Tethered EPIC?

[Mike 'Fireman' Ross]

Has RED, or anyone else, hinted at a solution for running an EPIC (or indeed Scarlet) tethered; bypassing SSD entirely and acquiring direct to a high-performance RAID attached to a DIT cart / workstation? Any thoughts on how that might best be achieved?

Mike

[Terry VerHaar]

Wouldn't you have to have the code to write R3Ds, which I don't believe RED has (or will?) release? Otherwise, you can take a clean signal from the HD-SDI port and record to an external recorder.

[Sean McAllister]

You could record off of the SDI but you would still want to use the SSD's to have RAW

[Doug Beatty]

Sorry, the only way to get the Raw out is onto SSDs. You can grab compressed 1080 debayered clips via HDMI or an SDI breakout cable, but not full resolution.

[sergio arguello]

someone explain that... why would you need the code if the ssd are for all intents just drives why then can you record to external if some smarter than me were to bastardize a connection to the ssd mount to take info elsewhere...? cant wait to hear this one

[Craig Parkes]

Someome in the 3D thread posted an extension cable they had designed to get the SSD off the side of the epic around the back for getting cameras closer together in side by side config I believe. This would be same idea, you'd just need the external cable to be longer and the raid to be formatted in the same fashion as the SSD with similiar protocols and connectors. Enough difficulties in that to properly be beyond third party providers, but from a technical point of view one would imagine possible. It's just not something a lot of people would buy so the development costs would be hard to justify.

[Andrew M.]

Aren't we going to have connection on I/O module that like in RED 1 allows you to connect external drive?

[Les Dittert]

If they allowed that, it would also enable folks to use non-red SSD's as well. That is a no no .

[Nick Burridge]

The early (still in development) RED ONEs had a RAW port I believe for off board recording as seen here (http://www.flickr.com/photos/r_jackson/2661384871/). Removed due to lack of interest given the costs involved, as well as the introduction of REDCODE.

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I imagine the SSD drive is just a SATA connection. You could probably re-pin an esata cable.

[Brian F Kobylarz]

Not quite so simple I would imagine. And imagine I wouldn't.
There is a handshake of some sort between the camera brain and whatever is plugged into the SSD port. I believe it knows who is family and who is not.
If there is something inserted into that slot that the firmware does not recognize, chances are it would reject recording.
Anyone trying to backward engineer that communication protocol would be violating RDC's intellectual property rights.

Dangerous territory.

Who wants to be the first in line to find that not only does your camera fail to work, but RED has closed the door on you as a customer?

I would take a different approach. Ask RED to consider it as a future option. Who knows, it may already be on the roadmap.
Then again, I think their hands are quite full with what's in the pipeline already.

[Les Dittert]

What if Canon said you can only use Canon SD cards in the DSLR ?

" We at Canon Corporate feel that to protect the consumer from disappointment when shooting in movie mode have only enabled movie mode when a Canon high speed SD card is inserted. "

[Brian Merlen]

Mike, I am doing that right not as we speak (but not getting raw). I am using avid media composer 6 and a black magic multibridge pro. It converts the true 24P to PsF so that I can get it right into the NLE. We tried doing it with a mojo and a nitris but neither worked because they wanted PsF not true P. So yes its possible to tether, we happen to be doing it with a scarlet. That and we aren't getting it 4k raw, just 1080p, though we can still use mags while I record into avid directly, say if you want a 4k master and a 2k real time logged and captured proxy

pix240 is a nice device too, but it wraps in .mov, not mxf which is problematic for our post guys who need mxf. there are lots of capturing devices that use hdmi or hd sdi, but we worked out a solution that captures to raid 0 graids through avids capture tool, and i can log in real time. its pretty f***ing sweet man, no ssds even needed, unless we want to overcrank on the mag or something i can't do with avid...

[Mike 'Fireman' Ross]

Interesting thoughts guys, thanks.

1080p kinda misses the point; the obvious way is to use a tether cable and substitute the RAID for the RED SSD, acquiring raw direct to disk. The ideal solution might be a FC side (or rear) module; you plug in an FC cable where the SSD would normally go. The SSDs are SATA, which is workable but not optimal perhaps.

I'll have to take a look at the 3D thread mentioned; anyone got a link?

To those who mentioned formats and comms protocols, those aren't a big deal; SSDs are in a standard format, that's why you can plug them into a reader and get footage off on any old PC or Mac! There's generally no violation of any property rights when you're engineering for compatibility, and I specifically asked if RED had mentioned anything about doing something along these lines as it should be fairly trivial to implement and they're the obvious people to do it... except they have their hands pretty full with many other projects, so maybe it is best tackled by a 3rd party after all.

I just like the obviousness and security of recording direct to RAID and cutting out the SSD middle man when there's a DIT cart or other IT infrastructure within easy range of the camera. Instant backup, one less thing to go wrong...

Mike

[Brian Merlen]

Since the redmag port is proprietary red would need to do this, and whatever drive you attach needs the sustained rates to do 4k raw. So far all we have is 1080 third party solutions with baked in non raw images.

[Terry VerHaar]

What if Canon said you can only use Canon SD cards in the DSLR ?

" We at Canon Corporate feel that to protect the consumer from disappointment when shooting in movie mode have only enabled movie mode when a Canon high speed SD card is inserted. "

Then, people would buy Canon SD cards. :huh:

[Les Dittert]

Even if Canon marked them up 6X from the same card sold by sandisk ? ;)

@Mike : Are you saying that it is OK to pursue other storage options officially then ?


Then, people would buy Canon SD cards. :huh:

[Brian F Kobylarz]

Interesting thoughts guys, thanks.

