transfer rate????

[Zakaree Sandberg]

Im budgeting my set up right now... and im curious.. how long do you think it will take to transfer the data from the 320gb red drive to an external harddrive or computer?
I ask because im trying to decide if its absolutely necessary to purchase 2 red drives.. or if the transfer rate would be similar to changing up magazines as far as time goes..

[Kjetil Haugen]

I think I would recommend getting two drives anyway, zakaree. As Jim explained earlier the drives aren't as stable as the RED RAM so having a backup would be smart. It would be a shame if something happened in the field and you're stuck with just one... Something to think about at least...

[Zakaree Sandberg]

oooo good point.. i didnt catch that post...what about the red flash? like if i got 4 of them.. would that be an ok move?

[Jeff Kilgroe]

We don't know the exact specs on the RED DRIVE yet. As with most drives and small striped arrays, read times should be a bit faster than write times. So you should be able to do a bit better than real-time off-load with it. Firewire 800 can transfer up to 100MB/s. I seriously doubt the RED DRIVE can do that. RED RAM possibly could or at least get real close. A safe bet for the RED DRIVE would be to assume 40MB/s, I think... That means you could probably transfer the contents of a RED DRIVE in about 2.2 hours or so. ...Maybe. That might be a bit optimistic.

[Kjetil Haugen]

Here's the storage thread with Jim's comments on storage. You might find some answers there. I'm alittle torn myself...

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=911&highlight=storage+101

[Brook Willard]

That's about right. You'll be looking at around 2-2.5 hours to download 320GB of data from the RAID to your computer via Firewire 800. The transfer rate will largely be limited by your computer's drive speed. If you plan on shooting tons of footage all day [ENG/EFP style, as opposed to cine style], a second [or third] RED DRIVE is the way to go.

[Dominic Jones]

For $900 there's no way on earth you're gonna see me walk on set with one drive. No Sirree!

If you're shooting film you have multiple mags, it takes only minutes to change one out and no-one even wants to wait for that, they're sure as sh*t not gonna want to wait 2+ hours for you to dub off your HDD!!!

That's regardless of the failure issue. I will most likely get three, so that I have a 2-drive system even with one failure.

I understand that budget can be a big consideration, but honestly, if you can't afford two drives you probably shouldn't be getting the camera, imho.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I understand that budget can be a big consideration, but honestly, if you can't afford two drives you probably shouldn't be getting the camera, imho.

Yep. But I think there's a few indie guys that budgeted $17.5K and are trying to make it all fit. :sorcerer:

[Brook Willard]

$900 may seem steep to a few until they consider a few other options:


700420 K2.54169.0 Arricam Lite Shoulder Magazine with Collapsible Core (Special Order Only) $14,200.00

[Zakaree Sandberg]

i agree.. 2 drives is what ill do.. but now im looking into the flash option.. i just dont know.. By unstable?? do u mean the red drive can potentially all of a sudden not have information on it after 3 hours of shooting? or do u mean when reading back to ur computer it might get screwy and make u start all over again?

I do plan on shooting ENG as well as CINE style (future goals.. shoot for discovery planet earth or similar show)

[Dominic Jones]

Yep. But I think there's a few indie guys that budgeted $17.5K and are trying to make it all fit. :sorcerer:
Sure thing Jeff, I just think there's a point where you have to realise it's just not gonna fit into that figure.

Hell, I had to buy a new pair of jeans a few months back - I tried to fit into the old ones, but they just wouldn't wear it!!!

Love the "magic" smiley, btw!...

[Brook Willard]

As for the drive's stability, it should be on par with any laptop drive. If you drop it, you're screwed. If you're running around with it all day, you may be screwed. If you treat it like the piece of fragile technology that it is, you may still be screwed by bad luck.

That said, I've lost one hard drive of the ~50 I've ever owned. It was, ironically, the only 2.5" drive I've ever owned. It was also 3 years after purchase.

[Dominic Jones]

i agree.. 2 drives is what ill do.. but now im looking into the flash option.. i just dont know.. By unstable?? do u mean the red drive can potentially all of a sudden not have information on it after 3 hours of shooting? or do u mean when reading back to ur computer it might get screwy and make u start all over again?
Good good, I feel much better now! :biggrin:

I think talk of HDD instability has been slightly exaggerated (and I have had HDD's go down and am not the greatest proponent of them for safety, I should add).

There is a danger that a single disk goes down and loses you all of the footage on that drive. However, we have been told that the drives will be operable in two different RAID modes - 0 and 1. RAID 0 (striped, with a capacity of 320Gb or ~2.5hrs) is the least safe, whereas RAID 1 (mirrored, with a capacity of 160Gb or around 1.25hrs) is pretty safe, unless you're in a very high vibration/extreme temp/throwing the camera about like a nutter type of environment. In that case you probably want to shoot to Flash or RedRam.

