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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'...

Jeff Kilgroe said:
I think it's safe to say they have shipped over 6000 cameras given the SN's are close to 7000.

I'd be surprised if RED turned a profit before they sold 5000 cameras.

It seems that over the past few years, for every 10 new FLASH products announced, only one makes it to market and is often 6 to 8 months late.
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Jeff, I think your 6K number is about right. I've been involved in manufacturing both on a small scale and have had a few very high up inside contacts at other camera manufacturers so I'd be surprised if RED didn't turn a profit by 1500 sold and VERY surprised if it wasn't by 2000. But of course that's all just beer talk.

As far as flash - I understand there has been a lot of smoke and hype, but we aren't asking for that actual 600x spec but just a 32gb "measuring up to a 2007 lexar 8gb"
 
Michael Hastings said:
As far as flash - I understand there has been a lot of smoke and hype, but we aren't asking for that actual 600x spec but just a 32gb "measuring up to a 2007 lexar 8gb"
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Sad.. I know... :-( I have yet to find one. The 450X 16GB Transcend cards do it right out of the package, but after a few uses their performance degrades and they also struggle as they heat up. The 16GB Lexars use the same memory controller as the 8GB cards, they just double-stack the NAND chips on each controller channel in tandem. So they perform the same as the 8GB cards in most respects, but performance falls off if the card ends up accessing all secondary chips at the same time. So the card shows weird drops in read/write times.

A card needs to sustain 45MB/s at a variety of block sizes and temperature ranges, and over multiple uses, to be useful at the same level as the 8GB RED / Lexar cards.

I can't discuss what my use for the cards is, but I've looked at having them manufactured. I don't have deep enough pockets to actually do it and companies just want money to give it a try, they can't even offer assurance that they can build what I need with current technology. Also, my application is pretty low volume... So I keep testing. I'm open to just about any format at the moment, so I test SDHC/SDXC, CF and a few others here and there. I think when it's going to take off is when SDXC and C.Fast get into full swing, probably about the middle of next year.
 
Jeff:

As discouraging as it may be, I really appreciate the time you've taken to explain all this.


binodpradhan said:
Michael Hastings said:
- as I said in my last post my frustration is that I'm locked out from making my own evaluation, and I'm suggesting RED alter that policy.

What do you mean when you say you are locked out?
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The camera won't let you shoot normal 4k with unapproved cards - so we can't even test for ourselves. As I mentioned in an earlier post, 8 and even 16 gigs are too small for us to use in our underwater shooting, so we have to design the housing to accommodate the hard drive which means the housing has to be longer and also creates heat problems which besides limiting shooting times in warmer water due to eventual camera shutdown, ironically also seems to create some reliability problems and frame/data loss and in some cases an i/o error that may require a reboot.

On the other hand usually - while some dropped frames would be irritating - underwater work isn't as critical as say a high budget movie where any glitch can cost tens of thousands of dollars. A 32 gig card that would operate fairly reliably at 4k would be acceptable for most uses. If we had those we could reasonably make the R1 housing several inches shorter which helps a lot of things but also means it would be a much more practical conversion to an Epic housing - which is a real concern for anyone looking at purchasing a housing for R1 right now.
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Michael,

Have you experimented with the RED RAM for your underwater uses? They don't generate anywhere near as much heat as the RED Drive and of course don't suffer from dropped frames due to motion. I have yet to encounter any errors when shooting to the RAM. They were an expensive purchase, but have been well worth it in terms of reliability. Not to mention they have pretty much paid for themselves just in rentals.

I would be a little leery of buying a RED RAM right now though. All indicators seem to say that a big price / capacity adjustment is in order.

I haven't had the pleasure of shooting RED underwater yet. Haven't even pulled out my SCUBA gear in the past 6 years. But it's definitely something I want to get back to doing. I'm really looking forward to Epic / Scarlet and smaller underwater configurations than what I'm seeing for the RED One.
 
i assume the red ram is just raided 2.5 inch SSD's in there, possibly like... 4 of them? capacities are reaching 512 gb now on the consumer end, the fastest ones still lie in the 256 gb range... it's probably all gonna come up at once, and be about a thousand dollars cheaper. much fun :)
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Michael,

Have you experimented with the RED RAM for your underwater uses?
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2 problems 1) price, besides my own hesitancy to spend that much, a lot of this is about being able to reasonably expect the customers to spend that much, and 2) I want to be able to make the housings shorter and REDRAM doesn't let us eliminate the drive space/cabling.

