The recording media and third party

[Christoffer Glans]

There's stuff happening, there's stuff coming around the corner. Have Red looked at the XQD technology and how it might be used with the cameras? How are these performing compared to the SSD drives that's being used right now?

And how might things be if Red opens up the possibility to use media from other companies? For my canon I don't have to use canon cards, I can use a number of cards giving a better economical solution. The best result of this is that in some cases it's hard to have a DIT station on set and you just need to keep shooting, saving the cards for transfer later.
For still photography this is often how it is every time you do a job, you shoot and save the cards until your in your office. The red media is very very expensive, for low budgets just getting the Scarlet is enough to drain the economy and then there's just basic media and battery supply.

I would like to see Red making technology as still cameras are made. This is why the 7D and 5D made such a mark among low budget filmmakers, because they were cheap and accessories weren't complicated or hard to get. It was easy to get out there and just shoot. The basic package for shooting with the Scarlet isn't really made for shooting long days in that mentality.
Like if you have a problem with an accessory, you can't just send a runner to buy a new cards as you can with a 5D.

My vision of future professional cameras is 4K/5K high quality cameras, cheap and easy as canon 5D with an opened up attitude towards third party accessories.
I understand the modular idea of Red cameras, but from experience it's only modular within Red accessories themselves. Modular to me is to take that thing in the corner and solve a problem.
Opening up to third party technology makes Red truly modular in my view.

 

[N.D. Paolo]

There's stuff happening, there's stuff coming around the corner. Have Red looked at the XQD technology and how it might be used with the cameras? How are these performing compared to the SSD drives that's being used right now?

And how might things be if Red opens up the possibility to use media from other companies? For my canon I don't have to use canon cards, I can use a number of cards giving a better economical solution. The best result of this is that in some cases it's hard to have a DIT station on set and you just need to keep shooting, saving the cards for transfer later.
For still photography this is often how it is every time you do a job, you shoot and save the cards until your in your office. The red media is very very expensive, for low budgets just getting the Scarlet is enough to drain the economy and then there's just basic media and battery supply.

I would like to see Red making technology as still cameras are made. This is why the 7D and 5D made such a mark among low budget filmmakers, because they were cheap and accessories weren't complicated or hard to get. It was easy to get out there and just shoot. The basic package for shooting with the Scarlet isn't really made for shooting long days in that mentality.
Like if you have a problem with an accessory, you can't just send a runner to buy a new cards as you can with a 5D.

My vision of future professional cameras is 4K/5K high quality cameras, cheap and easy as canon 5D with an opened up attitude towards third party accessories.
I understand the modular idea of Red cameras, but from experience it's only modular within Red accessories themselves. Modular to me is to take that thing in the corner and solve a problem.
Opening up to third party technology makes Red truly modular in my view.

The Canon Cinema EOS C300 (for canon die-hards),
Canon 1DX and Nikon 4D are appealing to
LEGACY pro still shooters with piles of CF cards ...

For video, they are compressing the crap out of the raw data stream to 8 bit to fit on those cards...

Hence, I expect the next generation mirrorless designs will eventually record to
off the shelf SSD, just like Blackmagic and Atomos recorders ALREADY do,
when they get around to 4K data streams and RAW video recording...

Red has been a generation ahead on recording media for a while...

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Have you looked into XQD cards? I understand the works of C300 but that camera is unnecessary, it's a camera released a few years too late. I rather get a Scarlet then that camera.
I'm more looking at the future of Red cameras, other developers of camera technology just don't get it in my opinion.

 

[N.D. Paolo]

Future of Red Cameras is 9K and beyond with Red 645 and 617 according to
Red's roadmap for 2012 (this year)...

Red would spit those cheap XQD cards out like stale tic tacs!

Notice how those cameras only do 720p 60fps compressed non-raw video...

You need real speed and storage capacity at Red 4K+ resolutions and frame rates
to record RAW data, and nothing short of SSD will reliably give you that today or tomorrow...

The last call Red wants to support is:
" I got Fry's $99.99 XQD card on sale this weekend,
and I'm dropping frames left and right... what's wrong with..."

