SxS Flash Drive for Red?

[Dylan Reeve]

Download a disk speed testing application... See what it says?

 

[Jeff Murton]

I'm assuming the interest in using another storage interface is to get beyond the current CF card capacity. What about the new slate of SSDs (solid state drives) like the 64Gbyte one that Apple makes available in their new Air notebook and using the existing SATA Red Raid connection.

Samsung has promised a 128Gbyte SATA II drive by the end of the June in 1.8" and 2.5" form-factors and a 'data writing speed' of 70Mbytes. No mention if this is a burst rate.

Wouldn't this be a more viable storage alternative to CF? The only downside I see is it'll be expensive...

Here's the link to Samsung's January press release:
http://www.samsung.com/us/business/semiconductor/newsView.do?news_id=887

 

[Dylan Reeve]

I'm assuming the interest in using another storage interface is to get beyond the current CF card capacity. What about the new slate of SSDs (solid state drives) like the 64Gbyte one that Apple makes available in their new Air notebook and using the existing SATA Red Raid connection.

That's what the RED Flash will be - SSD based - apparently not far away at all.

CF still has a huge advantage in terms of price... SSDs are really expensive compared to CF. I'm fairly confident that 16GB CF cards aren't going to be that far away really - no doubt there are CF companies working on making it happen.

 

[Mark Pedersen]

Just for the record, I wasn't necessarily lobbying for the SxS format, but interested in the ExpressCard in general.

So Dylan, your responses are always technical (which is fine) but I'm still confused frankly as to whether the ExpressCard format is a viable one for Red. Sounds like Gary could play back a R3d file over the bus (which I assume is a MacBook Pro) which is encouraging. But that isn't the same as having in on the recorder side on the camera, where the files have to be written and verified, and not just played back. But bottom line, if the media can record at appropriate sustained data rates then I think it's certainly worth consideration.

 

[Mark Pedersen]

I'm assuming the interest in using another storage interface is to get beyond the current CF card capacity. What about the new slate of SSDs (solid state drives) like the 64Gbyte one that Apple makes available in their new Air notebook and using the existing SATA Red Raid connection.

Samsung has promised a 128Gbyte SATA II drive by the end of the June in 1.8" and 2.5" form-factors and a 'data writing speed' of 70Mbytes. No mention if this is a burst rate.

Wouldn't this be a more viable storage alternative to CF? The only downside I see is it'll be expensive...

Here's the link to Samsung's January press release:
http://www.samsung.com/us/business/semiconductor/newsView.do?news_id=887

Yes, the point was to look for more robust alternatives to CF, which I see as a limiting factor...

This sounds interesting, but what about the size, portability and cost of the media? Seems this is essentially a replacement for a hard drive (like the Red Drive) rather than small, removable media that can be pulled from the camera, read and then re-used as we now do with CF cards (which makes a lot of sense).

M

 

[Dylan Reeve]

Just for the record, I wasn't necessarily lobbying for the SxS format, but interested in the ExpressCard in general.

So Dylan, your responses are always technical (which is fine) but I'm still confused frankly as to whether the ExpressCard format is a viable one for Red. Sounds like Gary could play back a R3d file over the bus (which I assume is a MacBook Pro) which is encouraging. But that isn't the same as having in on the recorder side on the camera, where the files have to be written and verified, and not just played back. But bottom line, if the media can record at appropriate sustained data rates then I think it's certainly worth consideration.

SxS is Sony's ExpressCard memory card - it is their own format. It was designed for their XDCAM EX product. SxS is just a type of card for the ExpressCard interface, it is the property of Sony, and they control access to it, I believe.

Other options for ExpressCard may be more promising I guess. There are SSD modules for the ExpressCard interface that are less restrictive (and much cheaper) than SxS - but as far as I can tell they current ones only use the USB interface in SxS, allowing only the same speed as USB.

Overall, SxS might be capable of it, however it's a closed format at this stage and speed is not clear at all. ExpressCard as an interface has plenty of bandwidth. But existing ExpressCard flash cards are way too slow.

 

[chuckt]

OK Guys, while we all fight over the merits of SxS card for RED, think about the fact that most of Jack Ass Movie was shot on Panasonic HVX200 and they made $64 million.

Moral of the story: It is the story, not the Camera or the storage card that makes success.
Get a simple, cheap, light, hand held camera that you can afford to lose, and start shooting. One day you might hit the jack ass, I mean jack pot.

 

[combatentropy]

I don't understand why, if CF is fast enough, ExpressCard would not be.

You're right, Sychophant, not all ExpressCards are storage devices. Like the old PC cards, some can be, say, modems, that you slide into your notebook. The technically correct term for what I'm talking about would be "ExpressCard SSDs" (Solid State Drives).