1080p kinda misses the point; the obvious way is to use a tether cable and substitute the RAID for the RED SSD, acquiring raw direct to disk. The ideal solution might be a FC side (or rear) module; you plug in an FC cable where the SSD would normally go. The SSDs are SATA, which is workable but not optimal perhaps.

I'll have to take a look at the 3D thread mentioned; anyone got a link?

To those who mentioned formats and comms protocols, those aren't a big deal; SSDs are in a standard format, that's why you can plug them into a reader and get footage off on any old PC or Mac! There's generally no violation of any property rights when you're engineering for compatibility, and I specifically asked if RED had mentioned anything about doing something along these lines as it should be fairly trivial to implement and they're the obvious people to do it... except they have their hands pretty full with many other projects, so maybe it is best tackled by a 3rd party after all.

I just like the obviousness and security of recording direct to RAID and cutting out the SSD middle man when there's a DIT cart or other IT infrastructure within easy range of the camera. Instant backup, one less thing to go wrong...

Mike

Mike,

It is not the ability to "read" the information, what you need to pay close attention to is the "record" side of the equation.

Remember the CF cards - if they did not meet up with RED's communication protocol, they did not work. There were some third party cards such as the Lexar 8GB 300x that they allowed, but other cards by other manufacturers that hit the same specs were not accepted by the camera. I would suspect that the same preventative steps may be in place on drives that are not manufactured by RDC. We don't know what they embed in the firmware.

A tether cable for 3D sleds going to a RED SSD is still talking to the same "media" - so the only issue I can think of is the material quality of the cable itself - was the conductor pure enough (less oxygen & other contaminants) to handle the speed? Once you terminate in a non-RED drive, who knows if it would work? Back to the firmware RED embeds in the SSD.

Hate to beat the horse again, but I think back to all of the threads a few years ago about the CF cards - RED is very aware that media can be a weak link and if it burps or shits while recording, people will blame the camera and the company, not the drive manufactured by "x".

As I pointed out in the earlier post, they may have a solution in the roadmap. Might it be an STwo or equivalent? Might it be a port in the Pro I/O (like you said, ideal)? But then again, I believe for reputation sake, they will want to be able to QC / verify that the media will meet their standards.
Speaking for myself, I'll be patient. I'd rather have something I know meets with their specs and approval. And as I pointed out, reverse engineering that communications protocol may have a price tag far too high.

[Les Dittert]

Couple of points:
Nobody wants CF cards anymore.
For Scarlet, you only need 50 megabytes per second write speed. That is easy these days.

[Mike 'Fireman' Ross]

All I'm saying is that there's a degree of obviousness in recording direct to RAID where the IT infrastructure exists to do this. With serious enterprise-grade storage the data rates should not be an issue; especially when backed by gigabytes of cache. The redmag port is standard SATA (unless anyone knows any different?!); the physical connector is non-standard for SATA but that's pretty small beer.

AFAIK RED have never stated if anything as regards storage is 'officially OK' or not; the last *clear* statement I recall on any such matter was when it was determined that R1 lens mounts that required the removal of the back focus mechanism (Birger, IMS etc.) were Not OK as a matter of principle. Common sense and common courtesy would dictate running prototype cables or hardware past Jarred for sanity checking, exactly as with lens mounts or other accessories.

Mike

[Brian F Kobylarz]

Couple of points:
Nobody wants CF cards anymore.
For Scarlet, you only need 50 megabytes per second write speed. That is easy these days.

Missing the point. I brought up the CF cards only as an example that many old-timers on this user forum would remember.
RED had allowed or prohibited recording media via communication protocols.
I would be surprised if they had abandoned that practice.

One reason the cards cost as they do is the testing.
The same manufacturer and model number does not guarantee equal performance.
Even if written specs on a device look good, there may be other factors that they consider during testing.

Amazing, old-timers are just a few years old here.

[Rocco Schult]

What if Canon said you can only use Canon SD cards in the DSLR ?

" We at Canon Corporate feel that to protect the consumer from disappointment when shooting in movie mode have only enabled movie mode when a Canon high speed SD card is inserted. "

RED did so in the past, you can bet they stick to it.

[Charlie_Grinnell]

Would be interested to see if shooting tethered would be considered as a feature request. I spent the last week in the studio shooting macro dolly stuff and I had our studio photographer in the same room as me and she kept laughing when I had to dump SSD's, she kept asking me why RED doesn't have a tethered shooting solution.

[Pawel Achtel]

I'll have to take a look at the 3D thread mentioned; anyone got a link?

Hey Mike, yes we managed to split the brain from the SSD and keep the patient alive :)

here is most recent post: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?91951-Looking-for-connector-Epic-Side-SSD-extension-cord&p=1127121&viewfull=1#post1127121

and here is the relevant post in the original thread: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?74750-3Deep-3D-underwater-housing-for-Epic&p=1023214&viewfull=1#post1023214


...Common sense and common courtesy would dictate running prototype cables or hardware past Jarred for sanity checking...

Yep. Tick.

[Charlie_Grinnell]

I was more thinking of being able to stick something in the SSD slot that would allow you to connect to a computer with USB3, eSATA, Thunderbolt (or whatever fast enough connection you want) and then every time you record, a new clip shows up in redcine-x pro, kind of like how stills people have it setup to work with lightroom.

[Victor Lazaro]

I'm just curious of why you would want such system (I'm not saying that it is not useful, just curious to know why it wouldn't be better to simply use small mags and quickly offload to a station after each setup for instance. giving you the freedom to move the camera without an extra cable.)

[L. Langer]

If enough people want it, RED will provide tethering if it's feasible without costing too much for them and you. The RED ONE platform did have a tethered design testbed using fiber optics - this is what Team RED told us at the time - but it was very expensive to implement as a product and would have been an option only for the high-roller owners, which made it untenable as an option to offer.