[QUOTE=Ola Christoffersson;940820]Filled up the card and I am copying it to my PC now. It is much slower copying though but for 1/8:th of the price of a SxS-card I don't mind!

QUOTE]

I presume you're plugging the sd card into a normal sd card slot on your pc, i wonder what transfer speed can be expected if the sd card was left in the sxs>sd adaptor then that was plugged into a sxs slot on a pc ?

Does a normal card reader slot connect inside the pc via the usb header ? If so then you'll get the usb bottle neck.

Paul.

Wow... keep up the great work guys!!!

Based on the read specs direct using my reader and the new Extreme 16GB SDHC (I clocked at reading 20MB/s), it should transfer to your computer at 1.2GB/minute.

Has anyone had any errors using the Sandisk Extreme III? I am tempted to start using it in production.

Ola,
I'm on day 5 and have yet to have an error. I've been trying to force erros with quick start and stops and also filling the media right to the end.... No issues!

As I mentioned in my last post, I estimated this combo alows 40% of data rate headroom running HQ (35mbps).

I've cycled through a few 8Gb Transcend Class 6 cards with no errors during normal use. I get downloads to my Mac that are about 30% slower than SxS, but it's still a lot faster than real time. One of the great things is being able to use a cheap SD to USB adapter to bring in footage to my MacPro.

Has anyone had clips spanning cards yet ?
Do the spanning also work ok, as with sxs cards ?
Either sandisk to sony sxs or sandisk to sandisk ?

Paul.

I tried spanning from an 8GB SxS in slot A to a 16GB Sandisk Extreme III with the Kensington adapter yesterday with one long 1.5 hour clip (actually Parrots in our town of Brisbane, the same parrots as the ones in "The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill" by Judy Irving). I used 1080 30P mode.

To add more complexity into the mix I took the SDHC card out, which had about 11GB in it and transferred it to a little SDHC to Hard disk stand alone media transfer unit I had. This unit is pretty slow, took about 20-30 minutes to transfer from the Sandisk Extreme III SDHC to the stand alone hard disk unit, but it completed. I didn't have to do this, I could have just put the Kensington adapter/Sandisk Extreme III into my Macbook pro (which I've done before), but I wanted to see if this transfer workflow would work. (and it did).

Then I connected the stand-alone hard disk unit via USB to my Mac, and it had the BPAV folder. I copied that over to my Mac, that took about 18 minutes.

I used XDCam transfer 2.7 to add both the Card A expresscard BPAV folder and the Sandisk Extreme BPAV folder (which had gone through a roundabout transfer to my Mac) and imported the clips folders both folders.

The resultant Quicktime file of about 1.5 hours played perfectly. So I would say this worked. I guess next would be Sandisk Extreme III in card A and B and do the spanning thing, but so far seems to work. Now if we could get that darn SxS door to close...

Using just the Expresscard slot in my Macbookpro to copy, and the Sandisk Extreme/Kensington combo, it seems to transfer at about 50%-75% of the of the Sony SxS cards -about 1GB per minute.

You're right Keith, by my earlier speed tests and calculations, the new Extreme III reads at around 20MB/s = 1.2GB/minute

BTW,
I wrote to Kensington tech support and asked if the Expresscard 7-in-1 was capable of 32GB SDHC (I believe it will since 16GB cards work), and I also asked if they had an equivalent expresscard reader with the low profile "spring type" media card slot.

His reply was that the expresscard reader was not SDHC capable...

LOL, apparently he did not read the whole mesage I sent. I mentioned we were using 16GB SDHC with no problems.

Unreal...

Having said that, I can not find any technical spec that shows it works with SDHC.
But, we all know it is SDHC capable..

Is this of interest?

Lexar intros 16GB high-speed SD card | Crave, the gadget blog - CNET (http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10047511-1.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=Crave)

Alex, that card is actually 2 to 3 times slower than the new SanDisk Extreme III 16GB 30MB/s version.

I have briefly tested the following set up - shooting some 1080 30P (HQ) and has worked fine so far. Here are the test numbers they are a bit different from a previous test with the same hardware.


Transcend 16GB SDHC TURBO CLASS 6($50) and Kensington adapter:

Sustained data rate: Read: 19.16MB/s Write: 14.59MB/s
Random 512K file: Read: 19.19MB/s Write: 2.48MB/s
Random 4K file: Read: 4.48MB/s Write: 0.022MB/s

Tried the combo on the EX3 today no errors. You can close the memory card door on the EX3

Maybe it's buried somewhere in this thread but is the speed of the Sandisk extreme III 16 GB the same as the 8 GB?

