I took apart a Redmag SSD...

[Mike 'Fireman' Ross]

Inside is a ssd drive with a custom firmware.
Upon consulting some of colleagues that worked at Hard Drive companies, many other companies buy drives direct and load their custom firmware onto them (in this case red).
Red did this and hence that's why if you bought the same drive it wont work due to the firmware being different (according to an above post). I have not tried this, but just assuming.
If you get the the firmware then you theoretically should be able to load it on another drive.
If you like to tinker and you are ok with voiding your warranty be my guest, but understand the consequences.
Also I hope I dont get banned for this.

The firmware you speak of is proprietary copyright RDC firmware, I'm pretty sure... Anyone treading in this area should do so with caution and discretion. And I suspect any attempt to SELL the fruits of your labours would result in a swift visit from Jim's famously undefeated lawyers.

The only *licit* way to work in this area, hypothetically, would be to clean-room reverse-engineer the functionality of the firmware, not to rip it off and copy it! That would be non-trivial.

Mike

[Bruce Allen]

Sustain without any risk of interruption by recalibration, garbage collection, or any other housekeeping functions, under ALL conditions, for however long a take lasts?

Yes, an EPIC is a computer - but it's a **real-time** computer, and that is a very different beast. Trust me.

Mike

So what kind of witchcraft does Blackmagic Design know if they can make a $325 device that writes at extremely high sustained rates to consumer SSDs?

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Jannard]

Extremely high? Like 5K at 3:1?

Check your data rates carefully... if you want 1080P, no problem. If you want more... you need to actually check and test the media.

Jim

So what kind of witchcraft does Blackmagic Design know if they can make a $325 device that writes at extremely high sustained rates to consumer SSDs?

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Bruce Allen]

Extremely high? Like 5K at 3:1?

Check your data rates carefully... if you want 1080P, no problem. If you want more... you need to actually check and test the media.

Jim

It might be... 5K at 3:1 is around 150MB/sec, right?

Blackmagic Hyperdeck Shutte - $325

Writes uncompressed 10bit 1080p 4:2:2 60i with audio.

That is: 165MB/sec.

Guaranteed to work on a $400 512GB Crucial M4 according to Blackmagic FAQ.

165MB/sec is plenty for any format SCARLET supports, and most formats that EPIC supports, right?

Try 2.5K at half the data rate (960 Mbps) a REDMAG can write at.

Am I the only one who laughed out loud when I first read those specifications? Ha! =D

No, not their cinema camera. Their $325 Hyperdeck Shuttle. Which writes at much higher data rates.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Brian Iannone]

Just realized what we were talking about here.

The Blackmagic Hyperdeck Shuttle records at 1.365 Gbps (170.6 MB/s) when set to Uncompressed 10-bit.

[Rob Ruffo]

Red mags cost what they cost. It's part of the price of owning the cam. On the whole, if you look at the final total, Scarlets and Epics are still pretty reasonable for what they do.

So maybe they make some extra profit on the SSDs, why should they not?

You want to know what's REALLY expensive? R&D.

[Sergio Perez]

Red mags cost what they cost. It's part of the price of owning the cam. On the whole, if you look at the final total, Scarlets and Epics are still pretty reasonable for what they do.

So maybe they make some extra profit on the SSDs, why should they not?

You want to know what's REALLY expensive? R&D.

Agreed. When I jumped in the Epic wagon, I knew what I was going into in terms of media price and accessories price. Red is not Sony or Apple, big corporations with huge distributors and high volume ordering which can bring down prices. Its a price to pay for reliability and R&D. Red is actually making an effort to help Scarlet users with the new 32GB cards. When are those coming? I think some of the media price complaints will go with the introduction of these. They should be in the same ballpark price wise to P2 Cards and SxS cards (pure speculation)

As an Epic owner, however, I' m really looking forward to what the 512 GB open up for us in terms of frame rates. However, I'm going to have to weight the Price vs gain scenario here. Will the 512GB RED colored media appear in any other form? (Smaller GB count, less expensive?) . I would see myself getting one of these only for the High Speed Stuff, but 512GB seems too much. Maybe a 256 GB and on the limit, a 128GB one?

[Thomas Koba]

What's the big deal in the SSD having a high profit? If they didn't, then the cameras themselves would be that more expensive.

It doesn't matter either way.

[Tony Lorentzen]

I would love cheap recording media as much as the next guy and I have been tearing myself apart about the RED MAG prices too, but when it comes down to it - it's a matter of "balance". RED probably wouldn't be able to sell Scarlets and Epics at the current price if they were able to shoot on standard off-the-shelf SSDs.

It's a business model. It's not evil. Get over it (or buy a BMD Shuttle 2 and live with 1080p) ;-)

[Martin Stevens]

Film negative costs more......and RedMags are reuseable.

Just sayin'.