{"id":19688,"date":"2023-10-31T13:04:13","date_gmt":"2023-10-31T20:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pugetsystems.com\/?post_type=case_study&p=19688"},"modified":"2025-05-06T11:59:59","modified_gmt":"2025-05-06T18:59:59","slug":"case-study-with-the-slow-mo-guys","status":"publish","type":"case_study","link":"https:\/\/www.pugetsystems.com\/featured\/case-study-with-the-slow-mo-guys\/","title":{"rendered":"Case Study with The Slow Mo Guys"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Background<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The Slow Mo Guys<\/a> is a popular science and technology entertainment channel on YouTube created by Gavin Free and Daniel Gruchy. Since the series premiere in October of 2010, it has been described as the biggest and most popular channel for slow motion videos on YouTube with nearly 15 million subscribers and racking up two and a half billion views! Their episodes consist of a wide variety of things filmed in extreme slow motion using a range of Vision Research Phantom high-speed cameras, capable of shooting over 1,500,000 frames per second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Slow Mo Guys is heavily influenced by Mythbusters. In a typical episode, Gavin and Dan attempt to film some sort of natural or physical phenomenon in extreme slow motion. Subjects of the filming are often some type of spectacular chemical or physical reaction or stress tests of certain objects under extreme conditions, while some episodes simply aim for a fun and viscerally pleasing result, often by the use of rainbow-colored paints.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Slow Mo Guys is… the biggest and most popular channel for slow motion videos on YouTube with nearly 15 million subscribers and racking up two and a half billion views!<\/p>\n <\/div>\n Kevin Bourke<\/cite>\n <\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Each episode features Gavin as the cinematographer and camera operator, and Dan, a former ammunition technician corporal in the British Army who served in Afghanistan, as the rigger and often also as the stuntman. Over the years, Dan jokingly noted that he has suffered more injuries during the filming of the show than during his tour in the Afghanistan war zone. <\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Episodes are filmed in Gavin\u2019s backyard in Austin, Texas, and as the budget of the show increased and more cast was involved, the experiments got larger and more elaborate. The gear required to produce each episode became increasingly complex, too. Puget Systems caught up with Gavin recently in his studio in Austin to talk about the evolution of their channel, but also the evolution of their gear and the computing power required to make it all happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSince we started Slow Mo Guys, I began seeing the world in slow motion,\u201d Gavin added jokingly. But not really. \u201cI\u2019m constantly looking at things, objects in motion, and thinking, what would that look like in slow motion?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019d been working in the film industry when we started all of this back in 2010, but we didn\u2019t quite have the gear then that we do now. We were filming with cameras borrowed from friends who trusted me, and our computing power was, well, sadly underpowered. We had all of this footage and nowhere to really store it. Back then, with the framerates we were shooting, we were only using about around 4 GBs of storage. But I was converting RAW files down to something we could edit and using an old gaming PC. It was ok, but not nearly what we needed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI then made the leap to an iMac Pro – that at least helped me make the leap from HD to 4k, but it still wasn\u2019t really enough. These days, we\u2019re up to 110 TBs (Gavin to confirm) because we\u2019re shooting at crazy framerates, on average of 100,000 fps, but lately we\u2019ve even been pushing that to over 1 millions fps!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Needing More, Finding Puget Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cThings were not going my way from a computing standpoint,\u201d Gavin joked. \u201cI needed more. I had reached out to a few computer companies and manufacturers, but they weren\u2019t really dialed into exactly what I was trying to do. Sometimes just throwing the most powerful components at the problem is not exactly the right solution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThen one day I was watching Corridor Digital\u2019s channel and I saw they were working with this custom builder – Puget Systems – so I reached out! They were one of only a few who I connected with, but their approach was different. They didn\u2019t want to just throw the most powerful, most expensive system at my problem. They actually sat down with me to design something for my exact purpose. That was refreshing! I explained my situation to them; my workflow, my bottlenecks, and frustration.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oscar Tirado from Puget Systems managed the consult and the build recommendation for Slow Mo Guys and talks about the process of really digging into Gavin\u2019s workflow for a better understanding of exactly what he would need to solve his frustrations. “After speaking with Gavin, we quickly understood his workflow, bottlenecks, and what he was trying to accomplish,\u201d said Oscar. \u201cGavin cycled between multiple workstations and software packages, constantly transferring files from one system to another throughout his workflow, which consisted of Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, and Final Cut Pro.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\t\t\n

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Looking for a Content Creation Workstation?<\/h4>\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t

We build computers tailor-made for your workflow. <\/p>\n\t\t\t

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Don’t know where to start?
We can help!<\/h4>\n\t\t\t

Get in touch with our technical consultants today.<\/p>\n\t\t\t

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Oscar was able to determine that one of the goals for this system would be to eliminate this part of the process, allowing Gavin to complete the entirety of the project on one workstation. \u201cTo accomplish this,\u201d Oscar said, \u201cThunderbolt 3, a RAID 1 array consisting of eight 12TB drives (yes, that is correct, eight!), and two NVIDIA RTX 6000 GPUs were clearly a requirement! Gavin’s workflow consisted of 8k timelines, using his previous system\u2019s twelve HDD RAID as a buffer for ingesting many days of filming at once. He would then download a Cinemag from a Phantom Camera via 10Gbe to an NVMe SSD from one of his older workstations and transfer that data immediately to the x12 HDD RAID.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gavin would typically do this in one sitting, moving whatever media that was on the twelve-drive HDD RAID to other storage and editing devices on his network, depending on what was filmed and when he planned to edit the project. By including these new recommended components, Gavin could now transfer his data directly to his Puget Systems Workstation via his twelve-drive HDD RAID and take advantage of his multi-GPU configuration in DaVinci Resolve. And, if necessary, he could continue accessing files from his Mac OS formatted external drives using the onboard Thunderbolt 3 ports. It was a workflow transformed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gavin added, \u201cI could quickly dump all of my footage right into the system. Oscar from Puget System set me up, stacked with hard drives, an extremely heavy RAID-5 which was great! Also, 10 G-bit ethernet for downloading footage, plus I wanted Thunderbolt so they were able to recommend the right motherboard.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Gavin’s Workstation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cMy Puget Systems workstation is definitely the best system I\u2019ve ever used. My ideas are no longer held back because of the worry that my system can\u2019t handle it. We\u2019re able to do even crazier ideas and push the limits on system-crushing frame rates. One of our more recent videos was shot at over 1 millions FPS! I wouldn\u2019t have been able to even conceive of that before.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gavin concluded, \u201cThe Puget Systems workstation is my first real workstation; I had grown so used to using a gaming PC. Plus, it is my first custom-built workstation, and it eliminated every bottleneck, it\u2019s amazing!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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