SSD Suggestion

[Shane Betts]

Red Team

I understand that delivery schedules are difficult to predict as so much stuff happens out of house and out of your control. There could be a solution, at least for SSD media.

1. We all understand (and correct me if I'm wrong) that the Red SSDs consist of a tested and approved after market SSD housed in a Red manufactured adaptor case.
2. We all understand that letting us end users just go on ahead and throw any old SSD drive in our cameras is dangerous because some people are always going to find the cheapest one they can find and then bitch when the camera starts dropping frames.
3. So the purpose of the Red-only policy is to, fairly enough, protect us and Red from this kind of stupidity.

But what if a small utility could be included in the camera's firmware that:
a/ Tested any "new" drive inserted for speed compliance.
b/ Then rated that particular drive for a certain level of R3D file/project.
c/ Either wrote a small file to that drive (upon formatting) to identify the drive's specs easily without testing it every time it was reinserted or, wrote the drive S/N and rating to a small LUT in the firmware for comparison upon insertion of each drive.

This testing would be time consuming but users would know this and know that they should always do this in pre and never introduce a new drive in the middle of a shoot unless they're desperate (and therefore willing to wait). Each time a given after market drive is inserted, the camera checks it's internal database for the S/N and tells the user what kind of project this drive will support.

Given this kind of intelligence, Red could then offer something similar to what Atomos does with their Ninja and Samurai recorders, with a plastic drive case/adaptor in which the bare drives can be placed for use. These would be cheap and easy for Red to keep in stock in large numbers. Red could include a disclaimer to be agreed to with each adaptor purchase but, basically, the camera need not drop frames, just sometimes refuse the accept a particular drive - just like we had with CF cards.

I'm sure most rental houses would still want the genuine Red SSD's, as would most of us, but this might at least allow people to shoot to SSD when Red might be having difficulty obtaining stock.

Any thoughts?

 

[Stephen Lovett]

Hi Shane,

It was good to meet you at NAB, and be able to put a face with your name.

I'm afraid it's not as simple as that my friend.

The physical size of the RED SSD media is specific in it's design. The SSD's that are generally available are a 2.5" form factor, principally designed with replacing drives in mobile computing platforms (e.g. laptops). Those drives are wider than the SSD media that RED has designed.

In other words, general purpose SSD's simple wont fit in an enclosure that would then fit in the camera or RED station.

Make sense?

Cheers,

Steve

 

[Uli Plank]

Plus, it might be pretty complex to test them. We tried the Ninja recently (which is working pretty well for the price) and it only works reliably on SSDs with Intel X25, nothing else. With other drives you don't get dropped frames, you get complete data losses without a repeatable behaviour. Ouch!

SSD is still a maturing technology, I'm afraid. The little box works well with most laptop harddisks…

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

I'm afraid it's not as simple as that my friend.

The physical size of the RED SSD media is specific in it's design. The SSD's that are generally available are a 2.5" form factor, principally designed with replacing drives in mobile computing platforms (e.g. laptops). Those drives are wider than the SSD media that RED has designed.

In other words, general purpose SSD's simple wont fit in an enclosure that would then fit in the camera or RED station.

While it is true that 2.5" drives are much more common ... you can in fact buy 1.8" SSD drives. Those would fit in the Red Enclosure.

Red never did allow users to use their own 2.5" magnetic hard drives in the Red Drive, even after it became clear that such drives had the sustained performance to be suitable in that application. (The drives in the 320GB Red Drive were 5400 RPM 160GB units drastically outpaced by newer units.)

This is different from the CF card situation where Red CF cards really do just go faster.

I don't know if commercially available 1.8" SSD drives have the performance Red needs, but if they don't right now they will soon.

I expect that they will continue to follow their historic course with new SSD media, although I would definitely prefer if they went towards open media. Its one of the very few places where I disagree with Red's practices.

 

[Stephen Lovett]

Alexander,

Your are absolutely right. Several vendors provide the smaller form factor. While such 1.8" media is in fact available, the media that would be most appropriate (specifically the new generation of SSD's that also include a 6Gbps interface like the Vertex III's and the mercury extreme) aren't available in that form factor.

