Buy a Compact Flash Card?
 

Is this the right type? It's 133X

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820208340

It should work just fine. I have the 32GB version and I've had no problems with it.

Have you seen this one double the speed quicker download x266

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820208298

From what I understand, 133x is all that is needed to record the video. The only real benefit you should see from a faster card is transferring video from the card to the computer. We should see a lot more 32GB cards coming out in the future as well as 64GB cards this summer.

Sandisk makes the "Ducati" (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...pactFlash.html) series of CF cards. They currently only have 4 and 8GB versions, but with the pretty red color and a motorcycle on the cover, they have to be fast :)

I agree. Add to that the fact that the video data is fed to the unit via firewire 400 and usually read in a USB2 readier, and the extra speed of a 266x card won't be of too much use. None the less, I emailed Transcend to ask about the potential availability of higher density 266x Transcend CF cards in the future and received this response:

___________________________________________________________________

Laurence,

Thank you for your interest in Transcend products!



Unfortunately at this time, there are not plans to release 16GB and 32GB CF 266x.

We do offer those capacities with our CF 133x. though.



Thanks,



Transcend Information Maryland, Inc

Richard Martin

Tech Support Engineer

richard_martin@transcendusa.com

As I understand it, 266X CF has a maximum data transfer rate of 40MB per second and USB 2.0 has a maximum data transfer rate of 60MB per second (with 40MB per second being more typical in a real world setting). It would stand to reason that 266X CF should be roughly twice as fast to read from as 133X CF, using a typical USB 2.0 card reader.

Yes you are right. I guess I should look things up before I post. This is why I suppose that the new Sony CF cards (when they finally are released) will be around 306x speed. That speed will put them right at about the same speed as any USB card reader they might be used in and give as fast as possible a transfer speed over USB2.

None-the-less, while you are shooting video, the extra speed beyond 133x shouldn't matter.

Without disputing those figures, I think real life performance is not always so predictable, and it's also necessary to think of such things as the speed of the hard drive being written to, and bus speeds within the computer. Other factors may also mean that those speeds can't be taken advantage of 100% of the time as far as actual downloading is concerned.

It would really be necessary to practically test the speeds with each type of card, and (most importantly) I believe the results would vary widely from one computer system to another.

It may well be that for Z7/S270 usage, 133x cards are a sensible compromise between price and performance - with the advantage that they currently seem to available in the largest sizes.

Has anyone timed how long it takes to transfer one hour of HDV video from a 133X CF to computer (hard drive)? I'd be interested to know what kind of real world performance is being achieved.

I did 70 minutes in 23 minutes