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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 :)

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sbcooler

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I am wondering if 32GB and 64GB cards are in the works? Is this something Red is working on internally or something they get outside rely on others?

I am thinking the Scarlet in particular would be nice to have a 64GB card...if I am doing the calculation right that's about 1 hour of footage with audio...or maybe just over an hour of footage...anyone?

8GB is so small. Panny announced they will have a 64GB this fall...so I am thinking RED could easily have a 32GB by NAB 2009...but really 64Gb is what I am looking for.
 
from what i understand, red tests just about every card under the sun and it's rare that they meet their manufacturers specs. just because panasonic puts out a 64GB card doesn't mean that one that can handle red's throughput is right around the corner. panny is only recording dvdcpro hd...not redcode...

correct me if i'm wrong :)
 
Panasonic has yet to come close to any of their announced P2 release dates. They continuously announce product dates and then miss them, then later announce again as if the first announcement never happened. They missed the initial target month for their 16GB P2 card by over a year.

P2 tech is quite different... AFAIK, they are still a quad-channel array (essentially RAID-0) of four SD chips. With 180X SD chips, that would theoretically allow them to have their 640Mbps (80MB/s) advertised bandwidth. I have never used any P2 cards that could even think of coming close to that... DVCPROHD at its maximum is 100Mbps, that's 12.5MB/s, or roughly 1/3 the data rate required by 4K REDCODE-36 @ 24fps. AVCHD cameras don't stress the cards any more than that either.
 
Remember, a P2 card is basically 4 SD cards RAID'd together. That's how they make their speed, which isn't fast enough for Red anyway. P2 is much less demanding for the card specs. I must say though, it's sweet to use the 32GB P2 cards! Can't wait for bigger CF's . . . . .

EDIT: (Jeff beat me to it . . . )
 
Couldn't Red make something similar to the P2 cards (i.e. 4 x 8GB Red CF cards in a Raid 0 - what speed would that give you if they were configured for 16GB of storage?)
 
davecw said:
Couldn't Red make something similar to the P2 cards (i.e. 4 x 8GB Red CF cards in a Raid 0 - what speed would that give you if they were configured for 16GB of storage?)
Click to expand...

They could certainly do that but it would NOT be cost effective and it would be a bad business move for them. They would have to design and manufacture a huge shell to house those multiple cards, a new card module, and bulk order larger amounts of CF cards from Lexar for that. Assuming RED is generous with their quality control, that means each of those new cards would have to be assembled by hand and verified for performance. As soon as CFast is available, you'll only have to get a new card module for your RED and maybe a new circuit board to go along with it if the tech changes radically. Though in all honesty, I could see cards not being used at all with RED in two years if SSD technology progresses well.
 
What he said.. There's a reason P2 cards are as expensive as they are, it's not just Panasonic charging a hefty premium. Notice that no one else has really stepped in to manufacture them.

I would also question just how fast a RAID of CF cards would be. FLASH memory is currently available in certain sizes of individual, tiny chips. I think 2Gbit and 4Gbit are the most common of the larger capacities right now. Each CF card or SD card, etc.. has several of these staggerd together with an internal memory controller. In a way, they're almost a mini-RAID themselves. They're not a RAID-0 interleaved stripe set in most cases. The internal configuration, speed and quality of the FLASH chips and the memory controller itself all factor into a card's speed. I know that Panasonic has found that simply tying 4 cards together in a RAID-0 or interleaved memory arrangement does not yield 4X the performance like we think of when you build a RAID-0 disk array. If that were the case, we would've had 64GB P2 cards long ago. I see the same holding true for CF cards and especially for use with RED because of the higher data rates needed.

Several FLASH manufacturers have announced larger chips, up to 16 and 32 Gbit sizes and much faster memory controllers. When we start seeing those products, we'll start seeing 16, 32, 64GB capacity CF cards that are much faster (and definitely more expensive at first). The key word is "when", some of these products were announced earlier last year and have yet to make an appearance in open channels.

Some SSD makers have created their own memory controllers and ways of interleaving / layering FLASH chips, redundancy cache, etc.. to get performance up and it looks like that there are some SSD devices out there now that may work with RED. But probably at a very steep price -- I could see a 320GB SSD based RED DRIVE costing as much as the camera or more in some cases. Obviously there are no easy solutions to this problem or readily available devices, otherwise we would have our SSD-based RED Drives.
 
It is a tad bit frustrating that there have been no major leaps forward in this regard, but it's not REDs fault, as the computer industry just hasn't put out anything that makes sense for this camera in terms of speed, size, and price. We want extremely fast, large capacity, for reasonable money. There are emerging technologies that might fit this model, but they still seem to be a ways away as far as I can tell.

I'm looking forward to the day when we can get SSD drive with 200-300 MB/s sustained data rates, intelligent controller cards, with capacities in the 100-500GB range.
 
I know rental companies would LOVE a CF->P2 adapter allowing to record onto P2 cards - having invested a lot of money in P2.
 
I am thinking primarily of Scarlet. The run and gun...I believe that was advertised as around 100mbps, same as DVCPRO HD...so at that Data Rate we could see a 64GB card out by NAB 2009 a la Panasonic (announced there's will be out this Fall...so even if they miss by 8 months that's still April NAB 2009.

Anyone?
 
sbcooler said:
I am thinking primarily of Scarlet. The run and gun...I believe that was advertised as around 100mbps, same as DVCPRO HD...
Click to expand...
Scarlet was advertised at up to 100 MBps (Bytes), not Mbps (bits)...
1 Byte = 8 bits, so that's 800 Mbits/s, 8x more than DVCPROHD...

I'm afraid we won't see any 64 GB cards working that fast for a long time...

Well however, I guess 100 MBps will only be used for high speed shooting.
In normal conditions (24 fps) we'll probably still be allowed to use Redcode 28 / 36 datarates.
 
Yeah I thought that was a mistake..100MB per sec...that seems like an incredibly huge amount of info for a 2/3" smaller cam....and considering the RED records at 28MB or 36MB....100 is not like 10% more...that's huge!

I would love to see a more manageable (if possible) data rate for the Scarlet..something like 100mbps like DVCPRO HD....I mean if Sony with the EX-1 can record at 35mbps and look pretty good...I gotta believe a scaled down or compressed up image at 100mbps would look good on Scarlet...no?

I might be missing something as I know the uncompressed (or much less compressed) Red Format is a completely different work flow.

I am just wondering if the Scarlet would be good for Live events...you know...a 2 hour concert...run and gun. I get called last minute...just to show up..no control of anything...just shoot the show with a couple of guys..the EX-1 might be able to handle this kind of shoot real well or EX-3 if we want to step it up.

Just thought if it was easier and simple and possible the Scarlet would possible SMOKE the EX-1 for concert like settings and live events.

Is this cam going to be built for something like that?
 
I'm sure they will have different datarates selectable when you shoot. On the Red One, you can either shoot at Redcode 28 or Redcode 36. You'll most likely be able to do the same thing with Scarlet, but allowing you to get up to Redcode 100...

Although I think that the 100 MBps is most likely going to be for that 180fps burst option.
 
I look forward to 16Gb CF cards and think that would be a nice sweet spot. Everything above 16gb, I prefer to shoot with Red drive simply cause I like to stagger my shots coming down the pipe for safety and anything over 16gb just starts to take more time then you might prefer. Pick up at least 4 CF cards if you get them, and get them you should.
 
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