Flash Incompatibility

[MikeCurtis]

If they were to certify....

1.) They'd have to test

2.) They'd have to spend the time and money to test, and then, some other manufacturer gets the benefit of that testing

3.) The speed and reliability issues make it clear to me that we need a Red branded solution - it isn't going to be a stock part you can pick up at Fry's.

Thus I find this thread moot.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

I agree with Mike

I agree with Mike

Mike makes good points. Here on the bleeding edge of technology I would rather have a fully Red solution, at least to start out.

 

[Finner]

Mike I assume you do not find yourself traveling around the world to shoot because if you did I think you would look at this quite differently.

As far as testing goes memory cards hold data if they meet the speed requirement and they are from a reputable company they have already been highly tested. Also who do you think will produce the memory for the RED. I would guess it will be a reputable flash memory company that is making flash memory already with there own products.

If film or hd tapes get lost or destroyed somewhere durring travel to a location you can still buy these products in most places and offices worldwide. If RED uses proprietary memory and you can only order it from RED people will end up stuck on location at some point with no way to shoot and there will be nothing "moot" about that.

 

[Evin Grant]

Finner, just don't get your Red with the Flash option then. Get the uncompressed out when it ships and hold your water until CF cards are voluminous and fast enough for Red to be sure of thier reliability. Because that seems to be what your advocating anyway.

 

[Mike Smith]

If they were to certify....

1.) They'd have to test

2.) They'd have to spend the time and money to test, and then, some other manufacturer gets the benefit of that testing

3.) The speed and reliability issues make it clear to me that we need a Red branded solution - it isn't going to be a stock part you can pick up at Fry's.

Thus I find this thread moot.

No offense meant Mike but I don't get what you're saying here. Are you suggesting that Red would sell a proprietary flash drive that has not been tested to meet the full specs of the Red camera? Such tests would HAVE to take into account the minimum data rate of the camera otherwise the device would be useless. They cannot rely on the specs of the memory chip manufacturer. If Red go the proprietary route, they will have to test the resulting flash drive to ensure that the manufacturing process did not damage the internals. You can't just solder together a bunch of memory chips and merely hope that they weren't damaged anywhere along the line of coming in the door and going out as an entire flash drive.

 

[Finner]

Evin from what you say it may be my fault for not understanding properly.

From what I understand is if RED builds a flash port that is RED specific you will not be able to use standard flash cards. So even when flash cards improve I would be highly suprisied if the had the RED specific port as the port they will have will be what is the standard. Thus you would have to change your RED port at that point but even then there would be old flash cards and inferior ones that would not work right? So just like now you would still have to be selective on your flash card choices.

I am just trying to figure this out. I know some of my clients would appreciate if I could use brand new flash cards on their project and just hand them over after shooting with them just like film stock. Thus the ability to buy reasonably priced sandisk memory off the shelf would be great.

 

[Jared VanLeuven]

No offense meant Mike but I don't get what you're saying here. Are you suggesting that Red would sell a proprietary flash drive that has not been tested to meet the full specs of the Red camera? Such tests would HAVE to take into account the minimum data rate of the camera otherwise the device would be useless. They cannot rely on the specs of the memory chip manufacturer. If Red go the proprietary route, they will have to test the resulting flash drive to ensure that the manufacturing process did not damage the internals. You can't just solder together a bunch of memory chips and merely hope that they weren't damaged anywhere along the line of coming in the door and going out as an entire flash drive.

I could be wrong, but I gathered that Mike was referring to 3rd party memory certification.

 

[Mike the beginner]

Here's my take on this

Red does indeed require top notch quality control on its product. This ensures the flash media works as expected.

Red ensures that the camera's do NOT require to be shipped back to red if and when a new open stndard fash port is introduced. We simply send our payment to red and they send us a new replcement flash media port or whatever. It is made simple enough for the majority of us to fit it ourselves.

Michael

 

[Finner]

Its good in theory mike but unfortunately new ports are not introduced very often. Flash memory improves but the ports stay the same for a long time.

Mike if you were given the minimum speed flash card requirements needed for your RED would you go out and buy one that does not meet the standards?

