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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 :)

Prices of SSD Cards

rod bradley said:
And as a few have pointed out -- it is what it is. And it's not going to change radically.

I think it's fairly safe to assume this ia a "profit point" for Red, let's even say it's a high end one. But there are some advantages to the "little guy" (me being one) in it being the media and not the camera.

You can develop work-arounds, getting by with 2 SSDs (even 1) -- or renting or sharing or borrowing. And recording to external recorders that are as inexpensive as the media when you don't require the raw. So, in an imperfect world where companies have to prosper, perhaps it is not the worst compromise for both company and customer.

Think of it as 35mm film you get to use over and over. That never gets f***ed-up in the lab. Oh, sorry, you weren't born yet! Yeah, and it was heavy. Really heavy. And you had to load it in a changing bag, and it could get scratched... etc
Click to expand...

I knew 35mm was dead to me when I had a couple used canister sitting in my fridge's bin... going to waste for literally years. It's just so clunky and so many things can and will go wrong with it. There's no guess-work, no light leak or hairs. Using it in film school is when I gave up shooting... now, with RED, I refound my 'love' of shooting since I get what I think I'm getting.

[Sidebar; similar to shooting on film, having edit film on a flatbed should be a requirement for all Avid and FCP student editors so you can appreciate the art, how far it's come and how lucky this next generation is to have unlimited and accurate freedom of creation. I feel like an old man even though I'm 36, but when I got started young, you had a vision of an edit but you were so restricted by the different exposures of the film, limited and lame 'master' angles since there was no budget for real coverage, and then the effort of just making a simple dissolve. Conforming? What a nightmare that was. It's just more "fun" now with digital, ya know? Now, there's no excuse... if we didn't make the film we wanted, then it's almost 100% on us, not our gear.]

I've rationalized the cost of SSD cards the same way, like, well... 400' used to be this much and it wasn't much time... and that was one and done.... and I'm not paying for processing and conforming... so... eh, it works out :)
 
Justen Nguyen said:
When the ssd modules first came out for the R1, Red stated that their redmags were comprised of SLC and not MLC ssd's.
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Regardless what they stated, those Toshiba SSD modules are of MLC variety.
 
Gavin Greenwalt said:
Just do what I did, buy a blackmagic hyperdeck shuttle. Use your 2.5" drives and record for hours.

You can get 5 hours of record time for the price of one 64GB card. Save RAW for when you need it.
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What is the Hyperdeck recording format? So you would have SSD REDMAG in the camera's slot simultaneous recording with BHDeck?
 
Petri Teittinen said:
Regardless what they stated, those Toshiba SSD modules are of MLC variety.
Click to expand...
As SLC would have 100K + writes, that makes sense, there would be a much longer warranty.

But even with MLC @ at least 5K writes, having a three month warranty does not seem related to a time frame where the max # of writes could occur.

Possibly the warranty should reflect the rather large markup as they may be one of the most expensive SSDs you can buy?

I personally feel a bit uncomfortable with such a short warranty on such an expensive part. A Crucal M4, used all day inside a computer for rendering has a 3 year warranty.
 
In it's daily, average use your typical redmag may experience:

High/low humidity, altitude, impacts of all kinds, being connected / disconnected, prematurely disconnected, bumped, thumped, lost, forgotten, found again, catch a little bit of rain, catch the cold or heat etc.

Point is, despite all that, you'll get 4k at 24fps - guaranteed (scarlet). If you could and would take your chances with other brands , I'm sure they'd query the usage ergo the warranty.

That's why comparing crucial memory warranty to something that's used in the field, the way a mag will be used, is inappropriate and misleading.

Would I like my red mags to cost $10 and be guaranteed for 5 years? Absolutely. Would I like to worry about dropped frames or missing data, when we've got many more $$$'s in front of the camera on that day?.. You get where I'm going.

I'm pretty sure we'd hear all about it if redmags started playing up after 3 months. Fact is we don't.

The overall ownership cost to shoot Red right now, as a system, is extremely low compared to anything else at the same level. It's worth keeping that in mind when building out your system.
 
Jason Honeycutt said:
I just bought my second 64gb card... I'm hoping that'll be enough to shoot and offload while doing commercials and music videos, all comes down to the offload speed but with eSata, should be okay I hope. I have my first 'real shoot' with my Scarlet in four weeks, a commercial, thus my frustration and concern going into it. I might just rent some extra cards, to be safe.
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Guys, I've been using 2 x 64GB on my Scarlet for some time and is plenty in all situations. Unless I am up the Himalayas, in which case I will probably need to take a few more.
 
anyone who thinks redmags are expensive should go buy an alexa raw recorder and then get back to me about costs lol
 
I was bringing up the Gemini SSDs because for all intensive purposes they are the same. Neither RED nor Convergent Deaign manufactures flash. It all has to be sourced. From what I've been told we currently have the fastest flash available with the next gen product making an appearance next Spring? I'm sure most high end camera manufactures buy almost the same flash from the top flash manufactures for their RedMags, Gemini SSDs, Codex packs, etc. My experience with these varying recording media is that they're all about the same in terms of consistent read/write speeds. I've found the Gemini SSDs to be slightly faster with downloads (eSata) than the others. But CD also has a Thunderbolt transfer station for their SSDs that smokes everything else(2x realtime).

BTW: the CD Arriraw recorder with (5) 256GB SSDs would set u back about 15K
 
Brian Merlen said:
anyone who thinks redmags are expensive should go buy an alexa raw recorder and then get back to me about costs lol
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Funny thing you mention that, we are thinking of purchasing one. But the difference is, it's Arri. Brand loyalty and Arri can charge those high end costs because of that. We know the prices/resell value and clients are willing to pay for it. That's the point. I'm surprised you didn't bring up film stock so we can have that argument.