They are both based on flash. So the only limit would be the bus between the flash and whatever you're going to. Now here's where it gets tricky.

While the latest CF standard (version 4) supports speeds up to 133 MB/sec. (Yes that's megabytes, I got it right), the ExpressCard supports either about 250 MB/sec. or 60 MB/sec., depending on whether the manufacturer chooses to use ExpressCard's PCI bus or USB 2.0 bus.

Something's going wrong, however. Everytime I google for ExpressCard SSD write speed, I have found poor reviews. I'm not sure what the manufacturers are doing wrong.

If price, storage, and speed are equal, I would prefer ExpressCard for its shape and size. Slightly narrower yet longer, it seems easier to handle, easier to write labels on. CF: 43 x 36 mm. ExpressCard: 34 x 75 mm.

 

[Mitch Deoudes]

OK Guys, while we all fight over the merits of SxS card for RED, think about the fact that most of Jack Ass Movie was shot on Panasonic HVX200 and they made $64 million.

Moral of the story: It is the story, not the Camera or the storage card that makes success.

Er, wait a minute - are you arguing that "Jackass: The Movie" represents great storytelling, with the proof being that it made a lot of money? :blink:

Sorry, I just couldn't resist.

 

[Dylan Reeve]

The ExpressCard interface has two methods of communications... It offers either PCIexpress (which is a great fast option, but requires an onboard controller in the card, and driver software for that controller - what SxS does) or USB (which 'just works').

So the ExpressCard SSDs on the market now are USB interfacing - they are basically USB storage dongles, but store more, cost more and use up an ExpressCard slot.

--Edited To Add--
Sorry, just noticed you mentioned the USB2 interface - yes, it should be able to manage up to 480Mb/s (although in practice that is rarely more than 40 MB/s with overheads) - but for some reason USB memory devices seldom reach anywhere near these speeds - I don't know why.

USB2 isn't offering a great amount of overhead for REDCODE which is running close to 300Mb/s sustained.

 

[Andrew Madu]

Red has their own Flash Drive on production, why they should go for to develop a SxS drive. It doesn't make any sense.

SxS is essentially an ExpressCard. An ExpressCard utilises PCIe buss architecture. PCIe has:

A high bandwidth— 5-80 gigabits per second (Gbps) peak theoretical bandwidth, depending on the implementation

whilst Firewire 3 has a theoretical 3GB/s and

USB 3.0, set to be released some time June 2008, a theoretical bandwidth of 4.7GB/s

 

[Rocco Schult]

Just for the record, I wasn't necessarily lobbying for the SxS format, but interested in the ExpressCard in general.
...But bottom line, if the media can record at appropriate sustained data rates then I think it's certainly worth consideration.

EX34 is the monly medium that can be put into modern Laptops.
With that feature alone it should be worth reconsidering it...
But I bet RED is thinking about those things all the time.

...Samsung has promised a 128Gbyte SATA II drive by the end of the June in 1.8" and 2.5" form-factors and a 'data writing speed' of 70Mbytes. No mention if this is a burst rate.

...The only downside I see is it'll be expensive...

In fact the biggest downside is availability.

 

[Barry Green]

EX34 is the monly medium that can be put into modern Laptops.

Really? I put SD and P2 cards in my modern Lenovo, which was bought about 3 weeks ago. It has an ExpressCard slot too. I can put SD, MemoryStick, P2 and ExpressCard media in my Sony VAIO as well. That one's about a year old, but they make models today that have all those same features.

I just ordered a Delkin UDMA CF->CardBus card, for $39 off Amazon, which claims to be the fastest way to offload a CompactFlash card -- way faster than firewire. You can get memory readers for almost any kind of memory media that fit in a CardBus or ExpressCard slot. Truth be told we can put just about any kind of media in any modern laptop.

SxS costs 2.5x as much per gigabyte as CompactFlash does. You can get CF->CardBus or CF->ExpressCard adapters for any laptop ever made. Why limit yourself to expensive proprietary memory, instead of going with the much cheaper commoditized solution of CF? There would have to be some tangible benefit. I mean, P2 is designed to stream 6 streams of HD live, simultaneously, directly off the card. It was designed as an edit media, which is one reason it's so expensive per gig (the same price as SxS). But Red doesn't need that, so why not take advantage of the cheaper media?

Now, if the SxS card was truly high-speed writing and allowed for recording 4K @ 60fps, then that's a reason to go with it. But if it doesn't provide any tangible benefit, why would you want to pay 2.5x as much per gig?

 

[combatentropy]

Why limit yourself to expensive proprietary memory, instead of going with the much cheaper commoditized solution of CF?

SxS is a straw man. Everyone here agrees it ain't worth it. Let's ignore it and talk about ExpressCard and why it isn't performing up to its specification. If it did, then it would read and write faster than CF. It also costs the same as CF.