RED STATION

[Santiago Marti]

Wow, there are some disrespectufl peeps on here- not sure how RED handles stuff that if spoken in person would induce a spinning back fist to the temple.

No coincidence that every single working DIT is raving over the solution... and those calling for spinning media support. wow, did you also clamor for more VHS decks when DVD was released, simply because of your rewinder investment?

Keep it real, put us down for 2 of everything please. Just looks pro and that's important to our clients... versus a flimsy (but mostly reliable) Lexar reader.

Tim, don't be disrespectful to other people here, and don't worry for RED, they are handling everything pretty well. Being a red one owner and waiting for epic i have to choose wisely how i spend my money cause i know i will need tons of accesories, like those really nice monitors or the new viewfinder, etc...For my needs, red station won't change my workflow a lot. If you need it buy it, if you need two of each, buy three of each, that is my advice.
The fact that anyone can say what they want, in a respectful manner, is the key to sometimes learn a thing or two. There are plenty of pros here that share their workflows.
BTW, Alexa does look pro too, buy two of each! :wink5:

 

[conrad gaunt]

where can I buy 2?

What! you know Red employees aren't allowed to buy Red products surely?

.. I predict eventually absenteeism due to "camera related sickness" will be Reds undoing..

 

[Guidofilippi]

BTW, Alexa does look pro too, buy two of each! :wink5:

Santiago... will you buy two Alexas in the near future?
Guido

 

[Tony Lorentzen]

Jarred - are these stackable in a way that makes it possible to lock them together as one unit or do I have to use Bongo ties?

 

[Santiago Marti]

Santiago... will you buy two Alexas in the near future?
Guido

Hahahaha, not a chance, first i need my red pro primes, then the epic. Even if i could afford an alexa, i wouldn't buy it. There is always someone who needs 5 cameras for the same shooting. There won't be 5 alexas, that's for sure, but you will sure find 5 epics ready to shoot! Plus i am an adobe user, why use prores when you can edit native RAW! insane.:tongue_smilie:

 

[PatC]

excited for this product. Thank you!

 

[Noah Yuan-Vogel]

http://www.directron.com/ftd64gl25h.html

Thats a 64Gb with 130Mb/sec write and its 576$...

Or this a bit faster and double and 399$...

http://www.directron.com/mknssdio128gb.html

Yes it is but what does that have to do with RED? Fast 16GB CF and even really really fast cheap ($300) 64GB CF cards were out when RED's 16GB CF cards were still $500, that doesn't mean we could use them in a RED ONE. That's part of the point I was attempting to make earlier, it's great that RED is looking to commodity computer technologies with lots of 3rd party options for their media, but if they don't support or certify any of those 3rd party options (as they have not supported it so far) then they are just saving themselves money by using mature tech they dont have to build themselves without passing any of the savings onto the customers. As I said, I hope this changes and you are right and this time they do support the <$300 128GB 200MBps SSDs (or even the new $400 128GB Sata6G drive that r/w's at 350/225MBps, can you imagine downloading your footage at 350MBps?) that are all over the place these days, not just make their own one for $2000. All I am saying is I am skeptical given their history with 3rd party media support, but we shall know soon so maybe its not even worth speculating what will and wont be supported.

 

[Bryan Golder]

I'm not too excited about this. It's a nice RED form factor, but the price is high, and there's a few things I don't understand:

1) First, $250 for a power supply? Red camera & Red accessories are starting to strike me as analogous to inkjet printers and ink cartridges. The camera is wonderfully inexpensive, because all the money is apparently recouped on the accessories.

The 2.5" REDMAG RED STATION module will accept normal 2.5" bare drives, so you can put a bare drive in ( Spinning or SSD ) and use it as an external hard drive, to offload cards to or for storage, etc.

2) Who backs up their camera negative to 2.5" hard drives? Yikes...planting that idea within the minds of non-technical producers & directors that this is a trusted backup workflow when they are budgeting for DIT/DAM...kinda scary, IMHO. Maybe no-budget run & gun shooters roll like that, but I don't. I use 2x8TB eSATA RAIDs and R3D Data Manager to make simultaneous RAID5 backups of the camera negative, and I always ask for the budget to provide an LTO drive for on-set archive as well. When the LTO option is rejected due to cost, I recommend a 3rd RAID5 backup, which I consider to be the minimal backup scenario for any production with any kind of budget at all.

