Raw via CFast 2.0

[adrianjebef]

When can we expect Arriraw recording capability via the Codex CFast 2.0 adapter for Alexa XT? The new Lexar 3600x cards are easily fast enough.

[Frederic Merten]

Hi adrianjebef,

Since the ALEXA SXT is using the well established Codex workflow for ARRIRAW, we currently do not plan on offering MXF/ARRIRAW recording with ALEXA SXT. For productions that use ALEXA SXT and ALEXA Mini, the Codex workflow will also support the ALEXA Mini MXF/ARRIRAW soon. We are monitoring how the market evolves and will make future decisions based on market demand.


Best regards,
Fred

[Rainer Fritz]

MXF Arriraw on Cfast at the XT and SXT would be really awesome!

[Grumply]

+1 for CFast 2.0 Arriraw on XR/XT/SXT via the CFast adapter, it would be a huge boon for a lot of productions! Particularly rougher ones, with smaller crews, where data wrangling in the field is problematic.

[david.r.jeffries]

+1 on ARRIRAW to CFast 2.0 cards. We have huge inventories of the CFast media for our Mini and it would be nice to be able to offer more options on the flagship camera.

[Lee Miller]

Hi everyone, this is my first post here

I'm Lee Miller of http://www.biwin.co.uk. We specialise in CFast 2.0 cards which are cheaper than, but just as reliable as, the other brands. We've had a lot of success testing our cards with the Blackmagic Design community - they seem to be really happy. Now we would love the chance to test them with Arri's cameras. I would like to send out 2x128GB cards as samples so somebody can experiment with them and post the results here. Is anybody interested?

I will bookmark this forum and will be here for any questions you may have regarding the cards. We currently sell 128GB and 256GB with a new 512GB coming hopefully in Q1 2017. I offer email support every day, including weekends, as long as I'm awake and will reply instantly if I'm not super busy with something. I'm in the UTC+7 timezone and I don't observe public holidays in any country.

Please check out the great reviews by Stan Arthur and Frank Glencairn listed on our website.

The performance for 256GB: read 511MB/s - write 288MB/s.
the performance for 128GB: read 490MB/s - write: 288MB/s

Resolutions supported with a single card:

ProRes XQ

24,25,30 fps XQ at 4.6K 2.4:1
24,25,30 fps XQ at 4K16:9
24,25,30 fps XQ at UHD
24,25,30 fps XQ at 3K anamorphic
24,25,30,60 fps XQ at 2K 16:9

ProRes 444

24, 25, 30 fps 444 at 4.6K full
24,25,30 fps 444 at 4.6K 2.4:1
24,25,30 fps 444 at 4K16:9
24,25,30,40 fps 444 at UHD
24,25,30,40 fps 444 at 3K anamorphic
24,25,30,60 fps 444 at 2K 16:9
24,25,30,60 fps 444 at HD 16:9

RAW lossless

24, 25fps lossles at 4.6K full
24,25,30 fps lossless at 4.6K 2.4:1
24,25,30 fps losslss at 4K16:9
24,25,30,40 fps lossless at UHD
24,25,30,40 fps lossless at 3K anamorphic
24,25,30,60,120 fps lossless at 2K 16:9
24,25,30,60,120 fps lossless at HD 16:9

RAW 3:1

24, 25, 30,40 fps 3:1 at 4.6K full
24,25,30,40,60 fps 3:1 at 4.6K 2.4:1
24,25,30,40,60 fps 3:1 at 4K16:9
24,25,30,40,60 fps 3:1 at UHD
24,25,30,40,60 fps 3:1 at 3K anamorphic
24,25,30,60,120 fps 3:1 at 2K 16:9
24,25,30,60,120 fps 3:1 at HD 16:9
All lesser framerates, resolutions and compression also work just fine.

Dual Card Mode
All resolutions including 24 fps XQ at 4.6K full, and RAW uncompressed up to 60 fps in full 4.6K.

BiWin are currently developing faster 256GB cards which will hopefully be ready at the end of this year.

Thanks for reading! For up to date info, please visit http://www.biwin.co.uk.

[Oliver Temmler]

Hello Lee,

while your post is against this forum's terms of use (any kind of advertisement (hidden or overt), such as e.g. competitions, discount campaigns or special sales as events), I would like to take the chance to explain how we treat the support of CFast 2.0 cards with ARRI cameras.

Our cameras only accept cards that fulfil certain minimim requirements and passed our 2-step qualification testing that is performed by the card manufacturer and our engineers.
Our technical requirements with regards to data rates, latency, and reliability are probably the most challenging in the market. We do this to establish a solid base for users of our cameras, who should neither worry about the maximum framerate a particular CFast card can deliver, nor worry if a card might become too slow at some point and cause the camera to stop recording mid-take.

I'm not going to list the full range of requirement here, but because you stated that your cards achieve a write rate of 288 MB/s: Our requirement would be 350 MB/s sustained write speed, using our QT/ProRes and MXF/ARRIRAW write patterns, not a simple linear write pattern as used by common benchmarking tools.

We currently support two types of media:
- 128 GB SanDisk Extreme Pro® CFast™ 2.0 (and the previous 60/120 GB generation)
- 128/256 GB Lexar® Professional 3600x CFast™ 2.0

Kind regards
Oliver

[Lee Miller]

Hi Oliver, thanks a lot for your reply. I'm sorry if it looks like an ad but my post was also aimed at offering alternatives to the hyper-expensive cfast cards out there, and my support to anyone who would like to test a different brand.

I fully understand the speed requirements you specified. I hope that the new cards we are bringing out relatively soon can meet them, but I'm not sure of their speed yet. I'll get in touch with you again if they live up to ARRI's standards.

Many thanks

Lee Miller

[Rainer Fritz]

Oliver, I think when you ask any posthouse in the world if they prefer Image Sequences or Containers what would you think would they say? One main reason is probably because of the codex vfs that can not encapsulate the frames into mxf. As on the mini where no codex is involved you can do it, and it is in any reason better.
Copying/moving footage goes quite more slower with sequences as you have a bulk on overhead because of the thousands of single files. Processing them or reading them is also more complicated for any software or hardware. Think on only the open/close file operations you have when you hit the play button... Also mediarecovering on set is not possible with the vfs, which you can do on the mini because it has no proprietary filesystem on the cards.
Who is using the codex vfs really? Count the productions which have a Vault on set and compare that with the number of productions which don't use the native codex workflow... The one which are using it really are a minority, at least in Europe where we don't have millions of euros budget at the camera dept at most of the productions. 95% I would say use a dock and copy the footage onto a normal storage and work with that for example in resolve, thats the majority...

[salmino]

it would be a huge boon for a lot of productions! Particularly rougher ones, with smaller crews, where data wrangling in the field is problematic.













Adam4adam TutuApp AppValley

[Oliver Temmler]

Hi Salmino, that's all understood , but I don't think it's going to happen. We have not supported new CFast 2.0 cards on ALEXA XT and SXT cameras for quite a while and introducing a new recording format (MXF ARRIRAW) next to Codex's VFS and Apple QuickTime/ProRes would certainly not fit into the FPGAs of an XT and probably also not for the SXT.

[pete_f]

Hello,

new to the Alexa eco system, am I understanding this correctly that ARRIRAW and Open Gate can only be shot on Alexa XT when using Codex media ?

Pete

[Jan Heugel]

Dear Pete,

yes on ALEXA XT recording ARRIRAW is tied to Codex media.

Cheers,
Jan