New 300x CF Cards

[Paris Remillard]

I've been seeing press releases for 280x and 300x CF and SD cards aimed at RAW capture for digital stills, but it makes me wonder if they'd be viable for D-Cinema.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/21/lexar-intros-300x-udma-compactflash-cards-readers/

The Lexar claims sustained write time of 45MB per second. I don't know how long that can be sustained or what the architecture has to be to read at those speeds, but it seems that recording to non-RAIDed off the shelf media might be possible. At least very soon.

Now you can feel free to tell me what I'm missing.

[Evin Grant]

It's certainly worth testing, these cards will only get faster and more affordable as time goes on. You only need 34MB a sec to get Redcode Raw 4K out of the camera with a 20% safety margin (According to published specs). Although 8GB will give you less than 5 minutes of recording at that resolution it's a good alternative for on-camera storage like 200/400 Ft 35mm mag..

[Carl-August Savgård]

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=689

[Zack Birlew]

5 minutes huh? That'd be like using a 4gb P2 card on the HVX200, only this would be the RED. :)

I've always liked the idea of using CF cards for video but it's like nobody's jumping on that. I wonder why? Then there's always microdrives, USB flash drives (why couldn't they just make flash drives with firewire on the ends instead of USB?), and plain old laptop hard drives. Yet there's no way to use these by themselves without the aid of a laptop.

Fortunately, it's looking like manufacturers are really getting into flash memory now, hence the RED Flash for one, and more will come.

[Nik Manning]

5 minutes huh? That'd be like using a 4gb P2 card on the HVX200, only this would be the RED. :)

I've always liked the idea of using CF cards for video but it's like nobody's jumping on that. I wonder why? Then there's always microdrives, USB flash drives (why couldn't they just make flash drives with firewire on the ends instead of USB?), and plain old laptop hard drives. Yet there's no way to use these by themselves without the aid of a laptop.

Fortunately, it's looking like manufacturers are really getting into flash memory now, hence the RED Flash for one, and more will come.

You know Jack I always wondered the same thing.

[Tom Lowe]

Flash is the way to go. Maybe you could build a port device with like five slots that attaches to the camera, and just drop 5 high-speed CF cards in there, whether they are 8GB or 16GB... that could add up to some serious record time at 27MB/s.

Isn't this essentially what the Red Flash drive is going to be?

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Flash is the way to go. Maybe you could build a port device with like five slots that attaches to the camera, and just drop 5 high-speed CF cards in there, whether they are 8GB or 16GB... that could add up to some serious record time at 27MB/s.

Isn't this essentially what the Red Flash drive is going to be?

Heh. We already had this discussion a few weeks back. The multiple CF card approach didn't seem too popular. :) But yeah, FLASH memory is getting cheaper every day and capacities and speeds continue to grow. By the end of this year, 128GB and larger FLASH based "hard drives" will be on the market. It's entirely possible that by this time next year (or even earlier) RED could offer RED DRIVE modules in 256GB+ capacity that are FLASH based instead of using regular hard drives. But I'm anxiously awaiting news on the RED FLASH unit and I'm curious to see which type of media they pick.

[Tom Lowe]

yeah, for real. RED FLASH has all kinds of potential.