Sonnet Fusion F3 Zooms Across Country With LA La Ride

Sonnet Technologies has announced that its Fusion F3 portable two-drive RAID storage system provided storage and video backup for a documentary film about the LA La Ride, a cross-country motorcycle trip made by actresses Katee Sackhoff and Tricia Heifer to raise awareness for the Gulf of Mexico oil-spill disaster. The Fusion F3 was chosen by Brightwood Productions' Peter S. Thompson, who served as Director of Photography for the production.
Thompson said: "The Fusion F3 turned out to be the ideal storage solution for this project. Not only is it rugged, which was important since we were hauling it in and out of cars and motel rooms, and sometimes travelling up to 400 miles a day, but its superior performance meant I could offload a large volume of material from three cameras very quickly each evening. Most important, I had peace of mind that our data would always be protected, whatever conditions we found ourselves in."
The LA La Ride was a project of Acting Outlaws, Sackhoff and Heifer's project to raise money and awareness for the Gulf Restoration Foundation. Last October, the two actresses embarked on a cross-country motorcycle ride covering 2,500 miles from Los Angeles to New Orleans. Brightwood Productions joined them on the trip to provide video footage that is currently being edited into a feature-length documentary. Shooting mainly 1080i video with a Panasonic DVCPRO HD camera, Thompson saved the footage onto a Focus FS-100 portable DTE recorder during the day, with videotape providing the master backup. Since the Focus drive could only hold about four hours of footage, the day's shoot was offloaded every evening to the Fusion F3. In addition, content from P2 cards recorded by a second Panasonic camera and still photos from a digital SLR camera were also offloaded to the Fusion F3.
The Fusion F3 is specifically designed to meet the demands of audio and video professionals in both studio and on-location productions, with high throughput performance, rugged design, and quiet operation - plus the flexibility of a quad interface and the convenience of an integrated universal power supply. Fusion F3 encloses its high-performance 3.5-inch SATA drives in a stylish aluminium and steel case that fits equally well in recording studios, high-end A/V racks, and desktop or mobile video-editing systems.
For the LA La Ride shoot, Thompson also used the Fusion F3 to support on-site editing of some footage for daily clips, which he delivered to the project's website by connecting the system to his Mac notebook running Final Cut Pro. With 6TB of storage, the F3 had ample room to store raw footage as well as the edited Final Cut Pro files.
Thompson said: "It was great to just plug the Fusion F3 into my Mac and have it pop right up on my screen, which was not the case with many other hard drives I've used. And it was a pleasure to have a hard drive that was fast enough to handle playback of our full-quality HD footage in Final Cut Pro."
(KMcA)