Also - concering transfer speeds: Transfering the media from my 8 GB Sandisk via the camera and it's USB took 16 minutes. Transfering from my SxS card took about 7 minutes.
Tomorrow I'll try using my laptops built in SD-slot.

Maybe it's buried somewhere in this thread but is the speed of the Sandisk extreme III 16 GB the same as the 8 GB?

Also - concering transfer speeds: Transfering the media from my 8 GB Sandisk via the camera and it's USB took 16 minutes. Transfering from my SxS card took about 7 minutes.
Tomorrow I'll try using my laptops built in SD-slot.

I leave my card in the express adapter and when transfering the files this may quicker, using the Express slot on my laptop.

Is estimate the new Extreme III to tranfer to your computer at 1.2GB/minute.

Yes, this slower thean SxS... But we knew it would be.

But based on this saving, you could buy a handfull of cards and copy them later when you have the time.

What?! Really?! This is awesome! You guys have done some great work on this - thank you!.

So, is this the combo you are referring to?

1, Kensington 7-in-1 Media Reader $ 36 (USD)
1, SanDisk Extreme III 16GB 30MB/s version $129 (USD)

Can anyone post links to the best place to order them from?

Ted,
Not if they're not on the sponsor list.

Has anyone tried the SanDisk Ultra II 15MB/s memory with the Kensington expresscard reader on an EX1?

Ah, Good point. How about real part numbers? I just don't want to buy the wrong devices.

Kensington 7 in 1 Media Reader for ExpressCard Slot" model number 33407EU

1, Kensington 7-in-1 Media Reader 33407 $ 36 (USD)
1, SanDisk Extreme III 16GB 30MB/s version $129 (USD)

Update on Expresscard adapters

In the quest for finding the perfect SDHC to Expresscard Adapter here's more info:

Sonnet 21 in 1 Multimedia Reader Part #MMRW-E34: EX1 displays "Unknown Media" with SDHC card in or not

SIIG ExpressCard 12 in 1 R/W: EX1 displays "Unknown Media" with SDHC card in or not

Cables Unlimited Card Reader ExpressCard 34mm (IOC9750) The packaging read SOHOUSB Multiple card reader to Expresscard: It works. Very similar (the same exact casing...) in design and functionality to the Kensington reader we all now know and love however... This card is a tiny bit faster. I noticed when I was copying data from my card to my RAID, it was maybe 10% faster. I did some benchmarking (using some Mac freeware, Xbench, and here are the differences:

Kensington Adapter:

Description, Overall Score, Detail

Disk Test 2.20
Sequential 20.87
Uncached Write 21.71 13.33 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 23.92 13.53 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 13.16 3.85 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 35.94 18.07 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 1.16
Uncached Write 0.31 0.03 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 5.95 1.91 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 522.34 3.70 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 95.21 17.67 MB/sec [256K blocks]

SOHOUSB:

Disk Test 2.24
Sequential 24.61
Uncached Write 21.93 13.47 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 26.61 15.05 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 18.77 5.49 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 38.38 19.29 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 1.17
Uncached Write 0.31 0.03 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 5.91 1.89 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 497.94 3.53 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 101.12 18.76 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Not sure why there are differences or if one is better on the EX1 or not. The SOHO had 15% higher sequential read and write scores than the Kensington, and about the same random write and lower random read scores. Anyway this adapter is the cheapest of the lot at $16. I'm going to order 1 more just for fun.

And also just for fun I decided to put the Sandisk Extreme III SDHC card in a Sandisk Micromate SDHC usb reader I have and measure the scores, very similar to the Expresscard adapters:

Disk Test 2.15
Sequential 15.61
Uncached Write 13.97 8.58 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 15.05 8.52 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 15.22 4.45 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 19.06 9.58 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 1.15
Uncached Write 0.31 0.03 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 5.43 1.74 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 455.42 3.23 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 51.02 9.47 MB/sec [256K blocks]

And just for reference here are the scores on a 8GB SxS Card (a LOT faster):

Disk Test 4.88
Sequential 54.65
Uncached Write 66.40 40.77 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 77.70 43.96 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 25.99 7.61 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 147.30 74.03 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 2.56
Uncached Write 0.67 0.07 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 13.67 4.37 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 977.79 6.93 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 392.66 72.86 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Got my Kensington and sandisk 8gb today, it all works ok.
Just want to confirm though that the Maplin SD>Express reader does not work.

Paul.

