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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

RED STATIONS arrived!

I thought that CF's were EOL'd with EPIC? Is this true?

CF's are not EOL. But moving forward with Epic, most people will probably shoot SSD. If you currently shoot a lot of CF's, buying one (or more) of these is a no-brainer. I'm really looking forward to the 1.8" Station module and 1.8" SSD media myself.
 
Just got my RED STATION CF today. Very nice piece of kit.

I did some quick tests using the AJA System Test tool. Here are the results

Lexar FW800 CF Reader - Write: 51.1 MB/s Read: 72.8 MB/s
RED STATION CF (FW800) - Write: 51.1 MB/s Read: 79.1 MB/s
RED STATION CF (eSATA) - Write 52.5 MB/s Read: 86.2 MB/s

Tests were done on my 17" MacBook Pro using the Sonnet Tempo Sata Pro Express Card for eSata.

These are the same speeds with a Mac Pro 8 Core with the 4 port lacie card.

For those of you questioning the worth of these, the real difference is when you use more than one at a time, that's where FW800 gets left in the dust.


We've used them to download more than 3600 16GB CF Cards on this show and they've performed as expected, blazing fast!
 
These are the same speeds with a Mac Pro 8 Core with the 4 port lacie card.

For those of you questioning the worth of these, the real difference is when you use more than one at a time, that's where FW800 gets left in the dust.


We've used them to download more than 3600 16GB CF Cards on this show and they've performed as expected, blazing fast!

Good point. Are you just doing a Finder drag and drop or what method of checksums are you doing?
 
I'm a big fan of black shiny things too, but am having trouble seeing the weight / size / cost benefit of this one over a good quality FW800 card reader.

I speak for myself and I think a lot of other REDusers when I say that it is nearly impossible to find a good quality FW800 card reader. The Lexar and Sandisk models are quite prone to overheating when you try to download two cards back-to-back, leading to data corruption, so most people get them in pairs, using them in rotation to allow them to cool.

The Sonnet Qio has had good reviews, but it's $999.

So, although it is yet to be fully "battle tested" by REDusers at large, the aluminum heat-sink like RED CF reader should do an excellent job of dissipating heat, and avoid data corruption. Also, it uses the exact same CF interface that the camera does.

Furthermore, f you are downloading to fast hard drives (like a RAID) then having multiple RED CF readers on eSata will allow you to download multiple cards simultaneously in the same amount of time it takes to download one card over FW800... theoretically. I'm waiting for tests on that one.
 
Furthermore, f you are downloading to fast hard drives (like a RAID) then having multiple RED CF readers on eSata will allow you to download multiple cards simultaneously in the same amount of time it takes to download one card over FW800... theoretically. I'm waiting for tests on that one.

Stephen, how would you plan on doing this? From my experience of using R3D Data Manager it seems it queues up your source folders and copies from them one by one. Can you get multiple sources offloading at once by running multiple instances of R3D DM? If so how reliable is this and doesn't one R3D Dm process affect the other in terms of read write operations and speed across busses etc?
 
Stephen, how would you plan on doing this? From my experience of using R3D Data Manager it seems it queues up your source folders and copies from them one by one. Can you get multiple sources offloading at once by running multiple instances of R3D DM? If so how reliable is this and doesn't one R3D Dm process affect the other in terms of read write operations and speed across busses etc?

You're right, R3D Data Manager in its current version wouldn't work for this at all. I'm a big fan of it and insist on other people using it if they are downloading footage on a show I'm post supervising, but it's not the only way of downloading and checksumming RED footage if you are familiar with Unix and doing things from the terminal.

Maybe if the RED STATION can work like this, R3DDM will be updated to take full advantage of it.
 
From the speed tests people have posted, I dont see any reason why you would buy the RED CF reader. Especially at its current price. Am i missing something??

Scott Resnick
Local 600
Digital Loader
Los Angeles, CA
 
From the speed tests people have posted, I dont see any reason why you would buy the RED CF reader. Especially at its current price. Am i missing something??

Scott Resnick
Local 600
Digital Loader
Los Angeles, CA

I believe the real benefit is being able to use E-SATA to chain them together and maintain high speeds.
 
After 2 weeks and 200+ 16GB CF downloaded e-sata to e-sata (PCI Sonnett card in a MacPro 2 years old) my figure is roughly 5GB/min!
Way faster than Lexar reader but the thing I love more is how fast it mount & unmount the cards! Always less than a second nothing compared to FW800 world.
 
Just got mine, Base & CF Module so far. I agree with the 'serious piece of kit' build quality comments.....if the performance lives up to expectations they will be well worth having.
(And by the way, they're not shiny:D).
 
Do the modules snap together or in some other way get mounted to each other to become a single unit?

That would be great for times you need to move them around and can just pick the whole thing up without it coming apart.
 
For those of you questioning the worth of these, the real difference is when you use more than one at a time, that's where FW800 gets left in the dust.


We've used them to download more than 3600 16GB CF Cards on this show and they've performed as expected, blazing fast!

Great info and endorsement! Thanks.
 
Do the modules snap together or in some other way get mounted to each other to become a single unit?

That would be great for times you need to move them around and can just pick the whole thing up without it coming apart.


Yup the feet on the bottom will snap into the top of other modules and create a solid stack as high as you want to go.
 
Yup the feet on the bottom will snap into the top of other modules and create a solid stack as high as you want to go.

Thanks Jarred. Great feature.

They look very rugged, so it's great to know they are road worthy.
 
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