Why no CF card module for Scarlet-X?

[Gary Ploj]

I was wondering why isn't their a Compact Flash module for the new Scarlet-X? Is it card itself not fast enough or is it other reasons? I know they have it on RedOne but why not Scarlet-X. Since what I read that the Scarlet-X AICD boards aren't fast enough like the Epic...so I would assume CF cards would be fine to take the RedRaw files from the Scarlet.

Also, the advancements in CF cards are pretty darn fast up to 685X. Maybe not fast enough for our new baby. I think that's about 50Mbps bit rate but I think I read Scarlet max data rate is 55Mps?

Just curious. Is CF cards out and SSD are in?

 

[Mohamed Fawzy]

AFAIK, Scarlet-X is 55MB/s, which is about 440Mbps, I might not know what I'm talking about, but to my knowledge, this much data rate is impossible to handle on CF cards

 

[Tom.Wong]

it's not 55 megabits pers second it's 55 megaBYTES per second. it's optimal compression ratio is a 6:1 at 4k 24p. that is a lot of pipe speed for a CF card, and even the fastest cf card on the market rate now couldn't give you that sustained. you need a sandisk extreme 90 mb/sec just to record pro res at 220 megabits a second sustained on a ki pro mini. that's only 22 megaBYTES a second. more than half of what the redcode needs, that's how much overhead you need on a cf card to get that kind of sustained. Which is why RED dropped CF all together. Price per gigabyte was never there, advancement in speed and reliability in the tech was always too slow. and with the file sizes we are dealing with, you'll never be able to offload them as fast as you would a SSD.

cf prices may have finally dropped, but next gen cards that might be able to give you a 100+ mb/sec variable wont' be out for a bit, and will probably be priced twice as much as the RED ssd at the same capacity. it's the way to go, and the side module, and a card is given to you in a shooting package. Just gotta go with the flow. In the end it may feel like more money, but you'll be saving money on the reliability and increased speed you get on set.

 

[Imran Farouk]

If it was the 3K scarlet it could've gone CF route PERHAPS but yeah the high data rates, the CF Card would've wanted to shoot itself running to keep up with the data coming through,

RED CFs are great but they aren't going to keep up with the new data rates, real shame since I liked their size and I have quite a few I'm not quite sure what to do with since they won't work in the 7D