How much record time at 120fps?

[Chris Parker]

Just curious as to how much record time you'd get shooting at 2K 120fps, on a a RED Drive? Are there any issues with the drives when they get close to full? Is it a good idea to only fill them a certain amount, to avoid any issues, or can you shoot until a drive is full, at 120fps??

I will be shooting a live sports event, and want to make sure I have enough drives so as I don't run out, but not too many extra, if un-neccessary....

thanks.

 

[Chris Parker]

Also, how many RED Batteries would you think I'd need to record 120fps at 2K, with LCD and EVF, and microforce, plugged into camera, shooting a live sports event for 4 - 5 hours....I won't have time to re-charge, so I want to take enough batteries too....Is 6 per camera enough?

 

[BigLu]

The main reason i do not fill drives beyond 50% is the download time
Its CRAZY.

I have filled a Drive like past 90% and I dont ever want to do that again.
It took hours and hours to download.
It is far more worth it to spend a little extra money and rent another drive and CF cards are so cheap to rent now that its also a great plus to explore that idea if your downloading at the event.

6 Batteries sounds reasonable.
that might be a touch short just for incase reasons id get over kill on power.
You are so far better safe than sorry.
Id be comfortable with 7

Live event 4-5 but 1 + hours of pre testing.

You should consider a runner and have a charger charging
1 battery at a time just one not more than 1 that is your fastest way to recharge.

And then youll be cool with 5 or 6 batteries.
hope that helps

 

[Steve Murray]

I thing that has happened to me is that when the RED drives ( I have 2) get to under 30% of storage left I suddenly start getting errors and I have to stop shooting -- even at 24p.

So 320gb RED drives are REALLY only about 225gb of useful storage before you have to stop and download.

I hope you have at least 3 RED drives for this event... or a really good assistant to download & backup for you.

I think you will need more batteries -- 8 or even 10 to be safe. Or a maybe big block battery if you are not moving around too much.

 

[David Wyatt]

Someone pointed me towards an interesting iPhone application called "iSee4K" which, as well as calculating depth of field and field of view, also calculates maximum frame rates and storage for various resolution and compression settings.

I'm not sure how accurate this application is but according to it you can only get to 120fps in 2K if you film in 2:1 (2K 16:9 max frame rate is 100fps). 175 minutes of footage in 2K 2:1 Redcode 28 with a 59.94fps timebase gives you 160GB (half a Red Drive), so I'd hazard a guess that 120fps in varispeed would give you 350 minutes? More than enough for most sporting events but as most people advise it'd be safer and ultimately quicker for backing up if you can swap out drives during a break.

 

[Ed Watkins]

Someone pointed me towards an interesting iPhone application called "iSee4K" which, as well as calculating depth of field and field of view, also calculates maximum frame rates and storage for various resolution and compression settings.

I'm not sure how accurate this application is but according to it you can only get to 120fps in 2K if you film in 2:1 (2K 16:9 max frame rate is 100fps). 175 minutes of footage in 2K 2:1 Redcode 28 with a 59.94fps timebase gives you 160GB (half a Red Drive), so I'd hazard a guess that 120fps in varispeed would give you 350 minutes? More than enough for most sporting events but as most people advise it'd be safer and ultimately quicker for backing up if you can swap out drives during a break.

iSee4K works out the varispeed storage requirements based on the average MB per frame values of the build 16 codec. So it should be ballpark accurate.

As for the max settings calculator, it is based on the RED manual so is absolutely accurate. You can only get 120fps at 2K 2:1 on Red Drive or 16GB card.

Build 17 update for iSee4k coming when it is out of Beta.
Ed.

 

[Birns and Sawyer]

175 minutes of footage in 2K 2:1 Redcode 28 with a 59.94fps timebase gives you 160GB (half a Red Drive), so I'd hazard a guess that 120fps in varispeed would give you 350 minutes?

It seems to me that you'd still get 175 minutes because if you double the frame rate and double the size of the drive, you're coming out even.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

The main reason i do not fill drives beyond 50% is the download time
Its CRAZY.

Uh, something is wrong with your setup if it took hours and hours to offload a RED drive. Connected via FW800, you should be able to sustain around 65 to 70 MB/s read. The drives top out at about 74~75MB/s.

Even at 60MB/s, you should be able to unload a full drive (298GB) in about 90 minutes. The drives will offload faster than the current 8GB RED and Lexar CF cards.

However, I don't recommend filling a drive and I don't do it myself. Not a big fan of putting all my eggs in one basket I guess. Especially when that basket is full of sensitive mechanical parts and I could lose everything in the basket if one of those little parts should malfunction.

Other than that, I agree with everything else you said.

 

[Paul Hazlett]

Also, how many RED Batteries would you think I'd need to record 120fps at 2K, with LCD and EVF, and microforce, plugged into camera, shooting a live sports event for 4 - 5 hours....I won't have time to re-charge, so I want to take enough batteries too....Is 6 per camera enough?

What about down time to swap batts, will you have that? might want to look at one of the hot swap solutions for batts.

I run my drives up to an hour of footage without a problem so by the time
I am ready to swap the other is downloaded and ready to go. If don't have an assistant then I would go with 3 or 4 drives to be safe.

 

[Brian Reisdorf]

However, I don't recommend filling a drive and I don't do it myself. Not a big fan of putting all my eggs in one basket I guess. Especially when that basket is full of sensitive mechanical parts and I could lose everything in the basket if one of those little parts should malfunction.

It's worth restating this.

For us, any red drive job means an absolute minimum of two drives, alternating throughout the day. This speeds up downloading and more importantly compartmentalizes the footage preventing one unlucky event from resulting in an insurance claim. I'd pretty much never order an odd number of drives unless you're grabbing a replacement for one already in your inventory.

 

[conrad gaunt]

I'd suggest getting a hot-swappable battery mount, so you can mount two batteries and swap them on the fly to avoid reboots. If you lose power during record you can lose footage. I forget who makes a Red compatible swap mount (ie v-mount and gives battery remaining estimate), but someone does, anyone?

 

[davidtorres]

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