16GB Compact Flash & Variable File Size

[PaulClements]

Hi,

Does Red have any word on their 16GB CF and it's availability.

Have Red or anyone tested PQI's 16GB 300x CF card. It seems a bit difficult to get hold of to be honest. I found one place in Romania that lists it for 1068.68 RON which is about $440 or £220. The write speed of it is 34MBps, I wonder if that's enough with Red's variable file size?

Which brings me to my next question. Has anyone who has their camera or the Red team themselves discovered the upper and lower limits of the variable file sizes?

Paul

[Olav Skogoy]

Hi Paul,
Jim said something about this in another thread.


Currently, 8GB cards that we will certify are available. We believe that in October we will certify 16GB cards. It seems possible that in Q2 of 2008 32GB cards might become available.
Jim

I do hope that they will be available by the time we will get our Red One's at the end of November.

Olav Skogoy,
Norway
Red# 418

[Michael Hastings]

I posted this on a new thread too, but:

I know RED has a lot on its plate but a dual CF module seems like a fairly critical need given that CF has become sort of the default format.

I was wondering if anyone here at the REDUSER genius bar (obviously some direct RED input would be nice too) could tell us what the technical issues involved in making a dual (or more) CF interface.

First, how hard to make a non hot swappable version where just adding the cards would increase available space - i.e. 2, 3, 4 cards. (also, is this something where somebody out there already makes an adapter to hold multiple cards to a single card interface).

Second, how hard is it to make it a dual hotswappable? What hardware issues might RED have locked themselves into, or is this just firmware to make it possible.

I'm verklempt so please discuss...

[Kevin Halverson]

Which brings me to my next question. Has anyone who has their camera or the Red team themselves discovered the upper and lower limits of the variable file sizes?

Paul

I performed a test over the past weekend to see if I could establish the lower boundary. My test consisted of recording a sequence of camera black and a sequence of a fully clipped sensor. The concept was that camera black would have very low information content as the noise floor is very low. The fully clipped sequence should have even less data variability and potentially data rate (assuming the entropy is used in the coding scheme).

I have been using these two tests for other purposes for the last two days, but will tackle this question next. The results are very interesting and I will publish my findings later, but for now, I will say that the results are very interesting.

Anyone else done any similar testing?

Kevin

[Lexicon]

I posted this on a new thread too, but:

I know RED has a lot on its plate but a dual CF module seems like a fairly critical need given that CF has become sort of the default format.

I was wondering if anyone here at the REDUSER genius bar (obviously some direct RED input would be nice too) could tell us what the technical issues involved in making a dual (or more) CF interface.

First, how hard to make a non hot swappable version where just adding the cards would increase available space - i.e. 2, 3, 4 cards. (also, is this something where somebody out there already makes an adapter to hold multiple cards to a single card interface).

Second, how hard is it to make it a dual hotswappable? What hardware issues might RED have locked themselves into, or is this just firmware to make it possible.

I'm verklempt so please discuss...

I don't work for RED but it is possible to do a dual CF interface. It's already been done on the PC with IDE and SATA interfaces due to their ATA commonality but I'm not sure of the specifics in how you would implement it on the RED as I'm obviously not privy to any design information about the camera beyond what I get here and from the website. The multiple cards with one adapter idea is what Panasonic uses for their P2 and it would be possible with CF but you'd probably have something fairly bulky and an expensive adapter. What I would propose (if I thought it were practical) is creating a high-capacity CF-type card that would work with the RED via the CF interface and be physically longer (but just as wide) to contain multiple memory chips on the board but that would require a relationship with a memory card maker such as Sandisk. I've looked at the engineering aspect of that and it can be done (it's exactly the same as a flash drive but with a CF interface) but costs and practicality are the issues there as it would be custom made and initially expensive. As for hotswapping, that is certainly possible with CF cards but that's something that would have to be addressed by the RED people as it's their design though I believe it could be done with the RED One.