What is what for digital media options

[KMayry]

I loved Brook Willard's "Understanding the Mysterium". I was wondering if he was going to post anything with respect to the digital media options. I come from a film background and would like more information on the various features of each so I can better evaluate and determine which ones are right for my applications. For example how much recording time would I get a 4k on the 320 gig drive vs. say the 64 gig Red Ram. And what exactly are the Express Card/34 read/write module or compactFlash read/write module or the 1.8" SATA read/write module. Or is the RAW port the way to go. Thanks for reading.

[Chris Parker]

I too would also like to see suggestions/answers for this. Particularly, what do people plan to do with the red flash/red drive once it is full on set, and need to continue shooting. (i.e. on set offload/backup systems)

[Emery Wells]

Im sure some others will fill in the missing details but I can get ya started.

First off, lets start with the RAW high speed data port. This will probably be the least purchased option on the camera. It requires an extremely expensive, and extremely fast external RAID to capture material. The upside is in the additional format recording options you have.

You cannot record the full 2540p (4520x2540) resolution of the camera and max frame rate (60fps) unless you have the RAW high speed data port.

There are other recording options such as the regular 4k 60p, and 2k 120fps that are also only available through the data port. Of course, if you want to avoid any and ALL compression then that's another reason to go with the highspeed port. The community has yet to perform extensive testing on REDCODE RAW material but so far it looks as though there is little to no reason to record totally RAW.

Ok so that's out of the way. Now we have 5 other recording options to deal with. The first two are external meaning they sit outside of the camera.

RED DRIVE (320 gigs) will give you a few hours of recording at 4k 24fps REDCODE RAW. I believe the exact number hovers around 3 hours of record time. This is the most cost effective solution for recording. So why would you want to consier the other options you ask? Well hard drives have lots of moving parts and they are prone to failure. Hard drives are sensitive to temperature and bumps and are all around somewhat prone to failure. Did i mention they are prone to failure? That being said, if they are cared for properly they should give you a couple years of trouble free service and the price cant be beat. For longer record times such as interviews or run and gun documentaries, this may be your only viable option. Also I noticed there are a lot of underwater shooters on this board and they have been dreaming for something like this for a long time. Traditionally they have been limited to the length of a tape when shooting underwater and now they can be limited by the length of their oxygen!

External recording option #2, RED RAM. This sits in an external housing that attaches to the camera. Its solid state, its made by RED so you know its tested and reliable, and its 64GB which will give you something in the neighborhood of 40 minutes REDCODE RAW at 4k 24fps, maybe more, I didnt do the math. The solid state RAM is fault tolerant, not as sensitive to heat, no moving parts, it can be banged around etc... very reliable. Downside: Expensive.

On to the 3 internal recording module options.

Well its simple. Red knew there were lots of recording mediums coming out on the market so they give you an option to choose which recording medium youd like to use. You can buy off the shelf recording media (all solid state) in 3 formats: Express card, compact flash, and SATA. None of them have an inerrant advantage over the other. They are purely the interface to the media. They are all fast and all capable of the recording speed needed for RED. It really comes down to whats going on in the market with recording media. I feel the mini solid state SATA drives will become very popular for laptops over the next year or 2 so I might choose that for my flash module option. You dont have to choose any option, as you could just stick with the external ones.

Do some research and see what kind of flash media is out on the market today and what type of interface they use. As far as recording time, it will depend on the capacity of the media you buy.

Good luck!

[KMayry]

Thanks Emery that was a great explanation and pretty much cleared some things up for me.

[Emery Wells]

Thanks Emery that was a great explanation and pretty much cleared some things up for me.

Cool, glad it was helpful.

Also keep on eye on www.projectred.net which is a new initiative we just launched with www.fxphd.com

We're going to try and answer all of these questions and more as we put the camera through a totally 'open source' real world production. It's all non profit and community based so hopefully lots of folks will join in.

[HD Hildebrand]

Great breakdown Emery! Thanks.