Mike Schell
May 30th, 2008, 01:25 PM
After considerable research into Compact Flash card readers, we have concluded that the Lexar UDMA Firewire 800 Reader (around US $60) is still the very best overall choice. This reader is very small and portable and you can daisy chain up to 4 readers on a single Firewire-800 bus (and stack the readers on top of each other) and see all the files on all four cards. All four readers can be powered directly off the Firewire 800 bus (no external power required!)
We have clocked the Lexar reader at over 40 Mbytes/sec reads using the Transcend 32 GB CF card, which means you can easily edit directly from the card without the need to copy to your hard drive. The 40 Mbyte/sec performance would support 4 streams of 50 Mbps or 2 streams of 100 Mbps directly from the cards. So, if you need to turn around an edit very quickly, this would be the best solution.
Yes, you can use USB based readers (we plan to include one in the Flash XDR box), but don't expect much performance. You might be able to edit a single 50 Mbps stream directly from the reader, but that's about the limit.
If you don't have a MAC with built-in Firwire-800, you can get an Express Card 34 to Firewire 800 adapter. Belkin makes one for around US $70, but I am sure there are plenty of other good choices on the market.
Another possible option is the Express Card 34 Compact Flash readers, available from Delkin and Synchrotech (around US $60). We have received good reports on these products, but they both have very short guide rails to support the Compact Flash cards, so it's easy to get the card twisted. This, of course, results in bent pins and a non-functional card. The other big drawback of this approach is that you are limited to reading one CF card at a time, as opposed to the stackable Lexar reader, which supports access to four cards.
We have clocked the Lexar reader at over 40 Mbytes/sec reads using the Transcend 32 GB CF card, which means you can easily edit directly from the card without the need to copy to your hard drive. The 40 Mbyte/sec performance would support 4 streams of 50 Mbps or 2 streams of 100 Mbps directly from the cards. So, if you need to turn around an edit very quickly, this would be the best solution.
Yes, you can use USB based readers (we plan to include one in the Flash XDR box), but don't expect much performance. You might be able to edit a single 50 Mbps stream directly from the reader, but that's about the limit.
If you don't have a MAC with built-in Firwire-800, you can get an Express Card 34 to Firewire 800 adapter. Belkin makes one for around US $70, but I am sure there are plenty of other good choices on the market.
Another possible option is the Express Card 34 Compact Flash readers, available from Delkin and Synchrotech (around US $60). We have received good reports on these products, but they both have very short guide rails to support the Compact Flash cards, so it's easy to get the card twisted. This, of course, results in bent pins and a non-functional card. The other big drawback of this approach is that you are limited to reading one CF card at a time, as opposed to the stackable Lexar reader, which supports access to four cards.