3) $250 for a CF card reader module? That's not fun. Maybe I could see shelling out for it if it's built to extremely high tolerances, meant to last a lifetime, no plastic. eSATA interface for a CF reader is nice, if it truly makes downloads faster (But does it really? What's the bottleneck for a RED CF -- the card's bandwidth, or the bus speed of the reader interface?). I have killed 2 of the Lexar 800 readers -- in both cases, the pins got bent during CF insertion due to flimsy construction of the track/housing which guides the CF card into it's fully seated position. I'm now using the SanDisk Extreme FW800 readers (because that's all I could get in a pinch when my last Lexar failed on set). Many hundreds of CF insertions later, over the course of two features, they're still working fine.

4) Red Mag 2.5" -- I wish it was a 3.5" sled. 3.5" drives are bigger, faster, cheaper, and more reliable, as someone else here already rightly mentioned. Having said that, I'd probably never use it. A 4-drive RAID5 is my minimum spec for backup - and in those scenarios where I have to run totally portable, like I'm riding in a chase car with a laptop, I trust my portable FW & USB drive enclosures as much as anything, and they are certainly much cheaper.

Bryan

 

[Jarred Land]

Jarred - are these stackable in a way that makes it possible to lock them together as one unit or do I have to use Bongo ties?

They lock together with rubber shock-mounted pins.

Bryan.. too each his own.. if you don't like what we are doing, you don't need to buy it. It's that simple.

The inkjet printer analogy is pretty insulting though.. as if you take a look at our accessory line up, including lenses, and compare the prices to the rest of the professional tools out there, you will find we are incredibly fair on our pricing.

 

[Bryan Golder]

One question though, are these eSata ports hot swappable? I see I can get an ExpressCard/34 eSata card for my Macbook Pro.

The only solid eSATA solution I'm aware of for the MacBook Pro is the Sonnet Tempo Pro. Don't buy the cheaper "Sonnet Tempo", you have to get the "Pro" model. The cheaper one has a different chipset which even Sonnet doesn't recommend for use with the Mac.

eSATA is technically hot swappable, but you have to do it the way the eSATA host card wants it done. With the Sonnet Tempo Pro, you unmount all the connected volumes (the Sonnet Pro is a 2-port card), then you power off the host card (the driver software provides an on/off menu in the menubar), then you can eject the card.

Having said that, the only times where I have ever had a full meltdown kernel panic on my MBPro (where the screen dims grey and you get the "restart" message in a dozen languages) has been when I have successively hot-swapped a couple of different brands of eSATA devices. Therefore, I don't consider it a very safe thing to do.

One other thing to be aware of with Expresscard devices and the MacBook Pro -- it's really impossible to use an eSATA host card or any kind of Express/34 card which is cabled to external media on the MacBook Pro if the Mac & external media is not set somewhere solid and stationary, on a desk or cart. Express/34 cards do not lock into place in the Expresscard slot. If you gently bump or tug an eSATA cable plugged into a Sonnet Tempo Pro or other host card, it will very easily pop the whole card right out of the Expresscard slot, and the Mac will crash. The way the mechanism is built in the Expresscard slot, there's nothing that locks the card into place. According to Sonnet, it's entirely Apple's design and there's nothing the host card manufacturer can do about it. You can test it with the computer shutdown -- insert the eSATA card, it slides in and clicks into place. You think it's locked in there tight. Not so. If you just gently pull on it, it will fall right out of the computer.

Bryan

 

[Sterling Wescott]

Can I buy one now?

Seriously guys, I want one.

 

[Rick Burnett]

Bryan.. too each his own.. if you don't like what we are doing, you don't need to buy it. It's that simple.

The truth is, nothing in the Red design is even requiring you to use these accessories. You ARE using CF cards and standard connectors here and there, it's not like if someone WANTS to use a different reader or card they can't.

Of course, there is no guarantee that performance will be as advertised. With Red hardware designed to work with the camera, you are more than likely going to get advertised performance.

Ask ANYONE who buys cheap CF cards about their experiences.

This is why I buy and use Mac laptop/desktops instead of the cheapest thing I can find. They work. I pay for that peace of mind. With Red, that's what I will be looking for as well. I don't want to troubleshoot, I want to be productive.

 

[Sean Rawls]

Wow, who knew a card reader could cause such a fuss. As a data manager I'm extremely excited for this product. I will buy several. I'd like to compliment the Red team for listening to customers and anticipating the entire workflow. I like many others have built my own reader . . . but this is a superior solution. I hope the I/O boards are upgradeable to new technologies as the initial specs promised. Awesome, can't wait for the 14th.