So Keith,
will the Cables Unlimited Card Reader ExpressCard 34mm (IOC9750) allow the EX1 memory compartment to close?


Here's a quick test to determine if the Cables Unlimited Reader is a bit faster in the EX1:

Set the EX1 to 720 24P S&Q ON at 40 FPS. (Almost half speed)
With the Kensington, I had no errors. I tested it for about 5 minutes.
It failed when S&Q was set to 45.

Check to see if the Cables Unlimited Reader will run at S&Q set to 45. If so, incrementally increase to determine when it fails.

Thanks for the update!

Here they are on B&H, a sponsor....

Kensington | 7-in-1 ExpressCard Media Reader | K33407US | B&H (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/475428-REG/Kensington_K33407US_7_in_1_ExpressCard_Media_Reader.html)

Sandisk | 16GB Extreme III - 30MB/s Editi | SDSDX3-016GR-A31 (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/580125-REG/Sandisk_SDSDX3_016GR_A31_16GB_Extreme_III_.html)

just ordered a Kensington from Amz.com
will test the Panasonic 8gb when it arrives tomorrow.

Ray, why Kensington and not Cables Unlimited one?

Just wondering, since CU was reported to be a bit faster, and is 2x cheaper.

Although the unlimited may report faster on your PC, it may not be any different in the EX1.

I asked Keith in my last post if he could run a quick test to determine if the Unlimited card is faster in the EX1.

The news keeps coming thick and fast. Sandisk have now announced a 45Mbs Extreme 4 card. This will surely be fast enough for variable frame rates.

SanDisk announces 16GB CFcards: Digital Photography Review (http://www.dpreview.com/news/0809/08092311sandisk_45mbs16gb.asp)

I would also add to this that Pretec are just lanching a 64Gb and 100Gb card!

Continuing the revolution in the field of flash memory card speed and capacity, Pretec today releases 64GB and 100GB, 233X CF cards with access speed of up to 35MB/s, overtaking the Pretec 48GB CF card, the previous world’s record holder for highest capacity CF card; and super high speed 333X 32GB and 50GB CF cards capable of running up to 50 MB per second of Read/Write speed, the highest speed CF card in the world.
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0809/08092306pretec_64gb_100gb_cf.asp

But these are both CF cards - aren't we all talking about SD cards?

Yes but it won't be long before the technology moves across to SD cards.

Just thought I should let you know the results of my test with the Kensington adapter and Transcend Class 6 8Gb card. The card will record at 720P S&Q 32fps continuously without errors. For short clips you can get up to 40fps, but longer than a few minutes and it throws up media errors. So that means the Transcend 8Gb card is good for 48Mbps. In my opinion thats a reasonable amount of headroom for 35Mbps HQ mode recording. I have some 16Gb cards arriving in the next few days.

I have a shoot this weekend where the client want's to take the rushes away. So I'm shooting on SD cards and will charge them on to the client exactly as I would tapes or discs.

So Keith,
will the Cables Unlimited Card Reader ExpressCard 34mm (IOC9750) allow the EX1 memory compartment to close?


Here's a quick test to determine if the Cables Unlimited Reader is a bit faster in the EX1:

Set the EX1 to 720 24P S&Q ON at 40 FPS. (Almost half speed)
With the Kensington, I had no errors. I tested it for about 5 minutes.
It failed when S&Q was set to 45.

Check to see if the Cables Unlimited Reader will run at S&Q set to 45. If so, incrementally increase to determine when it fails.

Thanks for the update!

Hi Steven

Unfortunately the Cables Unlimited Reader is physically exactly the same as the Kensington, therefore, no door closure.

I tried with S&Q on 40-45 FPS. I got failures at 40 FPS. On the Kensington it seems error-free at 42FPS at least. So I guess the Cables Unlimited Reader, though a bit faster on the Mac, is not as compatible with the EX1. However, I'm not convinced that the SDHC card speed is completely responsible for the failures at slow motion, higher bitrate storage. Now I'm thinking its a limitation of the EX1's Expresscard USB 2.0 interface. Expresscards have 2 ways of communicating, via the PC-Express Bus, a super-fast bus similar to the internal slots in a modern PC or MAC, or using USB 2.0, which is theoretically very fast but it depends on implementation and other factors. It may explains why the Sony Expresscard hard drive unit doesn't perform well at slow-mo.

So the SOHOUSB expresscard adapter is going back. No need for something that isn't as compatible as the Kensington. So far the Kensington Adapter is the best.

