Drive, LucidLink, or both?

Paul Matthijs Lombert -

Chances are that when you're reading this, you already found out that consumer clouds like Dropbox and Google Drive don't cut it when editing (sorry, bad pun). Maybe someone told you they're using Drive with great results. But you also had a look at LucidLink, as someone else told you it's great too (which is very true).

To you, both products look strikingly similar. That's because they are: Drive is built with LucidLink technology at its core, stripping away some of the more Enterprise-y features, and adding specific features to make life easier for editors.

If LucidLink is the "works for everyone" cloud, then Drive is "only use this if you are a video creative" cloud. Postlab works equally well with both, so what is best for you? It's easy to find out:

You make movies, but don't edit them yourself.

Creating documentaries, product videos, or movies is what you do. You work with a team of freelancers to shoot, edit, mix, and finish your productions. You're not a techie, but you do find it important to keep tabs on your media and assets. You tightly budget each production, and really hate having to buy hard drives all the time. It's such a waste of money, and never stops as each production seems to need larger drives.

Maybe editors used to come to your place or office to work with you, but now they all need to work remote and you still need to get them your media. If you're going to move your media to the cloud, giving freelancers access needs to be super easy, and revoking their access should be just as easy. When you're not editing, you don't want to pay for dormant storage. You do like the idea of having a central organized place for your projects so you can revisit an older project when needed, and share versions with clients.

👉 Drive is best for you.

You're an editor in small team

You work at a small company where most people are working with video files, day in, day out. Maybe you're also managing media, or you're that person that always ends up fixing all the workflow issues.

A few people handle project management, sales, and finance. They are probably already using something like Dropbox or Google Drive for those documents, and happy with it.  It's just that media in those clouds doesn't work for you, but you do like that it's cheap and predictable. Controlling cost is really important.

You're using something like WeTransfer to send and receive files all the time. When moving your media to the cloud, you'll need just a few TB of storage, mostly for proxies and other assets. Heck, maybe even less than a TB at times.

👉 For you, Drive is tailor made.

Your team is working on video, in-company.

You are working on video all the time, but part of a much larger organisation where video isn't core business. Maybe you're in content marketing, or doing training videos. You're basically a standalone in-house team, and can make most purchasing decisions without having to jump through hoops to get an OK from IT first. Ideally, all media currently in production lives in the cloud, preferably with an archival tier, but doing incremental backups each night on local storage is fine too.

Maybe you are already using S3 for your media, and you'd like to reduce egress cost. Maybe the company is using SSO for all services, like "Sign in with Google".

👉 If SSO is a hard requirement, it's LucidLink for you. Otherwise, Drive.

Video is core, and the company large(r)

You are working at an agency, production company, or a post production house.  You're an editor, or used to be one and are now the post supe or media manager. Although there are a bunch of editors, AEs, designers, producers, and others working with video, a significant part of the company is not touching the actual video assets but doing all those other jobs that come with it.

You're looking to move all the media to the cloud, and while you're at it, you might as well loop in your friends in IT to migrate all the non-media files and documents to the same cloud. Now everyone in the company can be working remotely when needed. That way you both will have a lot less headaches, and you've got each other's backs managing this roll out.

Maybe you are already using external storage and transfers services like Signiant, or Aspera, a MAM like iconik, storage like AWS S3 or Backblaze B2 for offsite backups, and are familiar with how much egress influences TCO.

Temps and freelancers will need to get access too, and you'll need to control exactly to which folders and files. You and IT will need daily Snapshots, so that you can easily manage people screwing up like accidently deleting files. The additional storage Snapshots require easily balances the time you tend to lose fixing other people's "happy little accidents".

👉 LucidLink is perfect for you, and maybe hook Drive up to it - just for your team.

IT decides what you can use, but a VPN doesn't cut it.

Your company's IT department controls all storage and access to it, and before COVID no media would ever leave the building. Still, you need your people to work remotely, and you need to find a good solution that IT will find acceptable. They have suggested you use a VPN instead, but you know that won't work with media. For Premiere and Final Cut Pro, using an on-prem Postlab Server would work with a VPN, but for remote access to the media, you'll need something better.

LucidLink's security model is to their liking (as it beats everything else), so you're in a good spot. IT demands tight control over who can access what, and it's most definitely not allowing sending files to outsiders. Freelancers are already given a temp company account. They require SSO, full stop.

IT demands full control of the required S3 storage and will manage backups. Or, they might already have an existing S3 account which you can piggyback on.

👉 Fences, everywhere - for a good reason. LucidLink is what you want.

Avid Remote Locking

Postlab's revolutionary Remote Locking for Avid Media Composer is available for both Drive and LucidLink, so you don't have to base your choice on that. Each Remote Locking plan comes with a Drive, and automatically Nexifies a connected LucidLink Filespace, so choose as you see fit.

Both?

You like the approach of LucidLink, having an app running on each computer in the background to manage access, but also like all the good things of Postlab. Ideally, you'd have everyone on LucidLink but the editors using Drive, and still be able to access all that media through LucidLink as well. All good – we'll connect Drive directly to your LucidLink account. Reach out, it's easy (and free).

Score Card

Still on the fence? Often the choice comes down to a single differentiator. Here's a cheat sheet:

  • Only for the video people? Drive.
  • Need everything in the cloud, all types of documents? LucidLink.
  • Less than 1TB? Drive.
  • SSO? LucidLink.
  • WeTransfer-like features? Drive.
  • Can't afford egress? Drive.
  • Break down cost per user, storage, and egress? LucidLink.
  • Snapshots? LucidLink.
  • Manage access per team or production? Drive.
  • Granular folder permissions? LucidLink.
  • Integrate a MAM like iconik? Drive.

Closing Thoughts

Made up your mind on using Drive or LucidLink? Good. If not, let's talk - there is always more to consider. Remember: Postlab doesn't mind - it works just as happily with LucidLink as it does with Drive, so you can have the best of both worlds, in any of workflow.