I would think every owner would be careful to buy the right flash cards.

 

[thomashopman]

Sugestion

Sugestion

Would it be a good idea to have some kind of cartridge where you could install 2 or 4 CF cards? The cardrige would have some interleave or raid function so everybody can use the cf cards with the specific speed and volume they need for the upcoming shoot. If you are going to use your red for HD or 2K mainly you could use slower/smaller CF cards. When needed you add or replace some CF cards and reformat and you will be good to go. When bigger and faster CF cards come to market every couple of months/years you can upgrade.

 

[Evin Grant]

Finner, I just take jim at his word when he says that an open standard flash device (Most likely CF) will be adopted when capacity and speed are at their requisite levels for reliability.

 

[PaulClements]

Well Red isn't going to be making their branded Flash memory in house, just as they aren't making their sensors in house, so it can be assumed that wherever they get it from already has a product that is going to be released or already has been released. As such it stands to reason that there will be other products available on the market.

I don't stand by the reasoning that if someone buys the wrong card is Red to blame? Absolutely not, anyone that spends $17,500 on a piece of electrical equipment will be more than capable of discovering the best memory to be used with it.

Whats more the entire Red revolution has been documented on these very forums and just in the same way Evin and others are collecting information on Lenses there is no reason why we cannot do the same for the individual cards on the market as and when they become available. As long as Red supplies a standard Flash drive, whether CF or other, which can write to that type of flash memory faster than the required 30Mbps or whatever it ends up being then the Onboard flash ought to be future proof enough that stripping out the entire drive and replacing it ought be entirely unnecessary.

Making aspects such as flash memory Red Branded is a very backward move in my opinion and is similar to the tactics employed by companies such as Apple and Sony that ends up being overpriced, time-consuming for replacements and annoying in the long run.

 

[Matt Uhry]

Would it be a good idea to have some kind of cartridge where you could install 2 or 4 CF cards?

YES! That would be a great solution, 4 CF cards. if you were DIY enough you could pull out a set and replace it with a matched group of faster cards. Kind of like recelling a battery. I'm a bit cranky on this topic ( like some others I think ) due to the way Panasonic bungled the P2 card size/pricing. I don't want to see Red go down that path.

Matt Uhry
www.fuzby.com

 

[Andrew M.]

I don't want RED to go that path ether.
P2 screening explanation from Panasonic is on big BS.
Like picture can not accept one bad memory cell!
Financial programs run off these flash cards, people store documents, one Byte error can freeze your program and what Panasonic can't accept two errors in the picture, wow!! In digital world things work or don't work.

You just tell people what works with RED-FLASH-INTERFACE mounted on the camera (mention 3 brands) and anything else is user own experiment and responsibility.
We have this user-net to exchange info on what works and what doesn't
Like there is no 30 days money back guaranty on the flash-cards

Andrew

 

[Finner]

Finner, I just take jim at his word when he says that an open standard flash device (Most likely CF) will be adopted when capacity and speed are at their requisite levels for reliability.

Hi Evan I trust Jim a ton as well. In fact people I know that are owners of some of the largest rental companies in LA have met with Jim and talk very highly of him.

It has nothing to do with trust for me. I just want to express that if it is possible to build the RED to accept flash memory from outside companys it would be a big plus for me. At some point responsibility has to be put on us users to choose wisely.

In the end I will probably buy most of my flash memory directly from RED as I will feel more comfortable using it but in a bind the ability to pick up flash memory from a local store would be very helpful.

I have heard that most DVX and HVX shooters will only put panasonic tapes in there cameras but in an emergency when they can't find a panasonic tape they have options. Iwould just like those kind of options.

Truely though in the end if the RED team feel they can not put a standardized flash port on the camera I will be fine with that. I just wanted to express my preference, the reasons behind them and see if others felt the same way.

 

[Craig Schober]

flash memory uncertain

flash memory uncertain

In the end I will probably buy most of my flash memory directly from RED as I will feel more comfortable using it but in a bind the ability to pick up flash memory from a local store would be very helpful.

flash memory is reliable because it is sold state but speed consistency is always an issue. marketing hype and labels cannot be trusted when it comes to raw mb/sec throughput. some cards write/read fast and some do not but all claim to have great sustained rates. who is supposed to test all these products and combinations? normally i would assign the task to red but i prefer a reasonably priced proprietary solution that they can guarantee. it's not like cheap dv tapes that are mostly interchangeable.