Bear in mind that it doesn't really matter how much footage the drives hold, as long as they can be read faster than you write them (which as previously mentioned shouldn't be a problem).

[Jeff Kilgroe]

By unstable?? do u mean the red drive can potentially all of a sudden not have information on it after 3 hours of shooting? or do u mean when reading back to ur computer it might get screwy and make u start all over again?

Yes, yes, maybe, who knows, sure, whatever....

The RED DRIVE is made of two hard drives in a RAID style config. It definitely can be configured as a striped array for max performance and use of the capacity of both. Or it can supposedly be configured as a redundant mirror to help prevent the lost of data if one drive fails, but I don't know if the RAID 1 / mirror option will allow for all the record modes due to transfer rates. I guess we find out at NAB.

But as I was saying these are hard drives. Lots of small mechanical parts moving very fast. Make of that what you will.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

And Dominic beat me to it...

[Zakaree Sandberg]

it sounds like im pretty much torn between cine style (red drive) or (eng)flash.. defiantly dont think im gunna get the RED RAM 64GB just because id rather have that 4 geez for a steadicam system or some more lenses

[Zakaree Sandberg]

what makes these harddrives different than your typical build yourself harddrive?

[Antoine Baumann]

If you do not have a raid array, I do not think FireWire 800 will be faster than FireWire 400, because as Brook said, you will be limited by your computer's drive speed, nto the port. You can see that RED-DRIVE will be a raid array made from two disks...

I am thinking to have a raid 1 array on the set to transfert the images from the RED-DRIVE, RED-RAM or RED-FLASH. It won't be faster to write, but it will be safer than a to a single disk.

I think Brooke is about right with the time you need, therefore I recommend to have two disks, or 2 32GB SATA FLASH (if you do narativ work).

[Jeff Kilgroe]

it sounds like im pretty much torn between cine style (red drive) or (eng)flash.. defiantly dont think im gunna get the RED RAM 64GB just because id rather have that 4 geez for a steadicam system or some more lenses

I think we need to see what comes of the FLASH options over the next few months. Lots of exciting new FLASH media products to come toward the end of this year. RED RAM is the future for large volume solid state recording on RED. But I think we won't see tons of people buying them as a primary record solution until late this year or possibly next. I think the price / capacity ratio just isn't quite there yet. But I would definitely rent a RED RAM, for projects that could benefit from the extra security. Maybe even buy one if the project allowed for it in the budget. If RED RAM were 128GB for $2500, that would be of great interest to me. I bet that next year about this time a 256GB RED RAM will be available. Who knows about price, but given recent trends and development with FLASH products, it should be less than the current 64GB model. FLASH tech is advancing so fast right now, I wouldn't be too quick to buy a bunch of RED RAM units unless you absolutely, specifically needed them.

[Zakaree Sandberg]

so AV are u suggesting i start off with the flash? how many?

[Jeff Kilgroe]

If you do not have a raid array, I do not think FireWire 800 will be faster than FireWire 400, because as Brook said, you will be limited by your computer's drive speed, nto the port. You can see that RED-DRIVE will be a raid array made from two disks...

I think a lot of people here already have some pretty fast editing systems and drive subsystems. RAID 0, 3, 5, etc.. arrays are pretty common these days. Not to mention that many newer 3.5" desktop HDDs are rather quick compared to 2.5" mobile HDDs. Even with the 2.5" units in a RAID-0 stripe. So many possible system configs, there's no way to tell for sure what people will be dealing with. But if a system takes in data slower than a RED DRIVE puts it out, then I don't know how a person would expect to edit with that system or the slow drives.

But either way... FW800 has a lot more head room than what the drives inside a RED DRIVE can kick out.


I am thinking to have a raid 1 array on the set to transfert the images from the RED-DRIVE, RED-RAM or RED-FLASH. It won't be faster to write, but it will be safer than a to a single disk.

What about RAID 0+1? Doubles the number of drives, but then you get the striped array for performance plus an identical striped array as a redundant mirror.


I think Brooke is about right with the time you need, therefore I recommend to have two disks, or 2 32GB SATA FLASH (if you do narativ work).

2 drives or a drive plus a well-equipped FLASH option is the way to go. The worst thing you can do is chance any down-time. Unless you're just dinking around by yourself. I ran into some downtime transfer issues when I was first settling into my P2 workflow. Makes for lots of grumpy people and in the case of the HVX lots of people who couldn't understand why there was a tape deck in the camera and I wouldn't use it.