Thanks Alister.
So it appears the SanDisk Extreme III 30M/s verison offers more headroom.
I'm capable of overcranking at 40FPS @ 720 24P.

Tonight, just to test, I'm going to try a SanDisk Ultra II 4GB 15MB/s version.

Yes Steve, I'm guessing the Extreme III cards will have more headroom. I will keep testing the Transcend cards as they are so much cheaper, great for giving to clients. I also think much of the speed restriction is down to the Express USB interface rather than the cards themselves.

I agree.
Based on Sony's PHU-60K which is also not fast enough to run S&Q mode, I have the feeling the problem is how Sony is transferring data though the USB interface via expresscard.

Yes Steve, I'm guessing the Extreme III cards will have more headroom. I will keep testing the Transcend cards as they are so much cheaper, great for giving to clients. I also think much of the speed restriction is down to the Express USB interface rather than the cards themselves.

The Transcend 8gb card could not read directly to the SD slot on my HP lap top I had to use the express slot with adapter to read in the clips.

Well, I tested the SanDisk Ultra II 4GB 15MB/s version SDHC with the Kensington 7-in-1 .
It works just like the SanDisk Extreme III. It was also able to overcrank at 40 FPS at 720 24P without an error. So, it has the same amount of headroom the new Extreme memory offers in this combo expresscard/SDHC.

This is GREAT news since 16GB Ultra II 15MB/s cards cost only $60 USD!
Ultra II 32GB cards are $150 USD!

110 minutes of HQ video for less than $200 including the Kensington 7-in-1 reader, unreal!

...and can you fill the entire 32gb card without errors?

Hi Steven

Unfortunately the Cables Unlimited Reader is physically exactly the same as the Kensington, therefore, no door closure.

I tried with S&Q on 40-45 FPS. I got failures at 40 FPS. On the Kensington it seems error-free at 42FPS at least. So I guess the Cables Unlimited Reader, though a bit faster on the Mac, is not as compatible with the EX1. However, I'm not convinced that the SDHC card speed is completely responsible for the failures at slow motion, higher bitrate storage. Now I'm thinking its a limitation of the EX1's Expresscard USB 2.0 interface. Expresscards have 2 ways of communicating, via the PC-Express Bus, a super-fast bus similar to the internal slots in a modern PC or MAC, or using USB 2.0, which is theoretically very fast but it depends on implementation and other factors. It may explains why the Sony Expresscard hard drive unit doesn't perform well at slow-mo.

So the SOHOUSB expresscard adapter is going back. No need for something that isn't as compatible as the Kensington. So far the Kensington Adapter is the best.


Keith, I'm just reading this post now... LOL.. You must of just posted this before my 2PM post.... We ARE thinking the same thing regarding where the limitation is coming from.
I agree, It's Sony and how they are using the USB 2.0. These fast SDHC cards are fast enough to run the EX mode even at S&Q. Heck, we are able to overcrank 40 to 45 FPS of the max S&Q (60) FPS as it is now.

Based on my calculations the MAX data rate overcranking at 60FPS on 720 24P is 100mbps or 12.5MB/s. The Ultra II SDHC cards can sustain 15MB/s read and write.

Also, if Sony wrote the extra code needed for the new Extreme III to allow it to reach its 30MB/s data rate, this would be great. The Nikon D90 was designed to access the new Extreme III 30MB/s capability. I'm sure Nikon could easily program this in a firmware upgrade.

Don't know.... As I mentioned, I only tested the Ultra II 4GB and the new 16GB Extreme III 30MB/s SDHC (Which I've been testing for over 6 days with no errors in all HQ modes.

Unless the 32GB Ultra II 15MB/s does not live up to their spec, I'm betting it will work flawless with all HQ modes.

As it stands now, both the Ultra II 4GB 15MB/s and the new Extreme III 16GB 30MB/s SDHC cards record all HQ modes with 40% data headroom to spare.

Keith, I agree, It's Sony and how they are using the USB 2.0. These fast SDHC cards are fast enough to run the EX mode even at S&Q. Heck, we are able to overcrank 40 to 45 FPS of the max S&Q (60) FPS as it is now.

Based on my calculations the MAX data rate overcranking at 60FPS on 720 24P is 100mbps or 12.5MB/s. The Ultra II SDHC cards can sustain 15MB/s read and write.

Also, if Sony wrote the extra code needed for the new Extreme III to allow it to reach its 30MB/s data rate, this would be great. The Nikon D90 was designed to access the new Extreme III 30MB/s capability. I'm sure Nikon could easily program this in a firmware upgrade.

