Storage and peripheral company OWC has acquired shared storage manufacturer Lumaforge. The Jellyfish has a new home!

Dear Final Cut Community,

Sam here. It’s such a relief to finally be able to talk about this.

Figured I’d post this on FCP.co because in many ways LumaForge was built right here on this site for this community. As some of you know LumaForge has been officially acquired by OWC (Other World Computing).

Given the world situation at the moment, it feels a little ridiculous to scream from the hills about how awesome it is that your company got acquired, so I’m not going to do that here. Instead, I just want to take a second and give a heartfelt thank you to the community that was there with us from the very beginning and whose problems this company was brought into existence to solve… and that was the Final Cut Pro X community and Mac users everywhere… and FCP.co was here for it every step of the way.

We launched the company on FCP.co:

LumaForge introduce shared storage solutions for Final Cut Pro X

Peter got the first Jellyfish Mobile we ever shipped to review here (and there’s a hilarious story about the boot drive we shipped him that we will never live down… ask me next time you see me):

First impressions of the 'JellyFish' - affordable shared storage designed for Final Cut Pro X

Ronny Courtens changed the game for us at Swiss National Television and told that story here:

How Swiss TV went FCPX - Final Cut Pro X in National Network Operations

Over the years, we have told amazing user stories and helped improve the workflows of countless video teams around the world. Here’s just a few of those:

Off The Grid-WMM: A RED-FCPX-Resolve Workflow series
* Part 1 Introduction and On-Set Editorial
* Part 2 Organization
* Part 3 Editing
* Part 4 Group Workflow and Finishing in FCPX
* Part 5 Collaborating with Color, VFX & Audio Departments

STV (Denmark): STV (Denmark) Case Study: We Publish the Presentation Videos from the FCPX Tour at IBC 2016 - STV Denmark & Coremelt 

La Peste FCP.co: Cut With FCPX: The Prestigious Period Mystery-Thriller "La Peste" Surpasses "Game Of Thrones" To Become The Most Watched Television Series In Spain

James Tonkin: James Tonkin Tours with the Biggest Music Artists on the Planet, Creating Stunning Concert Videos from Tons of 4K and 8K Footage in Final Cut Pro X

Apple-LumaForge at LACPUG 2016 - Replay the Final Cut Pro X 10.3 Narrative Workflow Presentation From the Los Angeles Creative Pro User Group

Thrown in the mix along the way was workflow suites and Faster Togethers at NAB, getting on the the Apple Store, taking over the very last Supermeet and so many other memories when we naively thought we could take 20 grand and go start a shared storage company and try and compete with the big guys… except we did. And we were able to do it because of this community here and your support over the years. Community matters, now more than ever, and if it were not for this one, my community at We Make Movies, and Apple and the Final Cut Pro X team, I would not have a career at all most likely.

It has been an amazing journey with you, the FCP.co community. On behalf of the team at LumaForge, I’m also very excited to tell you that while this chapter may be closing, the book is far from finished. Our next chapter is going to be the best one we have written and i am beyond excited about what we will be continuing to create for you at OWC.

So why OWC and what’s next? It’s pretty simple. Larry O’Connor.

If there was a single person and a single company that’s more passionate about the Apple ecosystem, products, and peripherals than us… it’s Larry O’Connor and the team at OWC.

He knows more about Thunderbolt, Apple Macs, chipsets, hard drives, and manufacturing than anyone I’ve ever met and he is a true knowledge base for all things in the Mac ecosystem. Want to learn a couple things? Watch these videos:

FCP.co Live Thunderbolt 4: https://eshop.macsales.com/blog/66986-thunderbolt-4-larry-oconnor-fcp/
Creative Summit panel: https://eshop.macsales.com/blog/69428-fcpx-summit-larry-oconnor/

I’ve been working with OWC for quite a bit over the last year and have gotten to know him and the team well over there. There is simply no better acquiring company for the LumaForge family than OWC. They’re really just a bigger, older version of LumaForge. They care about their customers, are not a soulless mega-corporation, are passionate about the environment (also watch Kiss The Ground on Netfilx that Larry helped produce and get some real hope about the environment future) and education (they’re building 7 OWC media centers this year for the Orphaned Starfish Foundation), and more than anything, they care about solving problems for their customers more than anything else in the world.