I'd like Red SSD media price to come down in half or media capacity to double this year,
but not at the sacrfice of quality, speed or compatability.

 

[Björn Benckert]

Hey, Do you remember how much a single roll of film cost? Then add the price for developing an telecine also add an HD tape to store it on.... now try to take that old roll of film and recycle it over and over again.... When you think of it, there are different ways to look at costs. To me the SSD's are basically for free. At least from the second time they are used and from there on.

 

[Stefan Antonescu]

This has been discussed so many times...

Cheaper media is a false economy. Nothing other than RED media can substain the dataspeed constantly.

The very last thing you want to worry about is dropping frames.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Future of Red Cameras is 9K and beyond with Red 645 and 617 according to
Red's roadmap for 2012 (this year)...

Red would spit those cheap XQD cards out like stale tic tacs!

Notice how those cameras only do 720p 60fps compressed non-raw video...

You need real speed and storage capacity at Red 4K+ resolutions and frame rates
to record RAW data, and nothing short of SSD will reliably give you that today or tomorrow...

The last call Red wants to support is:
" I got Fry's $99.99 XQD card on sale this weekend,
and I'm dropping frames left and right... what's wrong with..."

I'd like Red SSD media price to come down in half or media capacity to double this year,
but not at the sacrfice of quality, speed or compatability.

XQD has a maximum rate of 600 MB/s (6 Gbps), PCI connection (same as SSD), the first cards on the market are slow at their minimum rate of 125 MB/s, so I'm not expecting performance out of these early cards, I'm speaking of looking into this technology for future recordings.
Don't fail to understand what I'm speaking about, there are no XQD options as of now for Red cameras and I'm talking about future options, I'm talking about having the Red cameras behave like DSLR's behave with their support for third party accessories and media.

What are the speeds of the current SSD's that Red sell?

And I'm also not speaking of high end 9K cameras, that might be good for the year 2030, but 4K is no where near a standard yet and there's no reason to shoot 9K as of now, it's barely usable to do 4K for anything other then saving it for future distribution. Don't look blindly at resolution, 9K is totally unnecessary as of now and I'm speaking of a camera that is cheaper, like Scarlet, that can shoot 4K and be mastered in 4K. A future camera at a lower price that works in the same easy way as a DSLR does today, the Scarlet or Epic is close but not the same as the ease of use of a DSLR.

Future camera, not current technology, future media options, not current cheap XQD that works at it's lowest speed capacity. Look the technology up before arguing that you should never use cheaper media, XQD's aren't there yet, but it's coming.

 

[Sergio Perez]

The advantage of the Red DSMC system is its modularity. I think that if the technology is there Red will come up with a module for it. A XQD module would mean a smaller size that would be an advantage to make the Epic/Scarlet even smaller for certain shoots that require a smaller form factor. Of course, I would assume Red would have to come with their custom card to warrant no dropped frames recording, preventing the CF card hassles that happened on the Red One...

 

[Juhan Malmstein]

If you need cheap media, get one of the old Red-Drives. They're huge and dirt cheap now that SSD's are the thing.

 

[Petri Teittinen]

Nothing other than RED media can substain the dataspeed constantly.

100% not true.

 

[Tom Wardrop]

I challenged RED on the topic of media only a couple months ago when Scarlet was released. I nothing else, I gained knowledge of their some of their reasoning for taking the route they took. It's not that there are not products on the market that are faster than RED's media, it's more a matter of being able to guarantee a certain level of quality. RED don't want their image to be tainted by people using inferior quality media, or media that's otherwise incompatible (which can still be a problem with consumer SSD's). By inferior quality media, I'm talking about low-end SSD's that can't sustain the high write requirements or RED EPIC (not a problem for SCARLET owners), and connections that are more prone to wear than RED's own propriety connectors; the SATA spec only requires a minimum of 50 mating cycles, though nothing stops RED producing SATA connectors with much higher wear tolerance. I can only conclude that it's this protectiveness of image and perception, that continues to drive RED down the proprietary media approach, as there's so far been no counter argument that can't be relatively simple adapters and enclosures, and smarter firmware.