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Good good, I feel much better now! :biggrin:
There is a danger that a single disk goes down and loses you all of the footage on that drive. However, we have been told that the drives will be operable in two different RAID modes - 0 and 1. RAID 0 (striped, with a capacity of 320Gb or ~2.5hrs) is the least safe, whereas RAID 1 (mirrored, with a capacity of 160Gb or around 1.25hrs) is pretty safe.


Whoa whoa whoa... where is a link to this piece of information? How are they able to sustain a minimum 27MBs write speed on a single drive? I thought the reason there were two drives in that sucker was because you *had* to stripe them in order to get sufficient bandwidth. RAID 1 can be slower than a single drive.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

so AV are u suggesting i start off with the flash? how many?

Well, not necessarily. But I don't think we'll have that answer until we see the FLASH options at NAB. I want to say that the 1.8" SATA FLASH would be the best choice, but it may not have the price or availability advantage of CF or ExpressCard for a while yet.

I also don't want to recommend an option specifically to anyone because I don't know how you work or what you will be doing. The only recommendation I would make specifically is that you don't want to be stuck with only 1 RED DRIVE as your recording media.

I was mentioning the possiblity of going with a FLASH module instead of a second RED DRIVE because that may present more opportunities or alternatives for you. Or maybe not...

Damnit! I'm waffling on the subject and I don't know what else I can do. ...I voted for FLASH before I voted against it, ya know. Well, anyway, for me personally, based on what I know at this moment and if I had to buy my RED system today. I would get 2 RED DRIVEs and the CF FLASH module. There's a good chance that by NAB time, I will have changed my mind. :) If money were no concern, I would just get 4 or 5 RED RAM units and call it good.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Whoa whoa whoa... where is a link to this piece of information? How are they able to sustain a minimum 27MBs write speed on a single drive? I thought the reason there were two drives in that sucker was because you *had* to stripe them in order to get sufficient bandwidth. RAID 1 can be slower than a single drive.

RAID 1 has been mentioned as an "option". But no one ever said you could use that config to record all the onboard modes. :wink:

[Zakaree Sandberg]

hopefully by the time 1015 ships there might be something else out.. my plan.. shoot.. unload onto computer or harddrives while im shooting with the next.. then just keep that cycle going.. altough.. if the red drive shoots up to 3 hours.. ill doubt i would even shoot that much in a day on set.. unless im doing documentary type stuff...

[Dominic Jones]

RAID 1 has been mentioned as an "option". But no one ever said you could use that config to record all the onboard modes. :wink:
Yes, that's correct, but I'm hoping that RAID 1 mode will also allow at least 24fps (preferably 25, as I'm in PAL land!) recording @ 4K. The posts didn't say it would be able to handle it, but they didn't say it wouldn't, either...

If you're looking for the post(s) I'd recommend searching the forum for RAID or something similar (maybe RedDrive RAID) - as I remember there have been posts regarding this from the Red team in a few threads.

[david farland]

Stuart mentioned here (http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=912).

I was expecting REDDRIVE Raid 1 as a backup configuration....hope


Cheers,
DF




At NAB last year, we described

a) a camera with an internal compression scheme that maxed out at 2K.
b) a battery pack that was internal to the camera, therefore of limited capacity
c) a single 2.5" disk based digital magazine also internal to the camera.
d) a small, diagonal flip out LCD unit on the camera body.
e) a NLE based post production path that required RED codec specific NLE support.


A year later, thanks to NAB feedback and ongoing technical discovery, we have a much higher specification system -

a) a 4K resolution internal compression scheme.
b) an affordable 140 Wh battery pack capable of driving the camera and multiple accessories.
c) two digital magazines, RAID 0 and RAID 1 capable, based on hard disk or flash memory.
d) Internal recording options based on standard off-the shelf memory such as CF, Express Card etc.
e) a large 5.6" diagonal sunlight readable LCD unit mounting anywhere you need it and remoteable from the camera body up to 10 ft for steadyicam applications.
f) the world's finest electronic viewfinder. And for under $3,000.
g) REDCINE. Free pre-editorial software so any existing NLE can use content created by RED ONE.


Bottom line - Change is good. Although our costs and hence camera package price are a bit higher than we anticipated at NAB 2006, the product value has gone WAY up! And if you take the $2,500 credit for reservation holders into account, even the pricing is pretty close to the original $17,500, but you are getting a much more capable camera that even we could have anticipated last NAB.

[Sean Michael Johnston]

The fastest way to dump footage files from RED Drive to a backup drive would be a direct connection through a smart device like this: http://www.gethitch.com/about/ .
I'm hoping someone comes up with a faster firewire 800 version of this or a hard drive enclosure that works in a similar way. Like those drives that have media card readers and lcds built in for still image backup.