So how’s this all going to work and what’s next? You won’t see that in this article… but you will see it in increasing velocity over 2021 and beyond.

But if you want to know what the plan is? It’s SOLUTIONS across the entire ecosystem of OWC products. When you get a sense of just how big the OWC product lineup is and how Jellyfish solutions connect to all of that, you should be able to connect some of the dots. It’s going to be fun.

Anyway, from the bottom of my heart, thank you all for joining us on this amazing ride these last few years. It was unforgettable.

The good news for all of us, though, is that the best is yet to come. Onwards and Upwards!

For the official OWC blog on the acquisition, go here:

On Tuesday the 6th of October, we welcomed Larry O’Connor, CEO and Founder of OWC for our FCP.co Live Thunderbolt 4 special. What is it? What does it do and why is it better than Thunderbolt 3?

Time for a longer look at the Flex 8, the combined RAID, dock and PCIe expansion unit. How does it work with Final Cut Pro and will it turn a MacBook Pro in to a fully configured edit station with just one connecting cable? We find out.

Postlab has expanded. Today we have the launch of the collaborative media tool Postlab Drive that takes advantage of the new proxy capabilities of Final Cut Pro X.

We take a first look at the new ThunderBay Flex 8. Is it a dock? Is it a RAID? Is it a PCIe expansion box? The answer is yes to all three, down one Thunderbolt 3 cable. (Cat not included)

It's not very glamorous, but backing up and archiving is essential to not only make sure you can return to a project at a later date, but also to free up space and move media to another drive. The new ARC-X app for FCPX does exactly that with a host of other features to make getting a project back from an archive easy.

The Final Cut Pro X ecosystem grows again with new workflow extensions. They are similar, one for SNS storage systems to browse content and another for Cantemo Portal, the shared storage Media Asset Manager.

CalDigit has announced a bus powered Thunderbolt 3 to 10GigE adaptor. A perfect way to connect your Thunderbolt laptop to fast NAS storage.

Backups and archiving are hardly the sexiest subjects in the world as we have said before. However if you have ever lost data then you will know how important it is to have a proper backup plan in place. Patrick Southern shares his thoughts and strategies for making sure nothing gets lost.

Hot off the press from our friends, Felipe Baez and Jasper Siegers, is the announcement of the acquisition of FCPX collaborative tool Postlab by Hedge. 

The developers of KeyFlow Pro 2 have released seven new tutorials on how their MAM works. Of special interest to us is the integration with Final Cut Pro X and of course the Workflow Extension.

We have reviewed a QNAP desktop shared storage NAS before on FCP.co. This time we look at the TS-453BT3 4 disk unit from QNAP with 10GigE and Thunderbolt 3. 

We hate losing stuff as having to do anything twice is a waste of time and money. Matt O'Shea gives us some tips about sorting media, saving Libraries and has a free set of folder icons to download that will help get your media organised.

The Final Cut Pro X success stories keep on coming. This time we look at Norway's largest newspaper VG, whose TV arm switched to FCPX enabling them to expand their online media production.

With the inclusion of a 10GigE port on the back of the iMac Pro and the emergence of inexpensive 10GigE equipped NAS storage units: how do you connect them together for maximum speed and keep access to your other network devices including the internet?

Final Cut Library Manager has been saving disk space for editors since version 1. Now it has been updated to version 3.5 with a new Export to CSV feature.

A few months has passed since part one of the review of the QNAP TVS-682T. So after further tinkering and testing, how did it perform and will I be buying one?

One of the most competitive areas in the storage market at the moment is the desktop NAS. We test out a double Thunderbolt 2 equipped high performance QNAP TVS-682T - desktop shared storage at Thunderbolt speeds.

Back in March 2016 I took a prototype Jellyfish portable started storage unit out on the road for a broadcast Final Cut Pro X edit. A few months later, I took a shipping model out on another high pressure, quick turnaround broadcast job. What’s new, what's changed and how did it perform?

