As a wildlife producer / cinematographer I often spend weeks or months at a time on location in remote regions of the world. I’ve traveled across Alaska filming Grizzlies bears for PBS nature, to the remote forest of the Russian far East filming Siberian tigers for the Discovery Channel, and across SE Asia filming elephants.

 

When I began shooting 4K with the RED Epic I soon came face to face with the biggest beast of all, data management.  On a single five week shoot I average about 21 TB of data. Storing, backing up, and transporting that much data was making me nervous.

 

I needed a more secure and permanent back-up solution. LTO-5 seemed like the most cost effective long term solution for backing up my material, but I needed something that was robust enough to take into the field.

 

1 Beyond Wrangler LTO-5 NetDrive RED was the ideal solution. The LTO-5 NetDrive is a compact PC with a built in tape drive and REDMAG reader. The entire unit can fit into a carry-on 1510 pelican case for easy transport. 1 Beyond’s software solution generates a chuck -sum list so you can verify that all your data has made it off the card and safely onto tape and hard drive. You can back up your footage to both tape and multiple hard drive simultaneously using USB 3.0, or eSATA drives.

I’m a mac person and was a bit intimidated by PC in the beginning, but 1 Beyond’s software interface is simple and intuitive to use.

I have been using the unit for over 6 months and during that time I have transported it back and forth from the Japanese Alps, to the remote forests of Sumatra several times. It has proven to be robust solution. I would highly recommend this unit to anyone looking for a simple, safe, portable storage solution.

Joseph Pontecorvo

Bainbridge Island, WA