Best RED Media Reader Options 2019

[Tommy Penick]

Apologies if this is the wrong forum, or something that's been covered, but I've looked up and down and can't find what I'm looking for.

What Mag readers are people using these days with USB-C that provides the best offloading speed? Few options out there, but haven't seen any comparisons between them.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Michael Tiemann]

Apologies if this is the wrong forum, or something that's been covered, but I've looked up and down and can't find what I'm looking for.

What Mag readers are people using these days with USB-C that provides the best offloading speed? Few options out there, but haven't seen any comparisons between them.

Thanks in advance!

AFAIK, RED MiniMags cannot offload faster than plain vanilla USB 3.0, so no benefit to USB-C. Of course there are plenty of multi-port USB 3.0 hubs that connect to a single ended USB-C wire, which is helpful when connecting to laptops that have no USB 3.0 ports themselves. But that's more a question of electrical convenience and cable dressing, not optimizing offloading speed.

I'll also say that on OSX, while formatting as UDF has the great advantage that ProRes proxy files can be written as one long file instead of individual files that have to be stitched together before any NLE will recognize them as legitimate R3D proxy files, the UDF mount and unmount operations are terribly slow. So I fotmat as FAT32 and they mount and unmount very quickly, which leads to less overall time spend in the process of offloading.

 

[DJ Meyer]

The mags themselves are capable of around 450 MB/s offload real-world speed so if you're not getting that you're leaving performance on the table. I haven't used the USB-C readers but the USB3 ones are not quite that fast. I use the g-tech + thunderbolt ones myself.

 

[Michael Tiemann]

The mags themselves are capable of around 450 MB/s offload real-world speed so if you're not getting that you're leaving performance on the table. I haven't used the USB-C readers but the USB3 ones are not quite that fast. I use the g-tech + thunderbolt ones myself.

USB 3.0 can handle up to 640 MB/sec, so 450 MB/sec (which I see all the time) is no problem for USB 3.0.

 

[Tommaso Alvisi]

USB 3.0 can handle up to 640 MB/sec

No it can't, real world speeds are limited by the USB3 to SATA interface chip used in the bridgeboard of the reader, usually VIA or, better ASMedia and both tops at around 400-450MB/sec.

RED readers uses the fastest on the market and both, USB3 and USBC get the same speed of around 400-450MB/sec.

G-Tech Thunderbolt one doesn't gain speed but on some systems TB can be more stable and less susceptible to magnetic interference (common problem with 2.4G WiFi and BT for USB3/USBC).

The USB3 version has the added benefit of the additional eSata and FW800 interfaces, the USBC version is more compact which can be handy at times.

Hope it helps!

 

[Tom Gleeson]

USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 Gen1 in theory can do 640MB/sec but has been pointed out real world performance is more likely @450MB/sec. Of course there is USB3.1 Gen 2 that should see an approximate doubling in data throughput over the others but the bottleneck is the Red Mini Mags and I have never got a sustained output much past 450MB/sec. Computers that have USB3.1 Gen 2 connections should be capable of double the data rates and you may see an improvement in transfer speeds if you are copying to multiple drives on the assumption that the Bus would have a higher throughput ? I have not done real world testing. Who are the idiots that set up these naming protocols? USB-C is even more confusing and don't mention USBC cables !

 

[Michael Lindsay]

Hi Tom

What exact reader are you using or get 450MBs sustained? g-tech.?

Thanks

Ps On a side note I really Hope Red dramatically reduces the price of their media soon.. i like taking on productions enough media not to recycle anything until the shoot part of the project is over and currently the media is too pricey to do that with.

 

[Tom Gleeson]

I'm using the new Red Mini mag 3.1 on my 2012 MacBook Pro with an internal SSD. I can only reach these speeds by transferring onto the internal drive as the Bus does not need to do input and output. If I transfer to my external 2TB Toshiba T3 SSD I am usually seeing over 300MB/sec. I so hate seeing the slow spinning drives that clients turn up with and on larger budgets its insane not to be using the faster and more reliable SSDs. ON amazon the 2TB T3 is selling for only $347USD. For a measly $200 you will save hour after hour of production time for many years while keeping the data more secure.