"100 MB/SEC" = Megabytes/sec or megabits/sec?

[Jack Kelly]

So, some of the Scarlet specs are out. One of the specs mentioned on RED.com is "UP TO 100 MB/SEC. REDCODE RAW AND RGB RECORDING TO REDFLASH".

Strictly speaking, a capital "B" means "bytes" so 100MB/SEC = 100megabytes/sec which sounds very high.

Is the capitalisation of the "B" an error? I assume Scarlet only actually records at 100megabits/sec?

 

[nigelsmith]

I think the text comes from the posters in the pdf brochure - which is ALL in capitals.
The Red One poster describes its top rate as 36MB which we know is actually 36Mb.
So don't worry...

 

[Anders Holck]

No, current Redcode is either around 28 MegaBYTES or 36 MegaBYTES.
That is MB, not Mb.

100 Mbps (Megabits) would be 12.5 MB/s, which is lower that the current RED ONE.

So it's obvious that the new cameras will have much higher datarates.

If you will be able to record those 100MB/s to a flash card is unknown.

 

[Steve White]

I think what's happening is the following:

In Red One, the data throughput to the compact flash drives is limited by an internal bottleneck 36 MB/s. It doesn't matter if the flash cards can go faster, the Red One card drivers can't.

In Epic and Scarlet, they're making sure that the card readers and processing throughput can exceed 100 MB/s. Therefore, they will be able to decrease compression levels and increase frame rates. The goal seems to be to get at least 120 fps at 4K-5K.

That doesn't mean Scarlet's data rates will be 100 MB/s unless it's actually needed. Obviously the storage requirements for 100 MB/s are pretty painful - though they won't be in the future.

 

[Jack Kelly]

Interesting stuff, thanks for the replies

 

[Dylan Reeve]

I believe you're approaching the upper limits of the memory technology at around 40-50MB/s - I seriously doubt that the RED architecture is incapable of more, we know that there's an underlying SATA interface, which is 150MB/s or 300MB/s - it's very unlikely that the camera's bus isn't able to cope with at least 150MB/s.