64 GB Sandisk CF Media Released with Unrealistic Pricing !
 

Hi Friends:
Please be advised, if you're not already, that Sandisk is now shipping their new 64 GB high data rate (90 MB per sec.) CF card media. I also understand this card has *not* been qualified by Convergent-Design. The retail price per card listed on their own website at a whopping $895.99 US !! Now I agree the cards are re-useable and perhaps even justifiable for very high end projects, but let us also be realistic here ! If I was to purchase, say, four 64 GB cards to populate my Flash XDR CF card slots, then I will wind up paying *more* than the actual current retail purchase price for a Convergent Desgn nanoFlash ! Come on ! Let's get real ! Realisticly, how many folks who purchase a nanoFlash can afford those prices ? Even if you got a better deal @ B & H or whatever store, unless you got at least $400.00 off, then would it be affordable and practical for you ? Man ! I'm really disappointed at the price ! Go check it out yourself at SanDisk | Products | DSLR | SanDisk® Extreme® Pro? CompactFlash® Card

Dear Mark,

At one time, these SanDisk Extreme Pro 64 GB cards were listed on B&H for approximately $700 each. But, these listing were removed after a day or two.

At this time, I have not found any serious competition to these cards, in the 64 GB capacity.

Memory card prices move in one direction only: down. Give it a little time.

I wanna See the Price Go Down !
 

...Hey Chris. AMEN !

...Capacity is one thing, but $895.00 per card ! This price is just nutz !

I have 4 of the 32Gb Sandisk and after they announced the 64s, I thought to wait until further notice.

At current prices, I will be topping up my supplies with a few more 32Gb cards.

Once hot swapping comes on line, it will help on continuously recorded shoots.

"but let us also be realistic here" yes, why would you put 4 time 64gig in such device ?

....Hot swapping wiyh lower cost flash media ! You're absolutely right on with that !

Hello Mark,
Like you and David I would like to start to use the new cards but have decided to wait.
The best price that I have found for the SANDISK EXTREME PRO COMPACT FLASH CF 64GB is U$625.01.

Let's put things into perspective.

The Panasonic P2 A-series card at 64GB capacity is listed at $2,399 at B&H
Panasonic | AJ-P2C064AG 64GB P2 High Performance | AJ-P2C064AG

The new, lower priced 64GB P2 cards in that series lists at $979.
Panasonic | AJ-P2E064XG 64GB E-Series P2 Card | AJ-P2E064XG

These cards constitute approximately 1 hour recording time at 1080p


Sony does not yet offer a 64GB card in it's SxS line yet. The 32GB card currently lists at $844 at B&H.
Sony | SBP-32 32GB SxS PRO Memory Card | SBP32 | B&H Photo Video

This constitutes 2 hours of recording time at best rate.

While I realize those of you coming from HDV or even SDHC may be dismayed at the pricing, you can be assured that the prices are not out of line for "professional" media, and the prices on commodity media such as Compact Flash will decrease much faster than the prices of propietary media such as P2 or SxS.

I think that unless you intend to do all your shooting at 220Mbps, it doesn't make sense to spend that money in "high performance" CF cards.
I've got few SanDisk Extreme IV for occasional 160/220Mbps shooting.
The bulk of my shoot will be in 100Mbps, so Sandisk Extreme III 32Gbs will do the job.
Best,
rafael

....Yes. The bulk of my shooting is on 2 x 32 GB Sandisk Extreme III cards, with one 16 GB Extreme IV for higher data rate shooting. I have been experimenting with shooting at 50 and 100 Mbps to get the most out of these cards.

The largest and fastest and newest memory is almost always disproportionally priced, compared to what it's replacing. Though there are occasional surprises.

Holds true for all kinds of memory, from SSDs, to your work computer, to your camera, and (now) to your recorder.

