Komodo sustained write speed / minimum card rate specs?

[J. Orlandi]

Do we have anywhere an indication of what the CF requirements are going to be for the Komodo in terms of sustained write speeds?

 

[Phil Holland]

Do we have anywhere an indication of what the CF requirements are going to be for the Komodo in terms of sustained write speeds?

I think RED has yet to release the fully recommended list, but here's what I can tell you for sure.

Do not use 64GB CFAST 2.0 cards.

Most 128GB cards worked fine here, but I personally would suggest any card from a reputable manufacturer that is in the 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB capacity. It's no secret I'm using Angelbird 1TB media mainly, but that's just my path. RED's also offering branded Angelbird cards shortly. I know a few owners using ProGrade stuff just fine.

Hard data rates are difficult to say at the moment because of potential updates, but it's more or less:

Komodo at 24p 6K 17:9 REDCODE RAW HQ (the highest data rate):

1TB = about 1 hour
512GB = about 30 minutes
256GB = about 15 minutes
128GB = um, you probably don't want to swap cards this much.

 

[Thomas B.]

Thanks, Phil.
...aaand is there some sort of capacity limit for media? 2TB maybe? It's probably safer to have more media in case of media loss/failure...just wondering.

 

[Phil Holland]

Thanks, Phil.
...aaand is there some sort of capacity limit for media? 2TB maybe? It's probably safer to have more media in case of media loss/failure...just wondering.

There isn't exactly about 1TB CFAST out there. But you can indeed record to other media using adapters and cables. I haven't discovered major pains there and I have recorded to something that was 8TB in capacity. I know two manufacturers likely making external SSD adapters that are a bit more robust than a strip cable plugging straight into a drive too.

 

[Thomas B.]

Okay, thanks.

 

[J. Orlandi]

I think RED has yet to release the fully recommended list, but here's what I can tell you for sure.

Do not use 64GB CFAST 2.0 cards.

Most 128GB cards worked fine here, but I personally would suggest any card from a reputable manufacturer that is in the 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB capacity. It's no secret I'm using Angelbird 1TB media mainly, but that's just my path. RED's also offering branded Angelbird cards shortly. I know a few owners using ProGrade stuff just fine.

Hard data rates are difficult to say at the moment because of potential updates, but it's more or less:

Komodo at 24p 6K 17:9 REDCODE RAW HQ (the highest data rate):

1TB = about 1 hour
512GB = about 30 minutes
256GB = about 15 minutes
128GB = um, you probably don't want to swap cards this much.

Yeah I was just more curious about actual sustained write rates as even the big name companies have various different speeds. Like sustained write of 490Mb/s vs 540Mb/s like if it needs to be above 500 sustained or what the threshold is for stability sake. Say shooting 6K at the HQ in the highest framerate possible, what card can sustain the writing. Some Cards are sustained 400Mb/s write speed, would that be the lowest card able to handle full output or not?

 

[Phil Holland]

Yeah I was just more curious about actual sustained write rates as even the big name companies have various different speeds. Like sustained write of 490Mb/s vs 540Mb/s like if it needs to be above 500 sustained or what the threshold is for stability sake. Say shooting 6K at the HQ in the highest framerate possible, what card can sustain the writing. Some Cards are sustained 400Mb/s write speed, would that be the lowest card able to handle full output or not?

The coldest answer I will ever give regarding printed write and read speeds, both in burst and in sustained circumstances is to date as of July 9th, 2020 none, zero, zip of what's printed on a site, box, or on the card itself is true for mass media.

However.

Some good quality manufactures aren't going to swindle you and the media does the job. I don't mind saying Angelbird, Sandisk, ProGrade, Sony, and a few others (Jarred shared this btw). I don't spend my whole life running week long tests on this stuff usually.

The key thing, and this applies to all media whether it's CFast 2.0, CFexpress, MINI-MAGs, or whatever is to look at these things:

- Read/Write at various write capacities, performance takes a hit sometimes a deep hit as a card fills half way or more
- Read/Write at actual media sizes, sort of think about the speed boosts you might see in RAID 0 kinda
- Speeds at various temperatures
- Speed droop during expected media life expectancy

As far as I can tell manufacturers, like media peeps, post the Read/Write of RAW data (straight data write, no file system). Which is not exactly what is reflected when you actually format media with a filesystem. This is essentially a car manufacturing posting an expect miles per gallon, but only testing the vehicle on friction free tire rollers instead of actual roads.