On to part four of this masterclass in filmmaking and it's a bumper issue! Sam Mestman and Patrick Southern this time talk about group workflows and finishing. As always, lots of info and great tips. Possibly a two cups of coffee article.

Time for part three of Sam Mestman and Patrick Southern's very popular series on the workflow, techniques and tips needed in getting a 5K feature made, from shooting, right through to distribution. This time it is all about editing in FCPX and they also include a rundown of essential third-party tools.

We publish part two of Sam Mestman & Patrick Southern's popular workflow series. This time they look at setting up Final Cut Pro X ready for editing and using tools to organise footage within Libraries. As always, lots of very detailed & valuable battle tested information for film makers.

Patrick Southern and Sam Mestman take us on a detailed walk-through of the workflow involved in the post production of a feature. We start with part one, on set where the capture of logging information is essential to cut time and costs in post production. With the first part containing over 4000 words of wisdom, this series will be the 'go to' post production reference for future filmmakers.

We know that Final Cut Pro X can have issues with NFS storage. Felipe Baez details how to optimise a Synology RAID especially for shared FCPX editing.

The recent FCPX 'focused' meeting of the Los Angeles Creative Pro User Group was a sell-out. Even the waiting list had to be closed! One of the highlights was a detailed presentation of how Final Cut Pro X works with a narrative workflow.

At NAB 2106, there will be many interesting storage solutions on display. This will be one of them, a shared RAID of 120 TB over 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports from Accusys. 

The Jellyfish and Final Cut Pro X go on the road for a real broadcast job. Cutting edge portable shared storage on a budget, but with all of the performance you need. How did it cope with the strain of continuous records and multiple edit clients? Peter Wiggins takes the new cnidarian for a mission critical swim.

We haven't been attending BVE this week. That's because we have been testing out the hottest new storage product from LumaForge called 'JellyFish.' It's small, fast and got GigE or 10GigE tentacles to share media across clients. It is also very affordable.

The problem with MAMs or Media Asset Management systems was that they were expensive and required a lot of hardware to service them. Not anymore. The newly launched KeyFlow Pro is $299 and can run on a MacBook Pro. A very interesting new app.

Everybody knows the next release of the the Mac operating system will be called El Capitan. But how many people have heard of the DLC that comes with it? What is it, what does it do and how will it affect editors?

XSAN is dead according to Sam Mestman. So how did they manage to replay 84 streams of 4K at the recent LACPUG meeting?

We are back from NAB2015 with a disk full of interesting storage and expansion products. From the thin flash drives right up to the old Mac Pro sized new Mac Pro enclosure, there was a lot to see. 

What happens when you cross a Mac Pro with a RAID and a breakout box? The answer? The new Lightning Quad Tower from JMR

We are pretty excited about this one. After a few years of wishing this product existed, Accusys will be demonstrating the first shared RAID storage unit using Thunderbolt at NAB. This is the most interesting piece of hardware news this year!

On the eve of the BVE in London, G-Technology has announced it will be showing their new range of rugged drives and a welcome Thunderbolt 2 update to the popular G-RAID.

At CES in Las Vegas, axle Video announced Drive - a new low cost product that gives producers and editors remote access to media assets via a web browser. Could this be a cheap and secure way of getting online approval of productions?

Thunderbolt is becoming the interface of choice when it comes to peripherals. Lots of new boxes on show with Thunderbolt 2 connectivity now making the news.

We are in the process of writing up a 'Thunderbolt roundup' from IBC, but thought this was worth a special post. LaCie has released a drive that can convert into an HDD/SDD combination for faster speeds.

UPDATED

Filip Vandoorne has put together a very detailed guide on how to use libraries on an NFS filesystem. Could this be a much cheaper option to Xsan? Is desktop shared storage here?

It didn't take long for the peripherals to start echoing the Mac Pro design. G-Technology announced three new products at NAB2014, two of which were black, curved and fast!

The new products are starting to come thick and fast. Just announced is the new CalDigit T4 Thunderbolt RAID. They are targeting professionals who want to edit with 4k material. A special price offer on the T3 for NAB too.