I'm in Perrone's camp; to many of us the new gen of CF cards seem a bargain. Still, though most will really not need the 90MB/sec speed that costs so much more (now), being able to seamlessly continue a recording by hot swapping cards ads a tremendous amount of flexibility. (And is why I've been asking quietly every month when it's going to be implemented. :) )

Billy

Large Capacity Card Use is Practical Only If You're Recording Uncompressed
 

.....I don't say the 64 GB price is out of line for being a strickly professional high capacity recording media, which is unequalled anywhere else, and is being used for a special application. I make the argument that in an everday practical sense, I can't see any Nano user purchasing media which would possibly equal up to half of or superceed the entire purchase price of their SSDR device just to get a longer recording time. If they *must* have uncompressed recording mode for film out or visual effects green screen compositing for a later film out, then of course your minimum purchase will be four of these cards or more. At this time I understand the Nano will not have uncompressed capability. so the need for such a high end media may be a moot point. The Flash XDR on the other hand has been sold since it's release last year with a promised future enabling of uncompressed recording and was one of the reasons behind my decision to pay the extra dollars to go for the XDR and not the Nano as I understood the Nano's capabilities at the time of my XDR purchase.

.....Hot swapping lower end cards will be the way to go for the majority of our shooting. In any case, as already stated in this thread, the price of the 64 GB media will drop so the retail street price may be eventually quite affordable for any type of use.

Dear Mark,

If you are recording with a Flash XDR, and you are using our recommended 100 Mbps Long-GOP, and you have four 32 GB cards, you get approximately two hours and 36 minutes of uninterrupted recording.

If you use 50 Mbps Long-GOP which is more than adequate for event type shooting, you approximately 5 hours and 12 minutes of uninterrupted recording.

Typcially, even with long event recordings, one can take 30 seconds or less to change cards.

For long uninterrupted events one does not typically need the highest quality, "Master Quality" footage. Our 50 Mbps mode is the same quality as the Sony PDW-700, PDW-F800 cameras. Many PDW-700 cameras were used for the last Olympics, all were 50 Mbps.

Then, if one needs even longer times, we have 35 Mbps, 4:2:0 modes.

And our SD DVD modes go down to 5 Mbps. If one recorded using SD-SDI, at 5 Mbps, the times would be approximately 20 times than the number given for 100 Mbps above, or approximatey 52 hours of uninterrrupted recording.

Of course, all of these times double when using four 64 GB cards instead of four 32 GB cards.

....Yes indeed, and that's plenty of time for most things.

...Yes, this is amazing indeed ! I haven't done any testing at 50 Mbps, but I understand Discovery Canada is shooting Cash Cab @ 50 Mbps on their long row of Flash XDR's. If it's good enough for them.....

....Yep. The olympics looked pretty darn good in HD.

....I haven't tried this setting yet either, but I'm curious to know what it looks like.

....Yes, but none of this is really the point is it Dan ? The suggestion here is that one doesn't need uncompressed HD video, and for 90% of broadcast work I absolutely agree that the above stated suggestions are perfectly reasonable for everyday work in video.

.....However, when it comes to digital Cinema, then we're looking at a different set of delivery parameters.

i.e. 35 MM cinema projection and 4K digital cinema projection, and possible 3D shooting with two identical cameras and XDR's. Green screen plate recording for heavy Adobe After Effects work and a film out at the end.

.....To my way of thinking, the Flash XDR really hits its ultimate application in uncompressed digital cinema shooting and master VTR replacement, and of course, this would also be where the hyper expensive 64 GB cards become justifiable.

Respectfully,

Mark

Dear Mark,

I was not trying to address uncompressed.

I was trying to say that there is a very wide range of quality versus length of recording options available with the Flash XDR and nanoFlash, all without "Hot Swapping".

For full uncompressed, four 32 GB cards in a Flash XDR gives you more recording time than a large film magazine.

Four 64 GB cards gives you twice the recording time of four 32 GB cards.

Competition should drive the price of the 64 GB cards down, once other manufacturers release their 64 GB or larger cards.

My apologies for the misunderstanding. Yes, you are quite correct on this :-) Also, the addition of adding a hot swapping feature for use on long speech and sit down interviews (Like we're shooting now) would be a wonderful feature to have.