Jeff Kilgroe said:
Michael,

I haven't had the pleasure of shooting RED underwater yet. Haven't even pulled out my SCUBA gear in the past 6 years. But it's definitely something I want to get back to doing. I'm really looking forward to Epic / Scarlet and smaller underwater configurations than what I'm seeing for the RED One.
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Ironically, I haven't done nearly as much U/W as I thought I would - and it's my business - but been busy making housings and other stuff. I'm REALLY antsy for Epic as it is PERFECT for U/W. I will probably keep the same diameter since you still want to be able to use lenses like the Zeiss UP10 or 8R but it can be a lot shorter and still have plenty of storage and battery, plus the REDMOTE is going to really make camera control a lot easier.
 
For me I think it would be great for there too be a page on www.red.com that would list the various CF cards that have been tested and a performance chart indicating how well they did. It'd also be great if they could post upcoming peformance tests each time a new card comes too market so that people could see when an answer is coming. By giving everyone a precise reference they wouldn't have so many people getting angry that they are being 'Locked Out'.

One of the reasons such a database of information will be important is because when the Scarlets come around a lot of the tested cards will be good enough for shooting on the 2/3rd camera.

For what it's worth I agree with Jeff. I don't want cards that are only just good enough for rc28. We wouldn't have these problems with a 2K camera though :) hehe

Paul
 
The reason why RED restricts CF cards is simple. In the past there have been instances where (even rental houses) supplied RED One's with non-RED CF cards, which subsequently failed on big jobs. Everybody remembered that it was a RED camera, no one remembered that is was an unapproved CF card. So, they are simply protecting their brand - and watch our backs at the same time.

(And this from someone who uses 8gig cards, though I would love 32 or 64gig ones. But I am positive that the delay in their arrival has absolutely nothing to do with greed.)

---

(And as far as serial numbers go, when we reserved our camera around NAB 2008, we were given a serial, just below 4.000 - and I am sure that some reservation holders did drop out in the aftermath.)
 
Michael Hastings said:
Wondering how you can confirm? I know the serial numbers are up there but there has always been a question of how many dropped out that had reservations and whether those SNs were recycled or skipped.

I suspect the number is substantially higher but I was going with a minimalist number since even at 4000 it adds up to a lot of revenue.
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I only presumed that serial number=number of units sold because I didn't get the serial number issued until I completed the payment.

Besides, my comment was light hearted.

Also, to stay on topic, I used my Red 8GB CF card for the first time yesterday and got the "slow media" warning. :shrug:
 
Just tested 64GB yesterday, Yea, just like Jim Said "NO-GO!" Doesn't work, don't spend money on this SanDisk 32GB or 64GB. Under 2K, the card can be recognized, under 4K, no way. But the good thing is , this CF is not ours.
 
Shawn Nelson said:
The bottom line is we need cheap 16gb cards and new 32gb cards asap, like yesterday. If Red doesnt have the capacity to prioritize that testing (unsure of their manpower) i'd hope a special build would enable user field testing.
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I really like this idea - the "break your neck @ your own risk" build.
(hey... that sounds like the early adapor deal...) with a warning on the splash screen and continuely on the LCD/EVF that does not go away, so that renters are not unconciously doing risky stuff.
 
Yang Liu said:
Just tested 64GB yesterday, Yea, just like Jim Said "NO-GO!" Doesn't work, don't spend money on this SanDisk 32GB or 64GB. Under 2K, the card can be recognized, under 4K, no way. But the good thing is , this CF is not ours.
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But that is a firmware issue AFAIK
 
Yang Liu said:
Just tested 64GB yesterday, Yea, just like Jim Said "NO-GO!" Doesn't work, don't spend money on this SanDisk 32GB or 64GB. Under 2K, the card can be recognized, under 4K, no way. But the good thing is , this CF is not ours.
Click to expand...

There is currently no way for end-users to fully test these cards in the cameras themselves as the camera restricts unauthorized media to shooting in 2K. You can test 2K at different rates, but unless the cards are unlocked they're of limited use.

I'd be curious to know benchmarks on the card via a SATA to CF interface with various common disk benchmarking tools, AJA test, etc..

Cool that you already have one of these new cards. I haven't received one yet that I've ordered.
 
I was perusing this thread and wishing that either Red would develop/approve a 32GB CF, or drop the price on the 16GBs. Looks like I got my wish, in part...

http://www.red.com/store/700-0020

I love how they sneak these little surprises in. I'm hoping this means the tech has gone down in price, and new media is soon to come.
 
Darn! I just bought 4 cards at $495 each. Oh well.

Can't wait for larger cards ... especially if the price is right.

Phan Tran
 
i wonder if red is gonna come out with a raided CF system, much similar to the panasonic E-series cards. the bandwidths for epic series and scarlet series cameras are increasing by a factor of 10x. and there will always be a need for a SSD solution for camera rigs...
 
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