G-Technology collaborating with Atomos on "Media Platform"

G-Technology partners with Atomos

Professional storage brand G-Technology continues its trend of collaboration through a recent partnership with Atomos.

While Cine Gear could be characterized as the smaller sibling of NAB Show, this year's Cine Gear had its share of news, much of it centering around collaborative efforts between companies, headlined by the reveal of the Panavision DXL camera, an upcoming 8K shooter sporting a RED Dragon sensor, Panavision body and Light Iron camera software. The theme of collaboration was echoed on the Canon booth, where the company showcased a C100 MK II kit aimed at wedding videographers and run-and-gunners, which included a DJI Ronin-M and Sennheiser wireless lavs.

In our initial Cine Gear 2016 coverage, we mentioned the G-Rack 12 server and expansion racks which feature up to 120 TB of storage. G-Technology also exhibited recent and forthcoming products that were the results of the company's partnerships with some of the biggest names in the film tech industry.

RED and Atomos Hot-swappers

G-Technology showed off its G-Speed Studio XL line, which has been exhibited in past shows. The 6 drive RAID also features 2 drive slots for Evolution series products for hot swapping for rapid offloading and copying for backups and distribution to post. The ev Series Reader for RED Mini Mags was on display, a hot swap system first introduced back at IBC 2015. The G-Technology Reader, which takes RED Mini Mags up to 1TB in size, ups the ante on RED's own Reader by leveraging Thunderbolt connectivity and speeds.

At Cine Gear, G-Technology lifted the veil on another such Reader for hot swapping, this time for Atomos products. Atomos and G-Technology have been working together behind the scenes to produce a Reader that takes a 2.5-inch drives in an Atomos Master Caddy, supporting all generations of the product (Gen. 1-3). The introduction of this product means that users of Atomos display/recorders can easily transfer their physical drives to a compatible G-Technology device with Evolution series drive slots and docks without needing to fiddle with additional drive holders.

The Atomos Master Caddy reader is just the first step in the two companies' collaborative efforts. There is even talk of incorporating G-Technology media drives in future Atomos products. It's a safe bet that G-Technology and Atomos are hard at work on other useful integrations that will see the light of day in the near future.

More standards and compatibility

Increasingly, it seems that companies are seeking partners in the marketplace to put their wares in the best possible light, espousing workflow solutions that feature products from other companies. This tactic makes a lot of sense, especially whenever the combined solutions integrate easily into existing production and post-production workflows (Canon's C100 bundle is an excellent example). But it may be more noteworthy when companies work together on the design and implementation of these products (as is the case with the Panavision's and G-Technology's separate offerings described above).

To that end, G-Technology has a few other partnerships and products brewing that expand on this idea of collaboration. The company's current relationships with RED and Atomos shows G-Technology's willingness to support both proprietary and open standard media, pointing to a future in which it's conceivable that any other media format could be supported by G-Technology, pending agreements. Company reps have already targeted CFast 2 and SD as media that could be supported by future Evolution readers.

Of course, there are a plethora of other media formats, many of them proprietary, that could receive similar treatment from G-Technology. We probably won't hear many specifics until the ink on these deals dry or until there are actual prototypes to show off. But given G-Technology's past news schedule, I would venture to guess that we'll learn more about the company's growing partnerships at IBC 2016 in September.