Featuring Thunderbolt 2, LaCie have published a sneak peek at their new products for NAB. Just check out that AJA speed test for 3,000 MB/s read and 2,750 write for three new 8big Racks into a new Mac Pro.

We publish the next there videos from the recent FCPWORKS event. Rune Hansen (Azteca case study,) Alex Grossman from Stornext and Daniel Tapie from Softron are all up on the stage.

At the recent Los Angeles Creative Pro User Group, Neil Smith from LumaForge explored the new Mac Pro's speed and its storage options. He also demos the new networking option in town, one that we are getting very excited about.!

So when you purchase your new Mac Pro and install Final Cut Pro X 10.1, you are going to want some fast Thunderbolt 2 storage to go with it. The new Promise Pegasus 2 RAIDS are available now. A diskless model and the answer to who bought the RED Mac Pro too.

The Mavericks upgrade and FCPX has worked for the majority of users, others have had a few problems. Risking a Betteridge style answer, have we overlooked a feature in Mavericks that could help all users who want fast shared storage?

BRU Producer's Edition version 3.1 from the Tolis Group now supports backup to LTO of FCPX projects and drag and drop backup of media from FCPXML files.

Singe user external high speed RAID drives are pretty common. But what about if you need to share media across multiple users? EditShare displayed a new budget shared storage solution at IBC 2013.

So what was the big news about storage at IBC 2013? Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2. We did the tour of the storage and peripheral booths on the basis that most of us won't be buying a Petabyte SAN!

Initially we were not impressed by the new range of solid state and spinning platter hard disks from Sony. Once we got to talking to the Sony demo guy at IBC, we found out one great feature about these new disks.

Mike Fernandes and his team from NBC are no strangers when it comes to post production with FCPX. It was used on their Emmy winning show George to the Rescue.  He's now looking forward by upgrading the company's hardware to allow for a 4K workflow.

Amanda Burns from the Florida Atlantic University put a post on our Forum about using FCPX across multiple workstations on a SAN. We asked her for some screen grabs and thought her experiences would make an excellent front page story.

We love Promise Pegasus R6 RAIDS. Lots of capacity, a fast Thunderbolt connection and they are (pretty) reliable. Spinning disks do go wrong, so what happens if your R6 has a hard drive failure?

After a request on Twitter for budget shared storage and a lot of good words from Walter Biscardi, we went to check out Small Tree Communications. Steve Modica took us on a tour of their models.  

More new drives and more flexibility at NAB 2013. CalDigit announce their new SSD/HDD mix and match 3 bay T3 drive and a new Thunderbolt expansion station.

Promise Technology have announced a drive size update to their popular Pegasus R6 Thunderbolt RAID and they've also announced the new VTrak A-Class 'SAN in a box.'

We are big fans of G-Technology storage and use their products on a day to day basis, in fact we are using a Thunderbolt drive of theirs right here at NAB. They had two new products on the stand so we thought we would take a look as one has some special ingredients.

In the FCP.co office we were looking at storage options as our new Macs all have Thunderbolt ports. When we found out there was over 30% off the G-Technology G-Raid 8 Terabyte Thunderbolt Drive, the credit card didn't stay in the wallet for long! 

There has been a lot of debate on our Forum about the best RAIDs, configuration, speed, brands and so on. So it was very positive when we came across this excellent concise user review of the Promise Pegasus R4.

There is Thunderbolt everywhere at IBC 2012 and we thought we would look at the storage vendors that are relevant to the Final Cut Pro market and catch up on new models, new capacities, new speeds and even a skydiver dropping a unit mid dive too.

We have tried quite a few asset management systems here at FCP.co and they all have one thing in common, they are complicated. Axle Video may have the answer to individuals and companies who want a simple way to share assets.

There is no doubt that Thunderbolt is changing our industry, but up until now long cable runs were impossible. Now you'll be able to have your Thunderbolt devices more than 3 metres apart thanks to Sumitomo.

Another Thunderbolt product shipping and a brand new Thunderbolt product announced at the show for G-Technology. Seems Thunderbolt is becoming the only way to connect to local storage.

