SSD INFO

[Deanan]

Those types of drives are horrible for anything to do with compressed data and especially realtime requirements.
They will choke because they're designed for data patterns for laptops... Lots of highly compressible and small files written sporadically. Throw a continuous load at them and performance will be random. That's the last thing you want on a camera.

 

[Björn Benckert]

It's probably not the same dimensions on the connector. is it?

 

[HannodiRosa]

Folks give it up...deanan said it: he tried all these types of drives and then red built their own. I like the thread though cause some of these drives posted here might be interesting for my macbook so keepem coming!

 

[Eirik Tyrihjel]

One thing you CAN NOT AFFORD in a pro camera system is loosing data, so by eliminating non-RED SSD´s the margin of error is reduced to 0 or hopefully very very close.
if using other brands of SSD´s would even increase the margin of error by 1% it would be fatal to REDs reputation, hence: NO GO, no matter what!

RED and it´s costumers CAN NOT afford a reputation as the camera "where data writing to SSD is often a problem", so RED denies any other brand of SSD. VERY REASONABLE I say!

 

[John Bellari]

Those types of drives are horrible for anything to do with compressed data and especially realtime requirements.
They will choke because they're designed for data patterns for laptops... Lots of highly compressible and small files written sporadically. Throw a continuous load at them and performance will be random. That's the last thing you want on a camera.

Hi Deanen,

Great Topic, I'll ask my question again:


Will Red recover footage free and replace media if it fails?


& what's the guarantee...

 

[Les Dittert]

In the film days, if you had a roll ruined by a stock defect, Kodak would give you another roll of the stock.
I see Red offering a new ssd . Same thing.
-Les

Hi Deanen,

Great Topic, I'll ask my question again:


Will Red recover footage free and replace media if it fails?


& what's the guarantee...

 

[Steve Sherrick]

One of the warning signs I was trying to put out there before the official Scarlet announcement was to be prepared for additional expenses that come along with camera systems like this. Media was one of the things on the top of the list. I think sometimes people look at price tag of camera and forget about everything else that goes along with it. We're starting to see a lot of threads about the cost of media and accessories and people are looking for ways around those costs. As of right now, there are no ways around the cost of media. You need to have enough to get through a shooting day and ideally enough to cover you if things go beyond the original scope of the day. For example, I just had a shoot that was supposed to be a quick greenscreen with a couple of groups of people. Instead, it turned into a lot of people and we shot 500GB of material. Having one 64GB SSD would have been a disaster. Having two 128GB SSDs would have required rotating them with full, verified backups. Ultimately, it would have taken two 256GB SSDs with no rotation to get this done. Price tag for that setup - $6400.

Now, from there where are you storing the media? Ideally you will store this on 2 backups, and if you do enough shoots over time your backup storage needs become a serious investment.

This is not meant to be a downer, just stating what is reality today. If RED finds a way to offer cheaper SSD media while maintaining reliability, that would be great. But as of right now, best bet is to keep eye on deals from people selling on Reduser.

My suggestion for anyone buying a Scarlet that will need to do client based work is a minimum of two 128GB SSDs. That will run you $3600 new, and maybe $3000 used. And to be really safe, adding a 64GB SSD as a backup in case either of the 128s goes down is probably not a bad idea. 64GB SSDs are okay if you plan on rotating them, doing backups on set, etc. You could maybe go with 2 or 3 of those.

 

[Jason Rudd]

It's RED's way or the highway folks. If you buy into the system, you have to buy into their SSD's or take a hike.

A Scarlet X working configuration for client pro work shoots up to $17~$20K not including lenses, matt box, tripod, etc.

If you're just shooting nature footage for your own pleasure, then you can get by on one 64gb SSD card.