I can certainly look at it from RED's perspective, but I think it's the wrong perspective - or too narrow sighted if nothing else. It was probably the right move when they initially made it, as the SSD market was still maturing, but these days it's somewhat irrelevant. The market RED appeals to, is the enthusiast market. RED appeals to people who are passionate about what they do, and people who will thoroughly research their purchasing decisions. These people won't be tainted by any poorly substantiated complaints that result from people using media that's not up to the task. RED's stance on this is somewhat contradictory to their ethics and goals as a company. I think it should be the choice of the user to have flexibility in media, and be able to leverage new developments in the SSD space. Using image as an excuse is a rather weak argument.

Some examples of the problems RED's approach gives rise to:

* Media that exceeds the requirements of the user. SCARLET owners don't have the same performance requirements as EPIC owners. A lot of people also don't need media as compact as a 1.8" SSD, 2.5" SSD would be compact enough for most people. And as far as connector quality, I'd say most SSD's on the market would exceed the 50 mate cycle minimum of the SATA spec, and if only marginally, it would still probably turn out more cost effective.
* Premium prices for RED's own media. RED can't leverage the pockets of the consumer market in order to lower the prices of their own SSD's. They instead need to pass all the cost of R&D onto customers. That's why RED SSD's cost so much.
* The proprietary connector RED uses for their 1.8" SSD's gives rise to interoperability problems. It requires special docking stations which also suffer from the previous point, meaning they're expensive.

I really hope RED change their approach to media. I fear that they'll continue to push their proprietary media to recover R&D costs, and to not upset existing customers who have purchased quantities of this media, along with the camera module and docking station. I love RED's cameras, and I know that the cost of media seems balanced with the relatively cheap cost of their cameras, but as someone who's passionate about openness (open-source software, open standards, open patent-free technologies, civil liberties, etc), it seriously taints the RED-induced euphoria.

I mean this post with the greatest respect to RED. I only wish the best for RED and their current and future customers. As a computer hardware enthusiast, I find it a shame that the SSD's I have in all of my computers, perfectly capable of sustaining 200MB/s incompressible write speeds, can't freely be used with any RED camera I may purchase.

 

[Stefan Antonescu]

100% not true.

This is a thread where Deanan explained it much better then I did :
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?66477-SSD-INFO&p=866243&viewfull=1#post866243

That is totally incorrect. Most drives cannot maintain the constant realtime requirements with compressed data that a camera demands. Alot of drives will randomly have timeouts and drops in data or suffer from inconsistent write patterns. Anytime a drop like this happens, you have to then write twice as fast or more to catchup on the buffers. If it happens again before you've caught up, you're down a slipery slope and won't be able to recover.

Camera's don't have gigs of memory like a desktop has and not alot of room to tolerate marginal media. Even a low data rates.

There are also a bunch of other factors to consider such as power draws, wear rates, data rate degradation, etc.

Generic drives just don't cut it.

I have a huge stack of ssds and cf cards from every manufacturer from the last five years of testing that choke in many ways on a camera.
It took many many months to get the ssds working fast and reliably.

As for the future, who knows...

 

[John Galeano]

If you need cheap media, get one of the old Red-Drives. They're huge and dirt cheap now that SSD's are the thing.

Will those drives even work?

 

[Petri Teittinen]

This is a thread where Deanan explained it much better then I did

RED media is not manufactured by RED. They buy the drives from someone else who also sells the drives under their own and/or other brands.

 

[Tom Wardrop]

This is a thread where Deanan explained it much better then I did :
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?66477-SSD-INFO&p=866243&viewfull=1#post866243

As for the future, who knows...

That was the thread I was referring to where I challanged RED's logic behind their media. The arguments Deanan put forward were valid, but they become more and more irrelevant with time. The firmware I'd imagine could easily warn the user of dropped frames, or report on any other issues with the media, where as a lot of the other arguments relate to durability, but that's not going to be as much of a concern for the budget film maker.