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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 :)

32 & 64GB 90MB/s CF cards, now were talkin'...

Which 16GB Lexar? And how are you enabling 4K recording to it? Or is it one of the previous goofy 16GB 300X cards where some of them are allowed for 4K and some not?

On the 16GB 300X cards, some people have found cards that the camera will allow. The seem to work for most RC28 modes, but can occasionally drop frames and it seems to vary from card to card. As in one card works perfectly and may even allow 4K 2:1 @ RC36 as well and the next card can't do any 4K modes reliably.

I personally have not found any of those cards that allow me to record to them in anything other than 2K. And I own 4 of them and have borrowed and tried several others.
 
While that shows the cards are kinda fast for that sort of task, it's different than what is needed for RED. We would need to see some sustained transfer benchmarks via a SATA hosted CF module to really see what's going on. There's also a lot of buffering going on in the SLR and sustaining 3fps @ about 75fps with ~12 frames worth of buffering is a lot different than the card handling a constant stream of R3D data.

FWIW, I benchmarked the Lexar 16GB 600X cards a couple months ago in some of my own testing. They were a good 20%+ slower than the RED 16GB cards for sustained writes.

I've run across a few cards in my own testing that would probably be "good enough" for 4K 2:1 RC36 or 4K 16:9 RC28. But I think RED is also taking a conservative approach of making sure the cards are not just good enough, but can handle all formats on the RED One and potentially many formats on the DSMC cameras before they certify them. ...That's what I would do. There already going to have enough people complaining that the 8GB cards can't record some of the upcoming formats.

If you were to graph the write performance of these cards, I bet it looks like a heart monitor rather than a pretty straight line. That is bad, but that is what is wrong with most of the current "fast" CF cards.

Jeff I got this 32GB 600x from B&H for like $323! Unfortunately, I don't have an ability to do proper tests. Does it seem safe to assume that Red is maybe using cream-of-the-crop Lexar 32GB 600s?
 
On the latest build I have one of the new 16gb 600x cards recording 4k 16:9 25fps redcode 28. When I change to redcode 36 , camera brings up media not compatible.
 
Tom let us know when you try it out on a Red. Be great to see the results.
 
DSLRs, just like "burst" modes on the Scarlet I'd guess, don't actually write to the card at their top shooting speeds. They're buffered into RAM and then written out at a slower speed. The video doesn't show the part where after he stops firing the camera continues writing to the card for several more seconds to "catch up."
 
DSLRs, just like "burst" modes on the Scarlet I'd guess, don't actually write to the card at their top shooting speeds. They're buffered into RAM and then written out at a slower speed. The video doesn't show the part where after he stops firing the camera continues writing to the card for several more seconds to "catch up."

The buffers are not very large. With a slower card, the camera would only take like 50 or 80 RAW photos and then bog down. A friend of mine tried this exact same test - same camera, same conditions - with the new Sandisk Extreme "90Mb" card and only got about 50 frames before the buffer ran out and the frame rate dropped to like 1.2fps sustained.
 
Which 16GB Lexar? And how are you enabling 4K recording to it? Or is it one of the previous goofy 16GB 300X cards where some of them are allowed for 4K and some not?

On the 16GB 300X cards, some people have found cards that the camera will allow. The seem to work for most RC28 modes, but can occasionally drop frames and it seems to vary from card to card. As in one card works perfectly and may even allow 4K 2:1 @ RC36 as well and the next card can't do any 4K modes reliably.

I personally have not found any of those cards that allow me to record to them in anything other than 2K. And I own 4 of them and have borrowed and tried several others.


I've been using the 16g 300x lexars for about 5 months with no dropped frames. However, I can only use rc28. Perhaps I have just been lucky so far. Sorry for the bad iphone image.

Best, Peter
 

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lol, love the "fuck it" button on the right upper corner ! Is that a new option in Windows Seven ?
:badputer:

That button in question came with Apple's new version of FCP. It was installed by the former team there.
 
Just got our new Red in a few days ago! I purchased one of the Lexar 16GB 600X cards to give it a go. This is my first time ever using or dealing with a Red.

Switching to 3K or 4K says "SLOW MEDIA", so far I have ONLY gotten 2K to work using Redcode28, 36 and 42 also report slow media. Tested framerate was 29.97fps.

Guess we'll be ordering a 16GB CF from Red then.
 
CF cards

CF cards

Hi to everybody
I am new to the RED world. can you please tell me if the SD Extreme pro CF works with the RED?
Thx
 
I have the Extreme Pro 64GB 90MB and the Lexar 600X 32GB. Should I try these in my MX?
 
I think red has locked out other brand cards to 2k only
 
They won't work unless they have RED firmware installed.
 
Yep, the camera will not allow me to use the Sandisk 90MB cards for anything other than 2K low bitrate. I mean, at some point, these cards are gonna surpass some kind of threshold where they should definitely be fast enough.

Pretec has some kind of new "CFast" cards that claim super-fast speeds:

Pretec unveiled at CES 2009 the1st generation CFast of 16GB and 32GB with transfer speed up to 100MB/s. By continuously focusing on innovative solutions to offer utmost performance of NAND Flash applications, the patent pending Pretec’s 2nd generation CFast “Hypersonic series” has reached the unparalleled speed, capacity and reliability. With the sequential performance up to 250MB/s in read, 110MB/s in write speed and dimension measured only 36mmx43mmX5.0mm, CFast Hypersonic is the smallest and fastest SATA II SSD in the world. Available in capacities from 16GB to 128GB, Pretec CFast Hypersonic is the highest capacity CFast in the world.

http://www.pretec.com/news-event/press-room/item/root/press-release-2010-vol-7

It says it's a "SATA II SSD"... not sure what that means. I wonder if they will work with existing DSLRs, etc?
 
Media

Media

..at some point, these cards are gonna surpass some kind of threshold where they should definitely be fast enough.

That is a reasonable assumption. But so far we haven't identified any that do maintain the required sustained transfer (write) speed.
 
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Stuart, do you guys have any dealings with Pretec? They're a pretty cool company, in my experience, but they do tend to overpromise from time to time.
 
That is a reasonable assumption. But so far we haven't identified any that do maintain the required sustained transfer (write) speed.

SSD's are really fast out there. I'm getting really fast read/write times - certainly faster than what RED should need. Are you guys working on an SSD module will allow us to plug any SSD drive in?
 
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