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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 :)

Filesystem Limitations?

A

Adam Nix

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So FAT32 is limited to file sizes of 4GB or less. I've read on the forums that FAT32 is the filesystem used by RED. Does this equate to limits on shot times, or does the camera somehow split clips? Or am I just missing something here?
 
Exactly. I sometimes shoot 120 minute takes no problem. Tons of split files, but the Red software automatically assembles them, you just load the first.
 
Just about all file-based cameras use FAT-32 (or FAT-16) as it's the only format universally readable by Mac, PC, etc. And it's limited to 4GB yes but all cameras also have a solid spanning system so you don't have to stop a take until you run out of media.

Noah
 
Yeah.. The Fat32 filesystem seems to be one of those holdouts that are stuck in the dark ages of computing. Its really sad that we are all stuck on a system that was made almost 15 years ago. Lots of good Universal Filesystem alternatives seem to pop up every few years but they never seem to gain traction.

It is correct, we do a workaround to get past it.. but it really would be nice if we didn't need to.

That said.. the one good thing about splitting up the chunks.. is that it force a file close every couple minutes in case you eject too quick or get hit and loose power and get some corruption... only the last file (usually) bites it.
 
Noah Kadner said:
Just about all file-based cameras use FAT-32 (or FAT-16) as it's the only format universally readable by Mac, PC, etc. And it's limited to 4GB yes but all cameras also have a solid spanning system so you don't have to stop a take until you run out of media.

Noah
Click to expand...

No, there is UDF, which is designed for optical media but has a version ('plain' mode) which can be used on flash media, hard drives and so on. It's lightyears better than FAT32. And it's an open standard, which avoids any patent issues like TomTom had with FAT32 (which is owned by Microsoft).

Anyway, it can be used up to 2TB (and I think it supports files up to that size) with the next version supporting up to 8TB, allows Unicode filenames, has optional checksum checking, metadata and redundancy and so on.
 
Old standards die hard. Just look at MPEG and DVDs. Devised in '93, and we're just starting to get out of it for distribution (thank god!).

Except for compatibility, there is absolutely no advantage whatsoever to use FAT filesystems. Even HFS+, which is 'old' by some standards, is heavily criticized even if it's light years away from FAT. I can't wait to see ZFS being implemented into OSX. Everyone seems to say it's the holy grail of file systems.

Is FAT a problem for RED as far as access speed is concerned (or is it a design challenge / practical disappointment)? I believe I've heard other file systems can offer better performance.
 
Yeah Alexis.. ZFS was going to be great and we were looking at it too... but then Apple dropped ZFS off the snow leopard roadmap.. ZFS is in a big patent infringement suit so I doubt it will see the light.

Fat thank god is actually still pretty fast in comparison to the other file systems but it does have indexing issues.. anyone that has rendered out 40,000 DPX files to a FAT system can tell you what happens when you try to navigate around that folder :)
 
Michael T O'Connor said:
I've been hearing for the past two years that exFAT would be the next filesystem. I have yet to see anyone but MS support it though.
Click to expand...

That's because exFAT is a http://dict.leo.org/ende?lp=ende&p=12RDU.&search=proprietaryproprietary Microsoft(C)(R)(TM) standard... :(

PS: Who had this "wonderful" idea that someone can patent a simple filesystem like FAT, exFAT, etc... there's absolutely _nothing_ new and useful about these filesystems... (and I thought that was the main point in patenting something...)
 
FAT is a pretty simple filesystem. I think the original patent is probably too old now to be enforced. I don't know the whole history of filesystems ( I've only been doing computer forensics for the past two years ), but I would assume that the main patent covers how the file allocation table works. Granted, its very simple, but it is quite a bit different than how Linux filesystems work.
 
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