What's the current situation with CF card capacity?

[Brandon Fraley]

I haven't been following this lately. Are we still stuck at 8 gig? 16? any ideas when 32 gigs are coming?

Thanks!

[SF Geek]

It's been almost six months since the Red came out and we still have only 8gig cards with no other prospects.

[Dylan Reeve]

RED says they are testing every 16GB card they can lay their hands on. I suspect Lexar (their current partner) are also working on getting it happening.

[Chris Parker]

16 sure would be nice. i don't care much about 32GB.

[Andrew Walker]

I like the 8GB cards. Keeps the card changes going and you can catch problems if your checking the footage on set. The Red Drive is awesome but having that much footage on one device is always taking a chance. Even on flash. But if it turns out that you can record 120fps on CF cards then a bigger card would be nice.

[Paul Hazlett]

silicon power is coming out with a 300x 32gb....what yous Red?

[rod bradley]

The Delkin 16gig 305x card meets the specs, tests as fast as my Red card, but the camera won't let it be formatted. I find this confusing. Has anyone used any non-Red branded card and had success?

[Brook Willard]

Rod, try formatting it from the System menu rather than on insertion. That sometimes makes it work.

Ultimately, the CF debacle isn't RED's fault... it's the flash industry's. They advertise speeds that they just can't match in production. Frankly, I'm amazed that the Lexar/RED CFs actually hold up to recording [every time] after seeing how miserably all of the 3rd party cards fail.

Hopefully Lexar and their competitors get their collective butts in gear and get us some usable 16GB cards.

[Jannard]

The Delkin 16gig 305x card meets the specs, tests as fast as my Red card, but the camera won't let it be formatted. I find this confusing. Has anyone used any non-Red branded card and had success?

It doesn't perform to its spec.

Jim

[Mark Pedersen]

It doesn't perform to its spec.

Jim

Jim,

Any insight as to when we might see 16G cards that do??

M

[Kjetil Haugen]

Jim,

Any insight as to when we might see 16G cards that do??

M

I'm also curious. Got 2 8gigs. Been holding out for the 16gb. If I order 2 more 8gigs, will I feel totally stupid two weeks from now or something?

Don't have too much money to spend on CF cards. Spent most of it on this new camera everybody's been talking about.. RED something it says..

[Dylan Reeve]

I don't think they'll sneak the 16GB cards up on us... We'll probably hear once they find a supplier that meets the spec.

Even so, the 8GB cards a perfectly usable, so while you might end up with a few more than you want, they don't need to be thrown out...

[Ken K]

I'm curious to see if Pretec's 333x 16GB and 24GB cards will hold up. I think they're supposed to be released this month?

[Brent J. Craig]

When you think about how the rest of the world uses compactflash you can see that there is no real incentive for manufacturers to develop sustainable high write speeds.

The vast majority of CF cards are used in digital still photography, where the writes are very bursty with lots of time between them. A photog shoots 5 or 10 frames, then the camera buffers them and writes them out to CF at its leisure. The speed is unnoticeable because no one is taking more than 5 pictures per second, every second! The only time CF card speeds are noticeable for them is when they are downloading the cards, and most cards have much higher read speeds than write speeds.

Having said that, when the 16GB cards finally come out, there are going to be a lot of happy digital still photographers because we can sell them all of our ridiculously fast 8GB cards!

I am curious just how many high-speed cards someone like Red would need to order to make a special production run worthwhile for a flash maker? With 4000-5000 cameras out there, how many 16GB cards do you think we would buy? It could easily be 50,000 in my estimation. If Scarlet shoot to CF, you can multiply that number by ???.

[jbeale]

The Delkin 16gig 305x card meets the specs, tests as fast as my Red card, but the camera won't let it be formatted.

At the lowest level, here are a lot of very specific timing details in a CF card transaction between controller and memory, and every one of them has to meet requirements. You get a general idea from an overall data transfer timing, but that doesn't tell you about each of the clock and data edge-to-edge timings and latencies in the system. Also, it is often different with each different controller chip, so the timings end up different with different CF readers... the chipset in your CF reader is probably not exactly what Red uses.

[Lexicon]

I'll lay it out again for the 256th time. 16GB cards with sustained 300X write speed are not possible with today's designs. Flash read speeds have pretty much always been higher than the write speeds but things should become more balanced with the next generation of CF technology. That's why CFast (the format that will replace the current Compact Flash format) is being hammered out as rapidly as possible with release dates that have been set for next year. Card makers like Samsung, Lexar, Sandisk, and Toshiba already have new memory tech lined up to place in these cards so if all goes well, we'll have a significantly higher-capacity RED-branded card in the next two years that will meet the demands of all users.