Straight on our Christmas wish list this year (After the Blackmagic Cinema Camera) are these two portable Thunderbolt drives from Promise, the J4 and the J2.

Tired of waiting for your disks to spin back up to speed when you've not accessed them for a while from your NLE? The new version of Disksomnia from Digital Heaven will keep them ready.

One of the big stumbling blocks for the acceptance of Final Cut Pro X with professional editors has been its use on shared storage. Apple have published a white paper of Xsan Best Practices, it makes interesting reading.

Western Digital are the latest company to show off their new Thunderbolt products. The good news is that they have two ports so they can be daisy chained together or have data looped through.

Digital Rebellion have launched Video Space for the iPhone and iPad, a disk space calculator for media storage.

Two new products from Active Storage under the mMedia banner. The 48TB mRAID for online storage and the 108TB mVault for near-line storage.

With Apple announcing support for shared storage this week for FCPX, ProMAX have timed this free webinar rather well.

CalDigit have announced their ThunderExpress PCIe adaptor, their first Thunderbolt product. This unit allows you to connect one of their three PCIe RAIDs to any Mac, Windows or Linux machine that has a Thunderbolt port.

We can't believe we read a tweet this morning saying that there weren't any new Thunderbolt products on display at IBC. Maybe they didn't go past the G-Technology stand and catch sight of this 8TB monster prototype.

When we first saw the announcement about Thunderbolt we knew it would change the industry. We met up with Clément Barberis from LaCie to look at the Little Big Disk and its new Thunderbolted big brother.

If you've been editing with FCPX then you will know it is an all or nothing approach with showing your media in the event library. Here are two solutions that get round that problem, one gives Xsan compatibility too.

We are going to have to hide our credit cards this morning. Apple have just posted the Promise Pegasus R6 12 & 6TB drives on the Apple Store. That 'Add to Basket' button is saying 'click me.'

You gotta love the Drobo, here at fcp.co towers were big fans, regularly backing up all of our fcp.co stuff onto one, so when we saw this story, we knew we had to share it with the world. You just can't beat free.

Editshare ups the ante as it introduces 'Energy', its new high-performance mid-range shared storage solution at NAB 2011. The beauty of ‘Energy’ is that it offers advanced project sharing with sequence and bin locking for Avid, Apple FCP, and Lightworks. If you want more than one FCP editor working on a project then this might be the answer.

It seems to be the current fashion with FCP tutorials these days to get as many tips in as possible, this video from Wes James is no exception. Learn how to do popular music video effects such as light leaks or even the Charlie's Angels wipe.

An old but excellent tutorial. Media managing is hardly the most glamorous side of editing but it has to be done. Even though disk space is becoming cheaper by the day, you can't keep every take of every shot. This tutorial from Peter Salvia brought to you by his second glass of Amstel Light during some downtime during his laundry, will show you how to condense those finished FCP projects down. We had this video up for publishing before the free webinar was announced, a good primer for that one and a half hours maybe!

Looks like this will be handy, a free webinar about managing media inside and outside FCP. The webinar starts at 10:00 PST 10th March 2011 and runs for an hour and a half. Sorry about the short notice, but if they would have emailed us we could have posted this a while ago.

It has been a few crazy days of Apple news and we've loved every leak, tweet and article that we have come across. However it is only now that we are coming to realise how massive the new announcements really are. Prepare for a shock...

A great video of Thunderbolt in action to finish off an interesting day. Apologies if the video above takes time to load, but hey that's Flash:)

There will be many products released soon that feature Thunderbolt, but LaCie has got in there first. Take a look at the tiny "Little Big Disk" 500GB of SSD.

Wow! Two great bits of FCP news in two days. The new MacBook Pros that have been released today feature 'Thunderbolt' Apples branding of Light Peak technology from Intel.

You knew something as important as the cancelleation of the XServe would end up like this. Worth watching just for the Mac Mini line.

Active Storage have come up with a Metadata controller that looks like the now defunct Xserve. They're very proud of their new baby especially its ''out of the box'' readiness. 

Active Storage are teasing us with this countdown to Monday where a machine to replace the EOL'd Apple XServe might be announced. They have a pretty good track record too..