With Komodo for instance it writes REDCODE RAW in 2GB chunks and theoretically many would think CFast 2.0 is faster than RED MINI-MAGs when writing or reading, I can assure you, it is not.

Last year when I got to look deep into the eyes of CFexpress with a mouth salivating with potential for the future and I was having a massive about of media failure mainly due to heat issues, at the end of the day most media wasn't getting the 1GB/s + data rates on the sticker, but rather closer to somewhere between 600MB/s-close to 900MB/s.

Considering over provisioning needed to predict manufacturing variance and speed hits over the life of media, that is what you have to tap into. I was looking at this mainly as the new cameras were needing "certain" CFexpress cards to even work, much like Komodo needs a certain minimum speed.

Komodo "needs" about 300MB/s in actuality. But basically what I'm saying is you literally can't go by what mass media vendors print unfortunately. The good thing about mass media is it's readily available, often inexpensive, and the reputable brands do a decent job at letting you know what media you should use. In the mobile space you guys likely see microSD cards that need VIII for like H.265 4K video or whatever. That's how they solved that problem while still printing a fairly inflected data rate on the sticker.

This all dates back to brick and mortar, walking by a product shelf, and just picking the highest number. Some of which for years has been not exactly correct. Certainly correct and provable in court if looking at RAW data writes and reads, but not if we are talking exFat, NTFS, etc.

Sorry about the deep nerd post there.

What is good is whatever RED's testing, they are discovering pretty much the same stuff I am on this front. So they are looking and testing it the right way as far as I can tell. Meanwhile as Komodo's firmware is refined and tuned, data rates might fluctuate a bit to see if there's more juice in this block shaped can, but for right now that's the news basically.

 

[J. Orlandi]

Excellent info, I knew that data rates were always wonky on regular internal SSD drives for computers because I've tested these here and their numbers were all over the place depending on data being written ect so I definitely know what youre talking about.

Nerding out is fine, you'll see me do it about things too, especially lighting haha. I've got all kinds of AngelBird media since I'm a dealer, so I was interested in seeing which ones make the cut for komodo since I can't test it myself until our komodo arrives here hopefully within the next few weeks.

 

[Peter Stanley]

I’ve always thought a great way for cameras to deal with write speeds would to have an internal fast flash / ssd style card thats used to record too, then it transfers to a cfast card or whatever you put into the camera as you keep recording. Kind of buffering, Then once you stop recording you leave the card in for a few moments to finish the transfer.

I don’t know how recoding to cameras works so that could sound like the stupidest idea ever haha.

 

[Gregory Karydis]

I’ve always thought a great way for cameras to deal with write speeds would to have an internal fast flash / ssd style card thats used to record too, then it transfers to a cfast card or whatever you put into the camera as you keep recording. Kind of buffering, Then once you stop recording you leave the card in for a few moments to finish the transfer.

I don’t know how recoding to cameras works so that could sound like the stupidest idea ever haha.

A buffer works for stills cameras (ie when you record a continuous burst) and the shots are then transferred to a card as the buffer empties and you can hit the shutter button again.
But if you shoot a continuous stream that's 1h long or more, then the buffer needs to be at least 1TB and once the read/wrire life-cycle ends, you'd have to replace the internal buffer memory entirely.
Sure, there are (costly) workarounds, but why?

 

[David Rasberry]

I’ve always thought a great way for cameras to deal with write speeds would to have an internal fast flash / ssd style card thats used to record too, then it transfers to a cfast card or whatever you put into the camera as you keep recording. Kind of buffering, Then once you stop recording you leave the card in for a few moments to finish the transfer.

I don’t know how recoding to cameras works so that could sound like the stupidest idea ever haha.

This is exactly how my Digital Bolex is set up. Internal 512GB SSD (90 minutes plus) and dual C-fast for off load. In practice the auto transfer between shots took too long on narrative sets if time was a factor, so most do manual transfers during breaks between setups. I never bothered with C-fast and just use the USB3 transfer to a laptop with Slimraw software for offload and backup. Plan to send the camera in for a 2TB upgrade soon. Mine is five years old now and the SSD is reaching eol. New drives are much better.

With C-fast 2 or Xpress the auto offload between takes might work better, but no one wants to wait on the camera to finish before rolling the next take.

I do really like the rugged self contained ready to shoot feature of the bolex. Ninety minutes of footage and 3 hours plus on time on the internal drive and battery and the security of a reliable enterprise grade SSD.