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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 :)

Can you use other SSD drives?

That's a shame. I wonder why RED is not going to allow people to use other brands of SSD's. You can use other makes of CompactFlash cards so why not SSD? Most SSD's now are able to read and write at the rates you need for REDCODE. $3,200 for a 256GB SSD seems a bit steep for what they are. Does anyone know the full read and write specs of RED's SSD's?
 
this has been discussed very heavily already, RED doesn't allow third party media because they've had issues before with that, where third party media failed and the customer blamed RED for the fault.

You can't really use third party CF cards, your locked out of resolutions that isn't 2k and limited FR, the only ones you can use properly are 8 gb lexars, which work because they ARE 8 gb red cf cards.

and RED's SSD is guaranteed for sustained write speeds that they need 200+ mb/sec. from empty to full, and have custom connectors on them that won't break like normal sata connectors will after heavy amounts of plugging and unplugging. It's a much smarter decision on their part to offer their own bullet proof media rather than give people the option to do off the shelf stuff. It protects them, and protects the customer. What consumer SSD companies CLAIM their write and read speeds are, are never real world accurate especially sustained. Not to mention this also allows RED to custom flash the drives and have them write a specific way (just an educated guess, but makes sense) so it's optimized to write r3d all day and night. They probably have a lot of tricks up their sleeves that they aren't telling people about to get these drives to perform the way they do.
 
Seconding what Tom is saying... These are not off the shelf SSD's Neil, as what Martin said, highly customized, if some company wanted to go through the trouble of making RED mag style SSD's they'd be going through a huge R&D process, for something that might not work for EPIC.
 
Agreed with the need for RED media. But I have two reasons to hope for significantly lower prices in the not-too-distant future:

1. Moore's law

2. Demand by Epic-S and Scarlet users for media that is cheaper and fast enough for normal frame rates (maybe with HDRx on, depending on compression).

#1 will happen, always has. It's just a matter of how long it takes and how long you can wait.

#2 was rejected by Jim the first time I brought this up a few months ago. But he did consider it for about a minute. I had raised the point that there must be lots of memory rejected because it doesn't meet their QC tests. Jim did say all individual SSD's are tested, but didn't say anything about reject rates. I think that once Epic-S and Scarlet customers comprise about 90% of RED's customer base (not an unlikely number in my opinion), Jim will reconsider the second-tier media option. And I don't think it will be branded "PINK" as some jokers suggested.
 
I would also prefer to have an option to have "standard speed" media, i.e. media that can withstand up to 30 frames a second at 5k, and the "pro speed / high speed". Thus those of us who regularly shoot long form documentary/ENG/EFP style, could afford to have several slow 256g mags, plus one or two high-speed for those few situations where we need those.


But I totally understand that RED has to focus their resources, and that slower media is not a top priority for now.
 
Steve Marshall said:
That would be brilliant.
Click to expand...

I think some kind of distinctive color-coding will be necessary to make mix-ups nearly impossible. But this is a male-dominated non-"sissy" crowd and I think Jim wouldn't want people repainting pink SSD's. So a reversed color scheme - white body with black lettering - might make more sense. Now we're really speculating...
 
Martin Weiss said:
I would also prefer to have an option to have "standard speed" media, i.e. media that can withstand up to 30 frames a second at 5k, and the "pro speed / high speed". Thus those of us who regularly shoot long form documentary/ENG/EFP style, could afford to have several slow 256g mags, plus one or two high-speed for those few situations where we need those.


But I totally understand that RED has to focus their resources, and that slower media is not a top priority for now.
Click to expand...

great idea, though I don't see it happening anytime soon from a business perspective. but it really would be nice to have a "slow" version of the mag at very high capacity, 512+ gb for example. and can sustain r3d 5:1 at 24-30fps. They should even been a different color scheme so you can tell the difference...

hopefully the price of media drops as RED is able to get them cheaper from the factories, and they can pass on the savings to the customer. But it's really hard to say whether slower media is gonna be any cheaper. or that much more cheaper to be worth it depending on how many people buy it. because it's not just about maximum write speed, it's pure sustained write speed, from empty mag to full up, the same way every single time. I'm sure RED has been through it a thousand times already...

What I'd really love to see now though is a roll over recording option, attaching a way of attaching a second ssd module on the Epic. 2 major things I always wanted out of the media with RED , roll over recording, and a mechanism on the media to write protect it. guess the latter isn't possible with drive media, but roll over recording should help a lot of people with their wallets. they can just buy 2-3 lower capacity mags and just roll all day on them if they can offload immediately.
 
Martin Weiss said:
I would also prefer to have an option to have "standard speed" media, i.e. media that can withstand up to 30 frames a second at 5k, and the "pro speed / high speed". Thus those of us who regularly shoot long form documentary/ENG/EFP style, could afford to have several slow 256g mags, plus one or two high-speed for those few situations where we need those.
Click to expand...

This is what I would like to see. Most of the stuff I shoot doesn't require 5K. High frame rates would be useful, but not essential. I would be planning to buy the 3K fixed Scarlet with the SSD module, so some alternative SSD drives that are "low speed" and cheaper would be great.
 
Martin Weiss said:
I would also prefer to have an option to have "standard speed" media, i.e. media that can withstand up to 30 frames a second at 5k, and the "pro speed / high speed".
Click to expand...

Do you plan to shoot HDRx? If so, that is going to double the data rate.
 
I see no reason for RED to spend resources developing "inferior" media. Even as great as the new RED SSD's are, they're still not fast enough or large enough to live up to their future dreams of FF35 and larger format cameras. SSD prices are set to plummet rapidly over the next couple years as they begin to take over the market from mechanical hard drives. Best thing for RED to do is to keep forging ahead and eventually these SSDs will settle in price. Sure they're expensive, but not all that much in the grand scheme of things when kitting out a truly marketable EPIC package. OTOH, they're a tough nut to swallow for the Scarlet crowd... Not going to worry about that one yet until Scarlet is ready to ship. Who knows what could happen in the coming months. CF is still an option for Scarlet, but IMO doesn't make much sense. The SSDs still have lower cost per GB than the 16GB CF's do.
 
Our biggest worry is RED not being able to supply enough media... As of now the 128 and 256 are heavily in backorder...
 
When I used to shoot 16mm film for my projects I was looking at $33 a minute to get the material to my edit bay. So for 100 minutes of film thats $3,300. More expensive then a 256 SSD and can't be reformatted and used again and again and again... I used to spend 100K a year on film, processing and transfer. That was 6 or 7 years ago so I'm sure it would be more expensive now.
These cards are a bargain in my opinion.
 
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