Yes, REDMAGs are less expensive compared to ARRI but I think the argument tends to why they haven't released cheaper options.
RED is building cameras not media.

90 day warranty is a joke especially we are charged a premium for it.
 
rod bradley said:
And as a few have pointed out -- it is what it is. And it's not going to change radically.

I think it's fairly safe to assume this ia a "profit point" for Red, let's even say it's a high end one. But there are some advantages to the "little guy" (me being one) in it being the media and not the camera.

You can develop work-arounds, getting by with 2 SSDs (even 1) -- or renting or sharing or borrowing. And recording to external recorders that are as inexpensive as the media when you don't require the raw. So, in an imperfect world where companies have to prosper, perhaps it is not the worst compromise for both company and customer.

Think of it as 35mm film you get to use over and over. That never gets f***ed-up in the lab. Oh, sorry, you weren't born yet! Yeah, and it was heavy. Really heavy. And you had to load it in a changing bag, and it could get scratched... etc
Click to expand...

haha it reminds me years back about film camera.
true, it's really heavy, i experienced on my own back.
no assistant, no sound guy, no light guy, it's me and the producer.
i had that 16mm arri and lenses on my back, nagra and micr + cables and lights + wire + stands running around London for
10 days. I WILL NEVER EVER DO IT AGAIN.
 
It makes me wonder if the reason RED does not want to enable the camera to delete clips is because if you could, then you wouldn't need to buy high-capacity and expensive RED SSD's.
 
If you go to the below thread and find Jarred's post, then hit the Red Team button on the right to jump to his next post, he provides some details regarding some of the efforts that go into making the SSD cards. Also there can be a pretty big variance in performance even between the same brand and model of SSDs. Think about the chips that drive the Scarlet. I'm not sure if they are still doing this, but initially chips in the Scarlet were intended for Epics but weren't fast enough to keep up. Instead of throwing them away they find a new life in a Scarlet. With this said I'm sure that for every one of the SSDs that make it out the door, a few just couldn't keep up and end up not being used. I for one am just grateful that we don't have to use 16GB CF cards. A long live event with that kind of limitation would not be fun.

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?65744-SCARLET-ANNOUNCEMENT-Feedback&p=858346#post858346

;DFDooley
 
Todd T said:
It's not the size, it's the speed. No other commercially available product can match the sustained write speeds necessary to capture r3d code as it is generated by the Epic.
Click to expand...

But now that COTS SSDs are finally improving in the area of speed and delivering predictable, consistent latencies -Intel 520 and Samsung 840 immediately come to mind- this argument becomes much weaker.

In another generation most cheap commercial SSDs built around Sandforce controllers will match or eclipse Red SSDs. They will be 'good enough' for 99% of the users. In that situation having expensive proprietary SSDs will only hurt the Red-volution. Oh, for sure people will still buy Red cameras (who else gives this much performance per dollar, truly no one), but they will also complain how Red is morphing into the new Sony.

If this is about making money the underhanded HP way (cheap printer + absurdly expensive ink cartridge), Red should simply increase the base price of the 'brains' and call it a day. It will antagonize fewer people, better to be upfront about such things. If it isn't about making money the HP way, then there should be a firmware option to allow proven COTS SSDs from reputable manufacturers to work as storage.
 
Liana said:
But now that COTS SSDs are finally improving in the area of speed and delivering predictable, consistent latencies -Intel 520 and Samsung 840 immediately come to mind- this argument becomes much weaker.

In another generation most cheap commercial SSDs built around Sandforce controllers will match or eclipse Red SSDs. They will be 'good enough' for 99% of the users. In that situation having expensive proprietary SSDs will only hurt the Red-volution. Oh, for sure people will still buy Red cameras (who else gives this much performance per dollar, truly no one), but they will also complain how Red is morphing into the new Sony.

If this is about making money the underhanded HP way (cheap printer + absurdly expensive ink cartridge), Red should simply increase the base price of the 'brains' and call it a day. It will antagonize fewer people, better to be upfront about such things. If it isn't about making money the HP way, then there should be a firmware option to allow proven COTS SSDs from reputable manufacturers to work as storage.
Click to expand...

I think this sums it up:
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?65744-SCARLET-ANNOUNCEMENT-Feedback&p=858664#post858664

Red can't afford to have a user's mistake tarnish the Red brand. That's the same reason Sony and Panasonic have their own media, SxS and P2, that are just as expensive as Red's. Keep in mind too that when you're talking about speed, that's speed that has to be sustained continuously without overheating in conditions that could be really hot. The Red SSDs are built like tanks, I bet you could throw one off a cliff without it breaking.
 
Gabe Conroy said:
Red can't afford to have a user's mistake tarnish the Red brand. That's the same reason Sony and Panasonic have their own media, SxS and P2
Click to expand...
I guess Blackmagic Design doesn't give a crap, in that case.
 
Petri Teittinen said:
I guess Blackmagic Design doesn't give a crap, in that case.
Click to expand...

Well that makes sense for them...their main goal is to make an affordable camera for no-budget filmmakers. People looking at a low cost solution like the BMCC are already giving up security for the low price. Red, Sony and Panasonic are at the top of their industries, they're trying to be the absolute best. The BMCC won't be shooting a new Peter Jackson movie, or Disney's new tentpole, or Ridley Scott's next film, ect.
 
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