You're meta point however is valid, the media will progress in speed over time.

Frankly, that's not the real issue when it comes to RED media right now IMO. A lot of us just need more media and I for one just want it to work, so I don't mind paying a premium to that end. I also think that RED's concerns in this area are valid.

I further think there are two issues being commingled here, price point and availability. I don't think the cost issue is a major obstacle when taken in context of the broader expense of production costs. The later is however a real problem for any project that requires takes longer than about eight minutes, or placing the camera where fast media swapping isn't viable, and there is no way around that right now.

Hopefully that gets addressed soon. The uptick in M's rolling out is a very good sign... Here is hoping SSD's follow suit.

 

[Robert Trim]

I'd like to chime in and address a few points from a different perspective. That of Higher Education. We were fortunate enough to get a grant for a RED One a few years back. It has been a god send for training employable graduates in camera positions and DIT/workflow.

Our issue is budget. In the pro arena, the cost of RED branded drives/hardware is not that big of an issue. Yes there is strong downward pressure on rental rates, overall budgets, etc. which make it hard all around. But our situation is really bad. We got another grant this year for the MX upgrade and the SSD upgrade. We can only afford 2 smaller SSD cards and the reader station. Being able to purchase additional SSD drives in the future is a 'no-go' because of price.

It is critical for us to hold costs down. Being able to use 3rd party SSD media would be huge. It would also be huge for us to be able to replace the drives in the RED Drive with other drives as well. I absolutely agree with others "disagreement" with RED's policy in this area. This would seem to be a no brainer and hotly debated on the forum with no budge from RED. To bad. Would be a great customer service thing.

We are in an environment where recording media has to work most of the time... not 100% of the time. I am sure/positive there are SSD media today that would meet RED's standards. I am also understanding to RED's business model (any business for that matter) where there's a ton put into R&D and product release. RED, hats off to putting out solid stuff. But I also want the option to save what little money we have, but still expand our resources.

I/we can live with a limited options list. We CAN live with the disclaimer that we can/will/might drop frames. This is the daily life of any DSLR user who figures that a 4x card will suffice when the system really needs a 6x or 10x speed card. If they lose images, drop frames, etc., their bad. We get that. Can and do live with that. Not new ground here. We need a break.

My mission/goal is to train students to be heads-up, problem solving, thinking on their feet future employees in our industry. I do everything in my power to make sure they get their hands on the 'real industry stuff'. But that is becoming harder by the day.

I hope RED will listen... and help.

 

[nima]

I like to think of Red SSD media as a Red 4k digital mag.
1.8 media is hard to find and I don't mind the idea to see Red as the only manufacturer... pretty much like Aaton does with Penelope's digital mags.

 

[Manuel Wenger]

I´m absolutely against opening up SSD´s for other 1,8´ SSD´s than Reds native ones.
I did quite some harm in the beginning of the Red One when there could be used any CF Cards.
I know so much production who just bought Cards and didn´t test them before and had to find out that they´re not up to spec while continuously recording.

Productions had big troubles here that time, and despite the fact that it wash´t the cameras fault, the production got burned in there brains that the Red One generates a lot of troubles.

I don´t wanna go through that again with Epic !

Alexa also only works with the Sony Pro SxS cards, and not any manufacturers SxS knockoff, and so be it

 

[Robert Trim]

I'm wondering if we are trying to control stupidity here. Sorry for the strong word but it's what I tell my students. If your stupid enough to checkout a camera and not pull it out of the box and turn it on until you are on the shoot... your stupid and deserve what ever happens. Some learn a valuable lesson despite the warning.

A lot of info was shared fast about which CF cards worked and didn't. We bought some that were found to work. And they have, just fine for 3 yrs now.

Manuel, you don't have to go through any heartache here. Buy RED Mags. Sounds like the best solution for your situation.

My point is, let us have choice. RED can even help. Point us in the right direction for those who are willing to take the risk. If we don't understand (or read) disclaimers, then don't go there. But if RED would put out a list of criteria that an acceptable SSD drive would fit and work (without support in any way from RED), it would greatly help the education environment.

