RED Digital Storage Options and Accessories

[Tom Wardrop]

As like everyone else, RED has really had me excited over the last few years. The exceptional value of their cameras is what made me most excited. On that note, I find it unfortunate that they need to overcharge on certain accessories. I understand most accessories will be a little higher than expect, seeing as though RED isn't exactly mainstream, and so there are obviously overheads which need to be compensated for, but then there are other products which I find unreasonably expensive, and for which there really isn't any justification. This mainly pertains to the digital storage solutions RED offers.

Now, maybe it's just the fact they haven't updated their prices in a while (which they haven't), but let me give some examples...

• RED-RAM: This is basically a solid state drive in an enclosure. RED are asking $4500 for the 128GB product. Now, there wouldn't be anything special about the SSD in the RED RAM, and so if we compare it to one of the more modern 128GB/120GB SSD's available to consumer at the moment, we see that the RED-RAM is about 1000% over-priced ($350 USD will get you a very fast 120GB SSD these days, but let's add $100 to cover the case and any extras). Now, I would expect RED to charge 2 or 3 times as much, but 10 times is just plain unreasonable in my opinion.
  
• RED-DRIVE: Same point as above. You could get 2x 1TB drives in a RAID 0 for a fraction of what RED are charging for just 2x 320GB.
  
• 18-inch Drive Cable: $200 for a bit of a copper a couple connectors, solely for carrying a digital data stream. The only reason I can imagine that this is so expensive is because they're making their own propriety cable. If they were to use a more standardised cable such as eSate (which this probably is, just with different connectors), you'd only be looking at $20 at the most.

I understand RED are a company, and ultimately they're in the game to make money, but stuff like this really sours the deal. The biggest problem here though isn't the overpricing, it's the lack of flexibility. You're stuck to only a couple of storage solutions, where if RED only sold the drive caddies and allowed any SATA device to be used, the consumer would be open to a much wider range of options, and wouldn't need to wait for RED to catch up with the latest storage technology. I'd personally be happy to pay a $1000 extra for the camera, just to be able to use any SSD or HDD I wanted.

What are all your thoughts on this?

 

[Imran Farouk]

there was a post on one of these threads about the similar thing to the CF card...the reason for the expense of the card was that it was specially designed for use with the RED camera...

Basically if RED could do it cheaper I'm sure they would, but there is obviously a very logically reasoning behind it...then again you could be right, however, this point could probably best be proven...IF someone went out and grabbed a couple of these cheap SDD and HDD's and went to work getting it to work with the RED at their own accord.

 

[Tom Wardrop]

RED make cameras, not digital storage. Even the cheapest SSD's at the moment would be more than fast enough for the RED ONE. The RED ONE only requires a data rate of about 30MB/s. That's a bit of an ask for a compact flash card (although many can achieve that these days), but it's a walk in the park for any HDD, especially a SSD. Many SSD's these days can achieve write speed of 200MB/s, so to put that in perspective, you could have 6 RED ONE cameras shooting 4K, at 24fps, all recording to that single SSD (not that you'd want to, but it's theoretically possible).

So even an SSD is a waste of money in all honesty, as a single 2TB hard-drive would not only be fast enough (2TB HDD can write at about 70 - 80MB/s on average), but cheaper than a 120GB SSD. With a 2TB hard-drive, you could record 18.5 hours of 4k, 24fps RED ONE footage at a 30MB/s bitrate. A 2TB hard-drive would probably cost you only about $250 USD ($350 AUD). That's less than $14 USD an hour, and it's completely re-usable and non-degradable unlike tape.

Non-tape storage is one of the things about RED I find very exciting (convenient, reliable and being digital, completely lossless). RED could drive that home in a marketing campaign saying that you can store 18.5 hours of lossless 4k footage on a single hard-drive for only $250 USD. Sounds better than 2x 320GB of storage for $900 USD - that almost makes tape look good again. Plus, no one wants the weight of an extra, unnecessary hard-drive on their shoulder.

the reason for the expense of the card was that it was specially designed for use with the RED camera.

I do believe this, as CF cards have generally been pretty slow. But on that note, look how much one of RED's CF cards cost, and look how much storage you get. A HDD or SSD would blow a CF card out of the water in terms of bang for buck. If you want convenience, then a 2.5" SSD is no less convenient than a little CF card. In fact, an SSD is probably more convenient as you wouldn't need a hundred of them (which would require you to constantly swap them out), you'd only need a couple SSD's.

 

[Joe G.]

"SSD is probably more convenient as you wouldn't need a hundred of them (which would require you to constantly swap them out), you'd only need a couple SSD's."

Well, somebody's gotta be the first. Let's see the results. I'm all for cheap, reliable, fast storage. It occurs to me that you could even use a RAID on multiple SSDs to make the speed blindingly awesome. That's probably what will be required for Epic.