RED-DRIVE dock

[Nick Shaw]

I started a thread like this before on DVXUser, but I thought I'd bring it up again here.

I wonder if any developers out there (or indeed RED themselves) might make something for RED-DRIVEs rather like S.two's A.DOCK? [LINK (http://www.stwo-corp.com/stwodockbrochure05_05.pdf)]

It would be great to have an automated system which could clone RED-DRIVEs either onto other RED-DRIVEs or off-the-shelf 320GB drives, and also archive to LTO-3 or somesuch.

I think it would make a lot of people (producers particularly) feel a lot more confident!

Thought I'd throw the debate open for people to spec their ideal system.

Nick

[MikeCurtis]

sounds like a good third party opportunity to me...

[tj williams]

Oh boy more stuff to carry around. But the camera is too small
only weight 8 lbs??? starting to look more like 40....

1. backup without attendance not to take crew concentration from the work.
2. backup can be set to free space on the red drive so we can use it in an
emergency to extend the length of rec. on a mag.
A. This means a means of deleting on the magazine?
3. Backup also downloadable to a work station when on set.
4. Backup rugged enough to ship repeatedly.

[Nick Shaw]

I think as part of the system it might be useful if the RED-DRIVEs had something equivalent to a record protect tab. It wouldn't necessarily have to be a physical switch. Maybe a software flag on the drive that made any computer it was mounted on see it as a read-only drive. Maybe if this flag was set, only the camera itself could wipe the drive, and then only when a second flag was set by the automated downloading system which confirmed that the media was copied and verified. It would need to be possible to switch this functionality off, so that those who wished to use a different work-flow would not find themselves unable to wipe their own drives!

[Martin Drew]

Great idea Nick. I rather like the idea of a physical slider switch. I know it is olde worlde but I think there is merit in a very simple system, particular in this application. Easy to operate and easy to see if a drive is used or not used. There could be a secondary software flag system of course which would allow for a more versatile work flow.

M

[Chris Kenny]

I'd actually prefer that it not be a physical switch. A physical switch makes it the responsibility of a person to figure out if the digital mag is safe to erase/overwrite, which introduces human error into the process. If it's a software switch, that only gets flipped (during typical use) from read-only to read-write by REDCINE after it has transfered and verified the footage, then there's less room for error.

Of course, there should be an option to manually put drives into read/write mode or to erase them... sometimes this will be necessary. But if it's not part of routine workflow because it's usually handled automatically, people will probably be much more careful when they do it.

A more tricky question is what level of protection there needs to be about erasing just specific takes. This is clearly something that one would want to be able to do on-set, in camera. I think a good option for extra protection here would be to never really erase takes until the space is actually required. That is, if a take got erased on set, it would get marked as erased, but it wouldn't actually be erased. You'd be able to trivially mark it as not erased. Deleted takes would be erased (from first to last) only as you hit the 'record' button to record new footage on a magazine which otherwise wouldn't have room for it. This would, in most cases, give you a good long time to change your mind about erasing something.

[Martin Drew]

I wasn't disagreeing with the software flag but I would like to see a physical switch too. If your workflow was such you could leave the physical switch set to unlocked and rely on the software flags. Then the system could work exactly as you describe. I just like the option of a hardware master lock which makes the drive unwriteable.

M

[tj williams]

This backup sounds more like we take the RED Magazine off the camera and dock it to a computer for backup. I guess I was thinking more of recording crucial stuff to two drives simultaneously.

I'm concerened about the time to backup an empty a drive. We do a lot of long interviews. Going to a magazine, if I don't have enough its not ok. This situation probably here its better to record out to a portable computer?

[Chris Kenny]

This backup sounds more like we take the RED Magazine off the camera and dock it to a computer for backup. I guess I was thinking more of recording crucial stuff to two drives simultaneously.

I'm concerened about the time to backup an empty a drive. We do a lot of long interviews. Going to a magazine, if I don't have enough its not ok. This situation probably here its better to record out to a portable computer?

Recording REDCODE directly to a laptop doesn't seem possible. How would you ingest from SATA? The laptop would have to somehow emulate a SATA hard drive or something. Never heard of anything like that.

It also doesn't seem particularly useful. REDDRIVE has two hard drives, a laptop generally only has one, so you'd have less storage space this way. Of course, you can hook external drives up to laptops, but.... There has been some discussion that the camera might be able to record straight to generic SATA drives, not just to Red's digital magazines. If this pans out, you can toss one of Hitachi's 1 TB drives (coming soon, for $400) into an eSATA case, and record 10 hours of 4K at a go, with no computer in sight.

I wonder if anyone makes an eSATA case which can run easily off of 12V, so you could hook it up to Red's power taps. (Though in most applications where you wouldn't have outlet power, you probably wouldn't want to mess around with recording straight to a 3.5" drive. Usually something like this would be for indoor use, when the camera is on a tripod and the drive enclosure is sitting nice and still on a table.)

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Every working situation presents particular challenges that in some cases seriously strain the obvious workflow. If the amount of footage you will be rolling is high and dragging a computer system around too cumbersome I have one suggestion. Rent extra RedDrives as needed, it shouldn't happen that often.

I am planning to get 3 RedDrives for my kit so that I can, if it suits me, avoid downloading all day, even at 4k. I am not sure why there is so much interest in alternatives to the RedDrives - they are projected to hold almost 3 hours of 4k RedCode RAW, they are compact, unlikely to drop frames in most situations, can be downloaded via 3 different interfaces and reused many times. Embrace them, they are your friends.

In terms of write protect options it would be nice to have an intuitive and secure protocol built into the relationship between the RedDrives and RedCine to "flag" status. Ultimately I assume that I will have to manually verify the copies by playing back a few seconds of footage from at least one copy (probably 2) before wiping the drives, which I always imagined would require me to click through at least one "are you sure" dialog box.

[Greg Voevodsky]

I'd like to come back to my hotel, open my my small portable foldout satalite dish and upload my 1 terabyte of footage to a 3rd party secured server with backup. Echo-star can you hear me now?