Because other camera mfgs. require certain media, does that mean everyone has to follow the herd? RED by it's nature is not a follower. Part of AVID's product announcement on Thurs was one small item that was huge for them to do. For the first time you can use 3rd party hardware with their software. The cheer that went up could be heard around the world. It's that important to customers.

Just sayin'

 

[nima]

What I7m saying is that If I were Red I would leave you with only one choice, RED SSD.
Professor Trim, you gotta understand that SSD media is part of a camera workflow, and it should be treated differently than a shoulder mount or a cheese plate.
Once we will be both shooting in a desert at 120fps and your alibaba media starts dropping frames you'll definitely be the one that looks stupid.

 

[Anders Holck]

The actual internal SSD module is cheaper than the RED packaged media, but it still compares favorably to the competition:

You pretty much get double capacity for less money.....

 

[Robert Trim]

Nima... you are absolutely right... if I choose to use non-RED/Certified mags in that instance. We take students all over the world...most recently Namibia, Africa. That's a understandably different ball game. And that environment is part of our training. When it counts... you go with what WILL work... and you test the hell out of it before you pack.

I'm trying to address the daily small shoots, class labs, etc. We need more than 2- 64gig mags to service the 90+ students in our cinematography and advanced production workshops. At the current RED price, they will not let us purchase more. If we could use SSD's that are currently priced at $100, many students would buy their own. That further leverages our systems.

As for overcranking... in the past 3 yrs we have had the RED, only 3 students have shot anything OC'd past 60 frames/sec. These SSD mags would only have to shoot 4k at 48 fps which I think can be done to CF cards right now. I might be in error.. sorry if I am. And we teach extensive workflow management on no less than 5 HD camera formats right now.

You see the world from a different perspective than we do. You have different quality and reliability requirements than we do. Which is perfectly fine. We're just looking for some love and understanding for those of us who are trying hard to sustain a solid training program, on one of the best image systems, so someday, you can hire these kids knowing they are up to snuff.

 

[Robert Trim]

Good point. One of the driving reasons the SXS cards are so expensive... limited user base. SSD media will sell millions of units. I would be interesting to know if the SXS card sales has broken 100,000 yet, after all these years. Volume brings lower prices.

I'm sure many of us do not know the issues with SSD media. This article is a great primmer and performance rating for several of these. This is a dated article but still rings true. Almost all these cards outstrip the RED Drive abilities. There are other issues with this media which makes the hardware interface all the more important to meeting our RED needs.

Just thinking our loud here.

 

[Erik Franzén]

You don't skimp on media of all things. Anything else, yes. But not media. RED understands this well enough that they don't put out "it might work" solutions -- guess who gets the crap when it doesn't work? Yeah...

The situation isn't that different from P2 or SxS. I don't see the problem? The 64GB drives are quite awesome for the price/performance ratio -- when buying in packs it's even better! Seriously, there is nothing to do about it -- no SSD on the market is available for less $$$ and more performance. Insertion rates also suck and write sustainability is a pipe dream without proper QC.

I'd imagine that this isn't a viable solution.

 

[Manuel Wenger]

Robert, it´s not my situation, but it was the situation for some clever producers in Germany who tried to be smart and save some money.

they bought the CF Cards somewhere cheap, gave it to the camera department a day before the shoot starts. Then the Data Wrangler found out that this cards didn´t work and reported back to the producer.
Unfortunately there are not a lot of producers who swallowed it and said "OK, i fucked up" but most of them blamed it on the camera.

This gave a bad reputation to the camera because it happened more than once, and it was hard to get the Red into this productions again.
I sometimes hear still the phrases "Oh no we won´t shoot on red, it´s a unreliable camera".

It sometimes was hard work the last couple years to get confidence back into Red to some productions, despite the fact that the camera never was unreliable. But it´s easy to blame it to a camera if you´re a producer and not from the camera dept.

Believe me, i´m perfectly fine with my media for Red, but when others f..k up, it spreads like bush fire, even if it´s just half truth, and thats what bugs me.