As we get a clearer picture of Sony's USB hard drive performance (or lack there of) and now these SDHC cards, it would seem that Sony has crippled the ExpressCard USB throughput. It is a safe bet to say that Sony is also watching the SDHC and Compact Flash cards leap forward in speed. At the end of the day, Sony and now JVC will naturally want to protect their SXS card revenue streams.

The only way to get around Sony's "imposed limitations" would be to hack the EX1/EX3 firmware. If computers, cell phones etc. can be hacked to achieve end-user satisfaction, surely these camera's can also. Radical perhaps, but is anyone up to the challenge?

Probably, preventing this is high on Sony's list of priorities. This, I suspect, is one reason that they aren't providing the firmware updates to the public and are requiring that a service center perform them.

The bottle neck may not be down to Sony. The kensington (and other) express card adapters have been around for a couple of years. They are cheap mass produced items that have a chip to translate the USB data to data that can be written to the card. It is likely that when the translator chips were designed memory cards were not as fast as they are now, so it could be that a large part of the issue is down to the translator chips. I expect that the SxS to USB adapter used by the PHU-60 hard drive uses a similar chip. Too be honest I'm not too bothered with S&Q. I have plenty of SxS cards and will continue to use SxS for all those jobs where you only get one chance to get the shot, or where I need S&Q.

Where low cost SD cards fit is for shoots where I need to hand over the rushes or where I can do a retake if needed. Now amazon are selling SxS cards and with JVC adopting them I am sure the price will continue to fall. When I got my first EX1 the 8Gb cards were nearly £600, now they are less than £300, a 50% reduction in just 9 months.

The bottle neck may not be down to Sony. The kensington (and other) express card adapters have been around for a couple of years. They are cheap mass produced items that have a chip to translate the USB data to data that can be written to the card. It is likely that when the translator chips were designed memory cards were not as fast as they are now, so it could be that a large part of the issue is down to the translator chips. I expect that the SxS to USB adapter used by the PHU-60 hard drive uses a similar chip.

Perhaps Sony didn't make a decision to 'hobble' it's Expresscard USB 2.0 speed, but the EX's don't seem to be taking advantage of the possible speeds available with the Expresscard adapters. The throughput required for maximum slomo is, what 12 or or 13 MB/second? We've measured even bargain SDHC cards in their Expresscard adapters at more than this, up to 20MB second through a computer's Expresscard USB 2.0 interface. Now perhaps an EX1 needs to do some things like reading some random bits while writing, and maybe the SDHC cards don't handle these random reads or writes very well and therefore fail at higher bitrates, but then it would seem that Sony's Expresscard-HardDisk solution should be able to do it as even 2.5" 4200RPM harddisks are much faster in transfer rate and random seeks than these cards.

In any case, I do agree with you, slomo is not used that often, and if we need it, we have our luxurious SxS cards available for that. This homegrown solution, however, does free us up to be able to carry a day's worth of media for what is used to cost to carry 1/2 hour's worth, and to jettison awkward and expensive offloading solutions. I'm going to enjoy not having to carry around my Macbook Pro to all my shoots to offload my SxS cards.

Now I just have to worry about losing these tiny SDHC cards!

indeed loosing SD cards is rather too easy :)

I'm not sure if the Kensington/SDHC will work in the Sony SxS reader which is PCIe based.
But, if someone has an expresscard slot on their PC, they could run the CrystalDiskMark to test the speed.

I'm willing to bet it will hit the 15MB/s SDHC speed. The bottleneck is Sony.
Portable hardrives have had data read and write rates over 20MB/s for a while now. Most are over 30MB/s.

don't forget that as well as writing the mpeg to the card Sony are also writing metadata at the same time. It's easy to write large single blocks of data but writing to multiple files at the same time is much harder and this will reduce the maximum achievable write speed.

True, but meta data is very small and is should be written once during each intitial record start. With the slower memory i've tested that has failed, it could run for a minute then fail writing data.

I would not be surprised if Sony did cripple the data rate for USB 2.0. This certainly explains why their own PHU-60K can't even support 13MB/s.

Well today i ordered the Sandisk 32GB Extreme 11 15MBs card and a kensington 7 in 1 adapter They should both be with me in the next few days.

I picked the card up from ebay at £88 ( cheapest I could find in the UK) and the Kensington for £12 from Amazon.

If it works ( and I don't see any reason why it shouldn't) I will buy another card and adapter and have nearly 4 hours of recording media in HQ without having to change out the cards.

All for £200. Never thought it woould all get so cheap so quickly.