 

[PaulClements]

As long as that proprietary system doesn't alienate the possibility of using third party products I'd agree. People will post here on these forums if a cheaper, popular and more readily available product works fine with the Red One. Sticking one in the camera to see if it works isn't going to break the thing and the ability to buy flash locally rather than ordering it from the other side of the world is a massive plus point.

Whilst labels and other text written on card packaging may be misleading (Although in my experience this has never been the case) there are a host of good review sites for such products, the main dealers of them on the web give very thorough specifications and anyone with half an ounce ought to be able to see if it is of an exacting standard to work with Red One.

By all means have a Red Branded version but don't make it incompatible with other cards, afterall even if the other card that was being used was slower it could still possibly be used to shoot 1080p or 720p instead of 4k and probably work fine. The lessened speed would probably mean that shooting at lower resolutions was cheaper and more efficient, ideal for eng efp etc - lightweight and low cost.

 

[Chris Kenny]

It's likely that a REDFLASH mag is going to use multiple memory chips in parallel to improve performance, so allowing commodity third-party memory cards would require making it possible to open the mag itself and install your own cards.

Frankly I'm not sure this would be very useful. For one thing, it would raise costs, as it would require memory in the mag to be on memory cards; there's no reason not to just use bare chips in this application. More relevant to this discussion... RED would still effectively control pricing, because you'd still have to buy the mag from RED at RED's price.

I think at this point, we should probably just trust that RED isn't going to screw us on pricing. They haven't yet, have they?

It would be nice if they documented how the camera communicates with flash mags, so third-parties could also make them, but if RED's pricing is as aggressive as I suspect it will be, I wonder whether anyone else would bother getting into that market.

 

[RobRoySyd]

I think flash memory is a lot like a hard disk. It's not 100% flawless, parts of it maybe defective or become defective and the unit as whole is still OK. Those defective areas are simply spared out. So long as the amount spared out doesn't become excessive all is well.

However the process of redirecting read/write cycles obviously means a speed hit. Not normally a problem, maybe once in while it takes a little longer for you still camera to cycle or a file to save or retrieve.

Where it might become a problem is writing 8GB of data that needs a sustained data rate e.g. video. In all fairness to Panny I think this might be where they're coming from with their P2 card story, probably they've dumbed the story down too much so the marketing types can remember it.

I'm really guessing now, perhaps for applications such as RED the flash memory will need to be qualified as meeting sustained data rates rather than average data rates. Alternatively perhpas a large RAM buffer would obviate the problem of the odd glitch in the sustained data rate, all that needed to be met was an average data rate. Maybe the system should / could have a status warning that the flash tolerance was getting too low. Decades ago I worked on memory systems with ECC that did this sort of thing. Start getting too many corrected errors in a time window and the OS raised an alarm.

 

[Craig Schober]

red control

red control

As long as that proprietary system doesn't alienate the possibility of using third party products I'd agree. People will post here on these forums if a cheaper, popular and more readily available product works fine with the Red One. Sticking one in the camera to see if it works isn't going to break the thing and the ability to buy flash locally rather than ordering it from the other side of the world is a massive plus point.

i have an hvx200 and refuse to buy a p2 card (i use firestore which works fine for me) until pricing is more reasonable but i also understand that we're not dealing with dv/dvcpro data rates here. it's the old mac vs/ pc argument. mac user experience will always prevail so long as they maintain control over the hardware and software developers. not the best deal but the best user experience. and when you're dealing with a substantial investment like redone (unlike a flash based camcorder), i'm willing to take the hit and pay a little more for the assurance. i'm perfectly fine with sticking in a few cards to test them on red but that won't tell me anything because those cards could fail or drop frames a few hours later when i'm in the middle of a take on location. then what? i can't complain to red. all i can do is scratch that card maker off my list and try again. so the few hundred i saved i just lost on one bad take and i still have no assurances for the next card experiment.