We are constantly running into record length issues with the NanoFlash. With our high speed cameras the 1080p24 output is almost constant for the entire NFL game since we are expanding time. Stopping for even 30 seconds is a hindrance and quality is everything.

For longer (10 hour) events like the World Series of Poker Europe where we are simultaneously running 18 Nanos and XDR's at 50Mbs we would need to double our useage of Sandisk cards to run 2 cards at a time and as well have 2 sets. That increases cost greatly and some of you guys probably have still not forgiven me after I bought out B&H recently, lol.

The thing that will be much more useful to us than the 64GB cards is hot swapping 32GB cards. That will end up saving quite a bit of cost for us.

Jeff

Hot Swap and 64GB CF Cards
 

Hi Jeff, Mark-

We plan to give you both options: Hot Swap and compatibility with the 64GB Extreme Pro CF cards. We have already qualified the SanDisk 32GB Extreme CF card for all bit-rates. As soon as we can get the 64GB card we will also qualify it (or make appropriate changes to our firmware). The 32GB Extreme card worked with no code changes.

Hot Swap is still on target for a November release. We are testing time-lapse code now (which looks fantastic at 220 Mbps) and hope to begin debug on over/under crank next week. Once this code is released we will work on hot-swap and loop-record.

Naturally, reliability remains a key concern, so we always test the code across 10-15 boxes in which we record material over a week. That generates a ton of files to view and confirm, but it is time well spent.

Best-

Hi Mike. I am glad to know how seriously and thoroughly you test your code. It's really amazing to see how you folks can actually keep adding features, which of course is adding value to our XDR's and Nano's. I have not even seen regular full motion video @ the 220 I frame setting yet, so I am quite excited to see the Timelapse as well.

While high, recall that new memory cards of the highest capacity have been in the $400-1000 range for the last few years. Understand that when memory manufacturers release product from a new fab at a higher density, initially, their yields are very low. So, you pay more until the yields are higher. Even are these seemingly exorbitant prices, many are sold at or below actual cost.

Some Time & Some More Perspective
 

....I've had some time to research this issue a little more thoroughly and I have to respectfully agree to disagree with you at least in one sense Perrone. The problem here is you are making an apples and oranges comparison between Sony's and Panasonic's *proprietary* memmory card formats and the *Generic* memmory card format known as Compact Flash. CF cards are a generic format which can be used across multiple still and video cameras and manfacturors, while P2 and SxS certainly cannot.

.....As someone else pointed out on this thread, the newer, faster CF card memmory is probably coming from a new manufacturing process and/or facility with possibly much smaller production yields. Therefore, one can expect to pay somewhat higher prices for the faster, newer memmory. Obsteporus Chris the Rex pointed out that memmory prices head in one direction - down, so maybe as time and higher yields take hold, we will start to see some more realistic pricing on the 60 and 90 MB per second CF media from Sandisk.

New 64GB Card Looks Very Promising
 

Give us another day or so of testing, but I am optimistic that we may have found a new 64GB CF card that lists for $300 and is capable of all bit-rates up to 220Mbps.

More info in a few days.

Best-

... Now this is what I'm talking about. Thanks Mike. This is reasonable.

Mike,

What card are you checking out? Very interested.

Thanks,
Garrett

Sounds like the Photofast cards that Rob Galbraith reviewed positively.

Rob Galbraith DPI: SanDisk, Transcend and PhotoFast roll out speedy cards up to 64GB

Photofast Compact Flash* SDHC Class 10 CFAST CF Flash Cards

Hi Mike-
Yes, this is the one! Initial test results look very good. I'll have more info next week.

Best-

Thanks Mike and Mike,

Looking forward to more info.

Garrett

CF Media Performance & Prices Dropping Dramatically
 

Hi Mike & Mike:
I must say I'm quite encouraged to see how fast the price is dropping versus performance on the newer CF card media. It looks like we will be seeing 64 GB CF cards in the $300.00 range, which will allow much higher Long GOP data rate recording on the XDR and Nano. :-) Yay !