Also, sure this has been covered, but for those wanting an eSata solution for the existing Red drive: http://www.coolcameragear.com/r2e-lemo-to-esata-cable-p-1.html. Red doesn't support this cable (or connecting to the lemo port in general) but I've used it and it works. Like many DIY solutions it is temperamental and take a lot of tweaking. This is exactly why I'm excited about the Red Station. (I refuse to capitalize unnecessarily)

Keep rolling team Red!

 

[Bryan Golder]

Bryan.. too each his own.. if you don't like what we are doing, you don't need to buy it.

I'm no critic Jarred, not by any stretch. I just happen to see this particular Red product announcement as being overpriced and underdeveloped in terms of the features and value, and in comparison to other Red product announcements.

1) I think a 3.5" drive sled would be more practical (in terms of storage capacity), and more economical in terms of cost per GB for the drives. I don't think that a sled meant to offer a single-drive backup solution is a particularly good idea in any scenario (and that's the main reason I wrote my opinion). If Red had announced it's own approach on something like a RAID-1 solution which fit into this cool new Red base station form factor...that would be smart and exciting. Just my opinion. Respectfully.

2) I said I would buy the Red CF reader if it adds a lot of value in terms of build quality and speed. Red generally seems to build things to high standards, so I expect that's what will be delivered. Regardless, there's nothing terribly fun or sexy about spending $250 on a card reader. It's expensive, no matter how you slice it.

The inkjet printer analogy is pretty insulting though.. as if you take a look at our accessory line up, including lenses, and compare the prices to the rest of the professional tools out there, you will find we are incredibly fair on our pricing.

The analogy was meant to be complimentary with regards to the low cost of a Red camera for all the quality and value it provides, in contrast to the cost of these particular accessories. Bad analogy. Not meant to offend. Forget I said it. Of course I know Red prices are generally a great bargain.

I'll use plain language as I should have in the first place: $250 for a power supply and $250 for a CF card reader impresses me as being less of a bargain than is typical with other Red products. Fair enough?

Looking forward to Scarlet and Epic, and also looking forward to my first experience with an MX equipped Red One on a feature starting in June. No complaints about value there...

Best,
Bryan

 

[Cail Young]

I think a 3.5" drive sled would be more practical (in terms of storage capacity), and more economical in terms of cost per GB for the drives.

You are aware that 2.5" SSD is a new recording format for EPIC and beyond? This is an input device; whilst you could use it to copy from CF to 2.5" drive I don't think that's the intended use.

 

[Noah Yuan-Vogel]

You are aware that 2.5" SSD is a new recording format for EPIC and beyond? This is an input device; whilst you could use it to copy from CF to 2.5" drive I don't think that's the intended use.

You may have missed it, but it was specifically stated by Jarred (see post #97 http://reduser.net/forum/showpost.php?p=578152&postcount=97 ) that that is the intended use, and I believe 1.8" (not 2.5") SSD is the basis for the new recording format you are thinking of.

 

[Kenshin]

So im little confused on the 2.5 station. So if it accepts spinning drives and ssd does that mean epic and scarlet are going to record to spinning and ssd drives. Or does it mean that Epic and scarlet will record to ssd and you can read it in this, but you can also throw in a spinning 2.5 to use as external drive, basically like an external case for drive. I dont see purpose in this unless someone could explain how one would utilize a spinning 2.5 in this.

 

[Noah Yuan-Vogel]

I dont see purpose in this unless someone could explain how one would utilize a spinning 2.5 in this.

Sounds like 1.8" SSD is the recording medium of choice and its reader is in the works but not pictured. The 2.5" drive reader you are seeing in the photo is intended simply as a way of plugging in a 2.5" sata drive (be it SSD or HDD) to copy your footage to for backups, it is not intended for drives that can be inserted into the camera (though I imagine it could be if RED ever supports recording to 2.5" media). Think of it as a more rugged, RED branded/certified, 2.5" drive-only, RED BASE STATION powered version of one of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...8022&cm_re=2.5"_reader-_-17-388-022-_-Product .

 

[K. cromwell]

Lovely price tags. If you hire a DIT without one (or two), you are in deep trouble.

DIT What you mean?

 

[Rick Burnett]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Imaging_Technician I am assuming.