikroTick or miKrotik uh five
port desktop switch and that's because i already have and love using ubiquiti access points
and it's easy to manage them with a single controller to see all of my networking gear
i'm a big ubiquiti fan i think their stuff is great now the mikrotik switch also has
sfp ports which means you're going to also need to purchase an rj45 module which makes that switch
more expensive than the 175 bucks that it seems on the surface but it's probably more flexible
because you could use fiber optic cable both of these switches have four fast ports you plug your
cloud pod into one of them and then you plug up to three computers into the other so they're suitable
network switches for up to three editors the other port it's for your internet and then since i use
a macbook pro there isn't an ethernet port on it right so i'm using an owc thunderbolt 3 to 10 gig
ethernet adapter they run around 200 each and in hindsight if i didn't already own an owc dock with
a one gig port i would have purchased the owc pro dock which has a 10 gig ethernet port built in but
that does run me up to 400 it would just be less gear on my desk now i put affiliate links to these
products down below if any of my tutorials help you make better videos this is one of the best
ways you can help support the channel that way i can purchase more tools to evaluate them for you
like this blackmagic cloud pod and a side note to the external ethernet adapter if you run a pc you
can likely add an internal 10 gig card for less than 200 dollars i just don't have any specific
recommendations oh and if you buy a mac studio they come standard and mac minis they have them
as a worthwhile upgrade con 3 hdmi monitoring my next opportunity to explore the unmet potential is
that we want to monitor the cloud pod activity by typing an ip address into a web browser instead of
plugging into an hdmi display now the hdmi display it's fantastic and it's clever but i want to see
this blinky light show from any desk in my network heck i'd love to log in outside of my network to
see and help troubleshoot any issues if this is possible let me know maybe i missed something here
so who's this device for i think it's for anyone who edits videos with another person or team of
people remotely or in the same building or it's also great for editors that might work in multiple
locations on different computers and they want to work with dropbox and google drive to send their
proxies home to the office rather than carrying around an external hard drive but i think the
best use case is for collaboration working from the same media at the same time inside the same
project and guess what i have a full in-depth tutorial going over all of the collaboration
features that blow all the other editing apps out of the water linked up for you to watch next thank
you so much for watching and because there's so much more to learn i'll see you in the next video