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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 :)

CF cards hot swappable? If no why not? Maybe some day?

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BigLu

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It would be helpful to hear from someone at RED.

I know that you have to Eject the CF cards before you can pull them out.

I haven't tried but I guess I should.
But what will happen if 1 does not eject it properly?

I love how the P2 cards work with the HVX-200
you can pull them while recording and you don't really have to ever stop recording if you didn't want to, just keep hot swapping cards one after another non stop all day long.
I LOVE THAT.

I see that the RED camera only has a slot for 1 card.
But is there any information on maybe a hot swappable set up and maybe a second slot so 1 can keep recording without ever having to stop.

Any info anybody?
Thanks in advanced.
 
I'm not RED, so the following could be completely talking out my ass, but these are what I see as the issues to consider...

CompactFlash is essentially an IDE device. It doesn't really have an interface to handle a hot-eject. The best you could do is put a hardware 'eject' button on the slot that would force the device unmount and allow safe removal.

Also, I'm pretty sure you can't pull the P2 card that is currently active on an HVX, so with only one slot on the RED the swapping option isn't really available.

A larger issue with spanning across multiple cards (ala P2 or XD EX) is that the files have to be broken when the card fills. RED's file format certainly supports that (presently clips and broken into parts to avoid >2GB files) but I don't know about the logistics of spanning that across the cards - the RED naming and directory structure is quite specific and doesn't seem to lend itself to being spanned.

Also, in my experience with P2 and EX, the clips that span between cards can be problematic (I believe I had cases on both systems where the spanned clip is 'broken' when I come to access it). With the options available with RED (CF supporting upto 4-5min at 4K, heaps of space on RED Drive, and anytime-now RED Flash SSD) there is no real need to have clips spanning multiple cards/drives.
 
Hot-Swap is one of the features on the drawing board for CFast which is replacing CF.
 
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