[Rainer Fritz]

Would be nice to have a RED SATA Housing to put in SATA SSD by our self. Scandisk has there a really nice one:
http://www.scandisk.com/OEM/ProductCatalog(1321)-SanDisk_SSD_SATA_5000_25.aspx

[Lexicon]

Would be nice to have a RED SATA Housing to put in SATA SSD by our self. Scandisk has there a really nice one:
http://www.scandisk.com/OEM/ProductCatalog(1321)-SanDisk_SSD_SATA_5000_25.aspx

You'd be better off using what RED offers. Most SSDs are designed for READ speeds that are fast but many offer pokey write speeds. With the newer flash designs coming out, that should change so that flash based drives will become more of an option for general users.

[Michael Hastings]

I'll lay it out again for the 256th time. 16GB cards with sustained 300X write speed are not possible with today's designs.

Not to be difficult but I'm from the show me state, what is your source for "300X write speed are not possible with today's designs." What is different about a 16 gig over an 8 gig that makes it impossible to get the same or nearly the same transfer speed? It's not like a hard disk where the outer bands move faster than the inner.


Has anyone used any non-Red branded card and had success?

Soderbergh used Lexar 300x Professional UDMA 8 gig cards - at least that's what they are selling on another thread on REDUSER.


The Delkin 16gig 305x card meets the specs, tests as fast as my Red card, but the camera won't let it be formatted. I find this confusing.

Jim
It doesn't perform to its spec.

Jim

Couldn't you use "not quite up to 4K spec" cards for 2K? Why would the camera not allow formatting? Is the firmware disallowing unapproved cards?
"Holy Windows/DRDOS, Batman!":biggrin:

[Michael Stanmore]

Can I ask a serious question... is it possible for the Red folk to build a CF module with 2 slots? A la the P2 slots on the HVX200...though probably not hot swappable... but a system that would fill up one card, then automatically switch to filling the second card without dropping a frame?

[Dylan Reeve]

The problem with the two-slot model is that the clip has to be broken and spanned across to the other device. Even in P2 and EX that seems to wind up failing (I've certainly had clips that didn't want to join back up again on both systems).

An option that is maybe possible would be a SATA RAID-0 4xCF unit. Would, theoretically, allow higher frame rates and more storage. But the catch is that the four cards have to stay together in their set to be any use, so they can't be offloaded one card at a time or anything.

I'm don't believe that 300X 16GB cards are impossible at all, and I believe they will come, but at the moment we're stuck with manufacturers' overstating their performance, and frustrating everyone.

[Michael Stanmore]

Thanks. OK I'll wait too.. :)

[Bing Bailey]

I'm sure jim jannard is as frustrated as anyone that higher speed higher capacity cards aren't here yet. as it is I think we're all spoiled with what we've gotten already. in 12 months we'll probably have 128gb cards and this will just seem silly. all good things come to those who wait

[Dale Launer]

Here's a 32GB 300X CF. Someone try it!

http://www.silicon-power.com/eng/products_list_d.php?no=66&pid=9&sid=14

[Jeff Coatney]

Jim is probably looking into making his own CF cards.

[Lexicon]

Here's a 32GB 300X CF. Someone try it!

http://www.silicon-power.com/eng/products_list_d.php?no=66&pid=9&sid=14

They don't actually make any memory so it's likely just something made from surplus chips or a rebranded surplus card from whomever is making the other cheapo 32GB 300X cards sold by other companies. The Asian markets are full of companies selling products with different labels that all came from the same sources.

[Lexicon]

Jim is probably looking into making his own CF cards.

They already have their own custom cards through Micron/Lexar using their UDMA controller technology developed for the 300x Pro card series. It would be too expensive for RED to actually "make" the cards themselves. Mr. Jannard has a lot of money but he'd need to give up a significant amount of his current estimated worth to get into that game. The (currently owned by Micron) semiconductor fab in my area which was originally built by Sandisk and Toshiba during their R&D partnership started at $755 million initial projected cost and ballooned to over $2 billion when all was said and done. The economy has certainly changed a bit since then so costs would be somewhat different but probably even higher if they were to try that today. Of course if RED had a very small fab line and made cards on a small scale like an R&D fab turns out engineering samples then it could happen. They would certainly need to poach R&D talent from one of the big boys or enter into a partnership with them to obtain their technology but if the cards were right, RED could pull it off. I'm sure there are several old fab facilities on the market in CA.