"Cheapest Format" for Time vs. Gig?

[Jay A. Kelley]

There has been a LOT of talk about this on the thread.. But it's never been asked this way (Most likely cause you all have too much class and professionalism... NOT ME!!!)

Resolution and format be damned, if you were going to shoot RED with some sort of HD footage with a B4 lens and your main goal was to SAVE AS MUCH SPACE on the RED drive, flash, etc. as possible,

What settings would you use AND

How much time per gig would you get?

Please provide a clear answer for this. Most of my clients will LOVE any setting the RED will give them, but the less space I use, the bigger the hit I will be.

Jay

[Chris Forbes]

No one really knows all of the file sizes for all the formats at all the frame rates. ( Outside of the developers ) We won't know until NAB I think. What we do know is that the "default" setting of REDCODE ( 27 MB/s ) will be able to store about 3 hours of footage on the REDDRIVE ( 320 GB )

[Jeff Kilgroe]

This will become more clear when the cameras actually start shipping. But my bet would be that 2K RAW is going to be the most space efficient format. Oh, but you said using a B4 lens config.... That changes things... you could still shoot 2K RAW, but your lens won't cover the entire 2K sensor window, so you'll get some vignetting. When you shoot 2/3" B4, you're pretty much locked into 1080p or 720p HD resolutions and they will be RGB, not RAW. REDCODE RGB takes up more disk space than REDCODE RAW, but I'm not totally sure how they compre or will compare when finalized. I'm going to guess the 1080p RGB is going to be significantly larger on disk than 2K RAW, but 720p RGB could be the smallest or most space efficient format.... Maybe.

[Gavin Greenwalt]

@1080HD resolutions 2k RAW seems like the winner: It's 1/3rd the data of RGB so the resolution increase is insignificant compared to the storage saved. It can't really lose until you get down to 720p then you've dropped by 1/4 the data of 2k RGB which is a little less than 1/3rd of 2k RGB.

[Chris Forbes]

Wouldn't that be a trip if 4k REDRAW was smaller the 720p RGB.

Right now the rule of thumb is uncompressed 720 p @ 24 fps is about 66 MB/s.
I have no idea if that is relevant.