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Upgrade to mini-mag from redmag for Dragon?

J

John McCord

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I just sent my Epic back to Red for the upgrade to Dragon. Looking at the performance of the Redmag vs. the minimag with this sensor it is leading me to believe I should upgrade to the mini-mag as well. I currently have four 128gb redmags. Is the better compression recording rates worth the upgrade? Changing over to red mini mags (new cards, reader, SSD sidemount for camera) will be a costly endeavor and I am not sure it is worth the $6000+ cost at this point.

Thanks for your input.

John McCord
 
I'm about to make the jump to the mini-mags, myself...somewhat reluctantly (for financial reasons) - I think that your 128s will only get about 16 minutes of record time at 23.98 6k 5-1. Imagine when you are cranking up framerates?

I feel like I only need 2 x 512 minis at this point and that should carry me through most gigs that I get, and I can sell my existing redstation and 64g cards on the marketplace here.

Funny, but I've spent my morning debating the same business.
 
I have not seen exact comparison - is the minimag recording at a higher data rate or identical to existing mag? just more space to record 6K high frame rate for longer?
 
I've been considering this as well, and it's a tricky one.

The MINIMAGs are 512GB and benefit from having slightly better REDCODE RAW ratios across various formats and frame rates. Higher REDCODE RAW compression ratios, especially at higher ISO ratings, can add a bit of "energy" into a frame that could be helped by having the 1 to 3 compression ratio step advantage of the MINIMAGs.

Luckily REDCODE on Dragon is a bit different overall and we get good performance, but that's one of the major advantages really. Especially those shooting high FPS at lower resolutions.

The additional "pro" is the size. I'm using 256GB REDMAGs primarily these days and getting approximately 25-30 minutes for the various ways I shoot at 5:1 REDCODE RAW. Which is fine really, but I'm thinking 4X 512GB MINIMAGs might be a worth while upgrade for my particular style of shooting on and off sets. Heavier shooting days, gigs where I have to roll very long takes, or long days without a DIT handy on solo gigs are certainly reasons for me to consider it.
 
I had to swap over due to buying a battle tested dragon with a mini mag module on it... very expensive transition, hopefully these mini mags stay around for many years to come.... but I wouldn't of bothered swapping otherwise, your footage will look amazing regardless of what mag is in it
 
Don't get mini-mags. Stay with 1.8" form factor. Mini mags are giant waste of everyone's time. Pointless fragmentation.
 
?????


Huh?

I just made the switch. The new MiniMags ROCK! Plain and simple.


Jack Allred said:
Don't get mini-mags. Stay with 1.8" form factor. Mini mags are giant waste of everyone's time. Pointless fragmentation.
Click to expand...
 
Jack Allred said:
The regular mags rock just as hard, if not harder!
Click to expand...

That doesn't make sense... I agree people shouldn't refinance their house to buy them but they don't rock harder then mini mags. .. If you were buying a new Red Dragon you'd buy the mini mags before the original mags.
 
Don't the mini mags offload slightly faster? I've mini-mags on one camera and 1.8" SSDs on another. Honestly, not being concerned about millisecond differentials, I notice no difference.

That said, I'd probably trade a 256 GB 1.8" SSD plus the old side mount and a 1.8" Redmag Reader for a Dragon engraved side mini mag module, just to have the same on both cameras.
 
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The faster offloads will be noticed if you use the 6G interface over the USB3. That said, future media development will only be for the newer mini-mags. So my guess is that larger and cheaper capacities will only be for the newer size. It also depends on how much you have invested with the older media. I'm slowly starting to switch over.
 
The mini mags are newer, faster, smaller, better. It is an investment to switch, but I have switched and I'm not looking back. With Dragon the 1.8" mags are fine, but I highly recommend the 512GB 'turbo' mags or the newest 240GB 'high speed' mags for use with it as you'll get better recording options.

I really like the mini-mag form factor, much more so than the 1.8" mags. I'm hoping this can be maintained for some time to come and perhaps we can even see some backward compatibility as things progress. One thing however is that future cameras will no doubt offer increased resolutions and abilities, needing media with larger capacities and greater speeds, so none of this can last very long.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
The mini mags are newer, faster, smaller, better. It is an investment to switch, but I have switched and I'm not looking back. With Dragon the 1.8" mags are fine, but I highly recommend the 512GB 'turbo' mags or the newest 240GB 'high speed' mags for use with it as you'll get better recording options.

I really like the mini-mag form factor, much more so than the 1.8" mags. I'm hoping this can be maintained for some time to come and perhaps we can even see some backward compatibility as things progress. One thing however is that future cameras will no doubt offer increased resolutions and abilities, needing media with larger capacities and greater speeds, so none of this can last very long.
Click to expand...

One comment I remember from Jarred when asked a question that seemed to be about some feature or another of media and his one-word post was "smaller". With M2 format SSDs reaching 1 TB and current M.2 format sticks of PCIe storage @ 512 GBs, I suspect we will have to either repurchase or at the least buy an adapter for still another down size in the future.

Your thoughts?
 
I'm very happy with the mini-mags. I had 4x64GB mag before and now with the 512GB I shoot on one mag all day. Offloads a little faster too over usb3.
 
I am not sure keeping a whole shoot on one mag is the safest of practices in general... But regardless of that I have not made the switch. When I do make it I think I am going to horde the old media and buy a used Scarlet to utilize with it.. No reason to resell it at these rates...
 
I'm sure mini mags perform wonderfully. The problem is with form incompatibility and fragmentation across the red community and rental networks. Sourcing extra mini-mags for rentals can be difficult if you're not in L.A. or NY, and loads of people in production aren't aware there are two different, incompatible, types of redmag media. I've seen lots of logistical problems arise from this "pointless fragmentation". I wish RED had waited to introduce mini-mags until there was a practical reason to change the format.

Regardless, if you are buying a new dragon, and you are going to get (4) 512gb mini-mags, and you don't ever rent, or need to rent your gear, mini-mags look like a great option. On the other hand, if you already have regular redmags, I don't think there's enough gain to justify the switch unless everyone is asking you for mini-mags. Especially if the rest of your network has regular redmags, and you might want to combine media on certain shoots. I can spend $6000 on plenty of things that will make a noticeable positive impact in my shooting; Mini-mags aren't even on the list of things that will help me get a better image.

Lastly, What are people offloading to that see a noticeable speed increase from the 6G sata connection, let alone an speed increase that is of any value? I don't see data managers offloading to SSDs, so 6g or 3g you're likely not saturating the bandwidth anyway. I offload to (4) 7200rpm HDDs in raid 5 (in the office). I get about 250MB/sec from that array, so my USB3 reader with regular 3g sata redmag isn't the bottleneck.

Didn't mean to be negative with my initial comment. I've been wanting to express my disappointment with this fragmentation for a while. It's not a big issue, but in my opinion a totally unnecessary one that adds to the list confusion/complaints against the red system, while not providing a measurable advantage.

Double Lastly, before someone tells me the extra digit of redcode is the advantage, let me clarify: I don't have a problem with faster redmags. Make faster redmags!... and put them in the standard form that we all have.

On another note, I hope blu-ray gets an upgrade to a disc that is a centimeter smaller. I would for sure jump over to the new format ;)
 
I hope they release smaller capacity mini-mags. 128GB is the sweet spot for me. I have a 256GB as well and it's nice, but I prefer using my other 128s as much as I can.
 
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