How director Phil Holland completes 8K, RAW video jobs on the go

    Remote workflow has always been a huge part of Phil Holland’s career. Working as a director and DP based in Los Angeles, California, he often finds himself shooting content all over the world. He regularly works on special projects that require him to work with 8K RAW video footage. While it is a challenge to work with such high-res footage on the go, Holland enjoys the challenge and feels up to the task.

    Holland is used to working with large-res files. “Dealing with these large resolutions and also higher data rates has been something that really wasn’t foreign to me,” Holland says. “It seems like every project I’m doing something new whether that’s filming at a higher resolution or stitching multiple cameras together to achieve even higher resolution.”

    It is common for Holland to end up with 80 terabytes of footage. For most mobile workstations, this would pose a problem. Still, Holland can work off the larger files with his Dell Precision 7750 Mobile Workstation’s Thunderbolt 3 external connection with its high-speed data rates.

    “I’ve been in situations where the client wants to see footage or wants to see a rough cut,” says Holland. “I will sometimes be in a hotel room, sometimes I’ll be in an airport where I just sit down and work for a minute and send off a couple of renders. And that’s how powerful the Dell Precision Mobile Workstation can be.”

    With the Dell Precision 7750 Mobile Workstation with NVIDIA Quadro RTX 5000 GPU, Holland can work remotely and maintain his workflow efficiency.

    Working with RAW footage on the go

    For the kind of high-res shooting Phil does daily, he needs to have both a portable and a reliable workstation to keep up with his deadlines. There are many times when Holland needs to edit RAW data right from his hotel room because his client needs to see the project as soon as possible. For him to keep up with his clients’ increasingly demanding expectations, he needs a workstation that can handle 8K RAW footage without slowing down his workflow.

    “My needs are really about speed of access to the footage [and] offloading it quickly,” Holland says. “I want to be able to work with my native RAW files from my cameras without transcoding.”

    In order to work with native camera 8K RAW files he needs the processing capability of a decent number of CPU cores, a lot of RAM, and a powerful GPU. The Quadro RTX 5000 allows the Dell Precision 7750 mobile workstation to deliver the ideal combination of elements making it possible to work on high-res 8K RAW footage on the go.

    What does a day in the field look like for Holland?

    A typical filming day starts with shooting for the production day. As shooting completes it is time to ingest and back up the shot footage. With the Dell Precision mobile workstation, he can ensure everything is correct right on set without a lengthy transcode step. He does not have to bake out proxies. It is an entirely new way of working on-set with high-resolution footage.

    “It’s a different type of workflow,” says Holland. “Because I have powerful hardware with a mobile workstation like this, I can actually just jump into working on RAW footage itself.”  While Holland works as a director, his clients expect him to work in a variety of positions. It just depends on the project. When working with very high-res footage, there are times when he needs to do color grading in the field and deliver the project on-site.

    With the Dell Precision mobile workstation, Holland can work wherever it is most convenient. After finishing a shoot, Holland often jumps right in and tinkers with the color of the footage. He may even put some things into an editing timeline and send what he makes to the project’s client. The ability to work on footage right away is essential to Holland’s workflow because if his client needs to see something quickly, he can send assets the same night.

    Pushing the boundaries of what is possible with mobile workstations

    “I’m pushing the boundaries and new horizons of what to expect out of workflows out in the field,” Holland says. “I’m always looking to kind of get creative with my workflows as well.” The combination of the Dell Precision mobile workstation and the NVIDIA Quadro RTX GPU allows Holland to “do things efficiently, quickly and painlessly in the field.”

    “I think for people who are looking to expand their capabilities when it comes to mobile workflow,” says Holland. “The Dell Precision mobile workstation, as well as the NVIDIA Quadro RTX, can provide a level of efficiency and power to get work done quickly and painlessly.” 

    Handling high-res camera RAW footage can be hard to work with when on the go. The Dell Precision mobile workstation allows Holland and other professionals to work in the field, efficiently while on the go without compromises.

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