Video editing is all about speed. Plain and simple.
Computer systems are getting faster and faster. What we sometimes forget is that in addition to the speed of your computer, you need to consider the speed of your data ports, which are the gateways that allow data to move in and out of your computer.
Data ports themselves are constantly changing. USB2, which took over for USB1 is about 500 Mega bits per second (actually 480 Mb/sec, but let’s use round numbers.) Stemming from USB2, the new USB3 jumped to almost five GB per second, which is 10 times faster. That’s 10 times the data flow!
Then Thunderbolt comes out and can transfer data at 10GB per second, that’s twice as fast as USB3. For those of you new to Thunderbolt, it’s an interconnect technology developed by Intel in cooperation with Apple that combines PCI Express and DisplayPort into a single connection, allowing for a combination of up to six peripherals, like storage devices and monitors, to be daisy-chained together.
Now, Thunderbolt 2 comes out at 20 GB per second, or twice the speed of Thunderbolt 1.
This is the reason every editor needs to have Thunderbolt 2 (TB2) connectivity in your computer editing system. With matching TB2 connectivity on your camera, you can download your HD, 2K or 4K Digital video data tremendously faster than using the USB portwhile simultaneously displaying it on a discrete monitor. Thunderbolt 2 is also backwards compatible, which means that all Thunderbolt cables and connectors are compatible with Thunderbolt 2.
If the name of the editing game is speed, then it’s easy to see that Thunderbolt 2 technology is rockin’ the digital production world.