Manuel

 

[Joel Kaye]

I'm wondering if we are trying to control stupidity here.
Just sayin'

RED SSD is a profit center like P2 is for Panasonic and SxS Sony. It just is what it is.

The idea that RED would have to "protect" users buying this level of camera while Canon somehow manages to NOT protect regular consumers from throwing any old card DSLRs seems a bit silly to me. And Sony with the FS-100. Toss any SD card in and "good luck!".

Now it could be true that RED has to test SSDs and they have a high failure rate. They could say that AND open up SSDs to let people "experiment". Ultimately I think the community would find brands that tend to work.

My question is can a third party make an SSD holder so the experimenting can begin or are the SSDs chipped to prevent that?

I just think SSD is a profit center. I don't have a problem with that. Perhaps Scarlets are going out at a loss and the money is made on everything else. That's been the camera business for a long time. No harm, no foul. Just call it what it is though. "We make money on accessories - we need you to buy them to keep us healthy". Will a typical RED customer find offense in that? No way.

 

[L. Langer]

RED SSD is a profit center like P2 is for Panasonic and SxS Sony. It just is what it is.

The idea that RED would have to "protect" users buying this level of camera while Canon somehow manages to NOT protect regular consumers from throwing any old card DSLRs seems a bit silly to me. And Sony with the FS-100. Toss any SD card in and "good luck!".

Now it could be true that RED has to test SSDs and they have a high failure rate. They could say that AND open up SSDs to let people "experiment". Ultimately I think the community would find brands that tend to work.
.

Well, allow me to retort. Canon and Nikon test their prototype cameras with particular brands of memory card. Namely SanDisk and occasionally Lexar. When something doesn't work, they make note of it and work with those guys to refine their card designs as needed, which is why you occasionally see new high-speed card designs from them around the same time that new Canon or Nikon products are announced. That's also why you will only find that their cards are the most reliable in DSLRs while everyone else's are hit or miss. Canon, in particular, favors SanDisk cards. Talk to them and they will tell you that. Most of the rest of the memory card sellers apart from Kingston outsource cards from Asian OEMs that do no real testing other than on a most basic level to ensure they aren't making paper weights. Obviously, RED products are a bit different but they do the same thing with their vendors as someone has to make the damn media. Since RED products require higher sustained data rates, they can't always rely on the same stuff that Canon tests with because that media is designed around DSLRs that use memory buffers for sustained writing of files to flash media (which is why you can use just about any media in there to varying degrees of performance) whereas the RED cameras require the ability to write at a sustained high-bitrate directly to the media until the recording is stopped.

 

[Alexander Alexandrov]

The hardware is same as these toshiba parts. Costs about $100-200.
The internal firmware installed on the red ssd is different and protected. U have to be able to install this firmware for the camera to recognize the drive.

 

[Erik Franzén]

The hardware is same as these toshiba parts. Costs about $100-200.
The internal firmware installed on the red ssd is different and protected. U have to be able to install this firmware for the camera to recognize the drive.

100-200$? Link to an actual drive going for that much? I understand that this is an off-the shelve drive rehoused for RED's needs, but I can't for the life of me figure out what drive you're talking about here?

 

[Tom Greenberg]

Robert, I absolutely feel your pain! We are in pretty much the same boat, although we haven't have the grant money in the past to acquire a R1, so we haven't had to deal with it up until now. That being said, I do try, even now, to shoot with R1 MX (from local DPs and prod. companies) so that students do get real world experience with the cameras they are going to encounter once they leave school.

As of the Nov. 3 announcement, I've revised our 2012 budget to include Scarlet-X, and SSD costs are going to end up eating a lot of the money I had allocated for glass and accessories. I'm super excited to get Scarlet-X in the hands of our students, but hate to do it in a somewhat limited configuration. As you pointed out, most of our student shoots are not "mission-critical" and loss of a take or two is not going to be the end of the world. I fully understand the difference between our situation and a commercial shoot with producers and clients to satisfy...those situations dictate use of a certified-performance media solution...but our circumstances are much more budget sensitive.