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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 :)

Storage 101...

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This is correct. However, I should point out that the eSATA cable from the RED ONE to the RED-DRIVE is proprietary. You will also need to use a computer to offload the data via Firewire from the RED-DRIVE to another storage device.
 
how will the red ram look like? how will it mounted? same as the red drive? which interfaces does it has? would be fine to has a design like a filmroll...
 
Connector "B" on the diagram here is the Red Drive interconnect.
It's a proprietary connector (both on the camera and the Red Drive) that contains wires for both eSata and power.

The camera doesn't have firewire ports, so the ports on the Red Drive are for connecting to a computer. The drive itself will not work as a host, so it will have to be connected to a host, like a computer, to be offloaded.
 
The indications are that Red-ram is "simply" a Red-drive with 2 x 2.5" SSD's, instead of the 2 x 2.5" Harddrives.
Only the Red guys know of cause...

If the 64 MB/s transfer rate of the 32GB 2.5" SSD holds true, the red-ram will be pretty damn fast to offload over the esata bus...
 
firewire ports are for offloading use only, the SATA cable from the camera is the only one that connects to the drive in shooting mode.

when you take the drive off the camera, the RED-DRIVE functions like a normal external hard drive via the firewire.
 
the esata port on the drive is also proprietary, so you cant just hook it up to a ESATA port. You could probably concoct a cable to do the duty, but With it being a 2.5" raid and over firewire 800, you wont be gaining that much speed over sata.
 
Most Windows PCs don't have firewire 800, but there are Expresscards and PCIe cards available.
Many of the new desktops are coming with eSATA ports. Would be a shame not to be able to use them.
 
I'll second that zeke, given that the RedDrive is eSATA (even if it's a proprietary connector) it should be a no-brainer to ship with the option simply to hook it to an eSATA (or normal SATA) port for PCs. A cheap cable converter wouldn't be too hard to include would it, given that around 95% of the world's computers are PC based?
 
There is no doubt that bus powered 1394b is the most robust and elegant solution, especially in the field. It sure will be interesting to get more details later this month.
 
Question on the Red Drive (Dual 160GB). These are standard Laptop HD's (perpendicular? and probably Segate?) so we know they are pretty reliable, but what about fragmenting? Is there going to be software in the camera that will allow us to re-format the drives on the go. I know you can probably delete clips, but just like a normal HD anytime you delete something it leaves those sectors empty until you have a file that can fit in the space or defragment it. Also if you allow full format any sectors that have gone bad or suspected bad will be placed in tables (so the drive wont access these sectors and create more bad sectors).
I know all of this can be done once hooked up to any computer, but it may have an advantage in the field do be able to be done thru the camera. There may be an option for quick format, even though that wouldn't be the ideal situation it has its advantages (time).
 
Seems like the camera is really a computer in a different box. Would be truly strange if the drives couldn't be formatted. I would think formatting before each use, after recording and media managine ie deleting files transferring files etc.
Is that too conservative?
 
i don't see the RED as a computer ... IMO format/defrag drives on laptop/desktop ...
i don't think there has been any confirmation if you can delete clips using camera ???
i see the drives/flash more as a film mag ... shoot .. make a mistake - next take ...
 
The ability to review and delete clips on camera came up a while ago, but it didn't sound like that would be a feature. In the case of RED DRIVE, this can lead to fragmentation as mentioned a few posts back. With the solid state options, seek and initiation times are much faster and fragmentation wouldn't be as much of an issue (theoretically). However, keeping all recording as a linear process would make the most sense from a reliability point of view.

Like donatello said, treat your onboard recording device as a film mag. You shoot and shoot and do whatever until it's full or you're done filling it. Then you can transfer your footage off, wipe the drive and start again.

In the early days of working with P2 on my HVX200, I thought it was really cool how I could review right there on camera and delete or copy or whatever. I soon discovered this was pointless and even caused problems at times. Better to just shoot and deal with everything in post rather than try and sort it out on set through the camera. This isn't still photography where you're reviewing individual images. This is cinema.
 
Jeff,

the main difference to shooting your HVX compared to shooting with the Red One will be that you will need to pull focus manually (if you are not using a P+S or RedRock thing). We got ourself a Mini35 for the XLH1 to train for the Red One and even after weeks of training only 50% of the shots were usable, the rest of the shots did not have a perfect focus. Ok, we did a lot of dolly shots and stuff, but the fact remains that it is far from trivial to get the focus right.

So not having the possibility to review the best takes on set is a rather hard limitation. You never know if you really got it right.

The solution we found is to hook up a full resolution Marshall field monitor via HD-SDI and have a dedicated person watching for nothing but focus. But this clearly doesn't work in all situations and is impossible for 4k.

But let's wait till NAB to see what the Red team comes up with!
Mike
 
Mike Zinner said:
So not having the possibility to review the best takes on set is a rather hard limitation. You never know if you really got it right.
Click to expand...

Playback IS built in. That's confirmed. So you should be able to review your clips perfectly.

The unknown is, if there will be a delete function in camera.
It sure is possible to enable at later point, if they find out during actual testing, that fragmentation isn't a problem, especially on SSD devices.
 
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