USB 3.0 + RED CF cards

[Drew Moe]

Hello all! First time post!

I'm currently DIT-ing a show, and have some weird issues with USB 3.0 and RED CF cards. Specifically, we're shooting Red One CF cards, and I've been using a Hoodman USB 3.0 UDMA reader to download footage using R3D Data Manager with an MD5 checksum. I have a brand new 15" MBP with 16GB RAM and 2.6 GHZ Quad-core i7 processor. I'm downloading to two separate (non-dasy chained, that is) FW800 drives plugged in through two Thunderbolt to FW800 adapters.

In this combination, it's been excruciatingly slow. A 16GB card takes 30-40 minutes to download and verify. I've tried multiple cards, multiple USB 3.0 ports, and multiple card readers. I've tried two Hoodman 3.0 readers and a Delkin 3.0 reader. Both Hoodman's were updated with the most recent Firmware. All with the same results. I also tried ShotPut Pro with a MD5 checksum, and got the same painfully slow speeds.

So, to experiment, I've tried downloading with one of those old Lexar FW800 CF readers (daisy chained to one of the drives). And using this method, the speeds just about tripled. A 16GB card takes less then 13 minutes.

I've also tried doing more typical downloads without a checksum, just in Finder. Doing that, the speeds were more consistent with what I imagined: USB 2.0 the slowest, then FW800, and the fastest is USB 3.0.

So has anyone else tried downloading RED CF cards through USB 3.0? Any advice you guys might have? Thanks!

 

[Wolf]

USB 3.0 + MacBook Pro Retina + CF cards

USB 3.0 + MacBook Pro Retina + CF cards

Hi,

I've experienced the same thing, although not directly with RED CF cards (too long ago since I used those). I have seen DITs having the same problem with CF and USB 3 on a MacBook Pro Retina basically reduced to USB 2 speeds (Canon C300, DSLRs, KiPro Mini, etc). I tried using Carbon Copy Cloner with MD5 checksums and that worked much faster. Obviously Carbon Copy Cloner is not an alternative to R3D Data Manager or Double Data, and not a very good alternative to ShotPut Pro either. But if you just need to get the footage off the CF card and onto faster intermediary storage, it could offer some relief.

Update: The slowdown seems to only happen when I copy to multiple destinations at once. When copying to only one destination it doesn't slow down that much.

Update 2: Found a RED 16GB CF card in my garage. It wouldn't even mount in the Hoodman USB 3.0 card reader when connected to my MacBook Pro Retina. If I rebooted the computer with the card connected it mounted, but I only got 12Mbytes/s read. Works fine in FW800 reader (approx 80Mbytes/s with Finder copy, less with ShotPut) and Sonnet Expresscard adapter (99Mbytes/s with Finder copy). Heck, it even worked in my C300. Might get some use out of it...