In the world of gaming, I’ve followed the success of Nintendo’s Wii with interest. What the Wii proves is that it’s not always about raw performance, but ease of use. The Wii takes minutes to learn. Getting to the level of beating a typical 14 year-old at the latest Madden game on the PS 3 is full-time job for a week. The Wii appeals to all those people who want to play games, but don’t want to turn it into a profession.

EditShare FieldIn the world of computer storage, EditShare is akin to the Wii.

I’m not a storage guy. I don’t like thinking about storage. I never learned all the different flavors of SCSI, though I’m sure I’ve used them all. I’ve worked on Unity systems and XSANs, but never dared look under the hood. Under duress I may be able to explain fiber channel, but normally I take a turn to the topic as my cue to duck out of the conversation.

At last night’s Connecticut Final Cut Pro Users Group meeting, Andy Liebman presented his EditShare product line. Time for a cookie break. “It uses a standard Gigabit Ethernet interface, no Fibre Channel.” Maybe I’ll stay.

EditShare is the only non-Avid product that allows editors to share Avid bins. Cool. Project-level sharing is coming for Final Cut Pro users. But what really won me over was the ease of administration. The control panel is intuitive. Though I’m sure Alan doesn’t recommend it, I’m sure I could get the system up and running without cracking the manual. Try that with Terrablock, XSAN, and Unity configurations. What’s the catch? A little trade off in performance. I think I found my storage solution for my next series.

Alan brought an EditShare Field unit (pictured) to the presentation. Built for use in trucks and under extreme conditions on location, it’s overkill for my needs – but it looks so dang cool.