SSD fills fast, any MicroSD card fast enough for ProRes?

[Pat2021]

My SSD lasts less than 30 minutes and then takes over an hour to offload before I can fly again. Does a MicroSD card exist that can write fast enough for ProRes so I can just pop it out and put a new one in and keep flying? Thanks!

 

[Meta4]

My SSD lasts less than 30 minutes and then takes over an hour to offload before I can fly again. Does a MicroSD card exist that can write fast enough for ProRes so I can just pop it out and put a new one in and keep flying? Thanks!

No ... but do you really need to use ProRes anyway?

 

[Kilrah]

No, and even if there was one the aircraft wouldn't let you record prores to an SD card anyway.
For the record prores needs pretty much 5X the speed of a common fast card.

Usually in the cases where prores matters you'll be recording a couple of minutes per flight as you'll set up the shot, press record, do your move, stop recording, repeat etc.
Doesn't make much sense to record an entire random flight in prores...

 

[Pat2021]

No, and even if there was one the aircraft wouldn't let you record prores to an SD card anyway.
For the record prores needs pretty much 5X the speed of a common fast card.

Usually in the cases where prores matters you'll be recording a couple of minutes per flight as you'll set up the shot, press record, do your move, stop recording, repeat etc.
Doesn't make much sense to record an entire random flight in prores...

Thanks. I mainly film animals for major natural history documentaries (Netflix, Nat Geo, BBC etc). So you often have to be rolling a lot to get that one moment when the shark attacks the seal or whatever you are waiting for the animal to do (they don't take direction very well unfortunately). With the Inspire 2/X7 we just pull the SSD each time its fills and put in the next one and do 10 or 15 flights per day with maybe 7 or 8 SSD cards. Sometimes there is just a few seconds in each clip that are valuable, but you still need to keep the full clip. Crazy that Mavic 3 has a non-removable SSD that only lasts 25 minutes and requires 2 hours to offload.

 

[Kilrah]

Ah, makes sense in this case. But then it's probably the wrong tool for the job indeed...
But you should be able to offload it much quicker than that, in the 20-40min range when connected to a computer with USB3 and fast enough storage.

 

[Pat2021]

No ... but do you really need to use ProRes anyway

Ah, makes sense in this case. But then it's probably the wrong tool for the job indeed...
But you should be able to offload it much quicker than that, in the 20-40min range when connected to a computer with USB3 and fast enough storage.

Thanks. It could be my external drive slowing things down then if you are getting 20-40 min. I'm getting about 2.5 hours when the SSD is full. I'll try a faster drive. 30 min to offload would certainly be better. Not as good as 30 seconds to change the card like the I2, but better than 2.5 hours.

 

[Kilrah]

What are you using right now as storage? If it's a mechanical HDD then yes no wonder, and 2.5 hours to empty the 1TB drive equates to 111MB/s, which is about what would be expected from an external mechanical HDD.
You'll want either SSDs or a good old multiple drive fast RAID array. If the Inspire SSDs were in budget you can probably buy multiple 1TB external SSDs that will be much cheaper and just use one for each offload and manage them like you'd do with other media. Go with good fast ones that are not QLC.

if you are getting 20-40 min.

I don't have one, going by specs. Not clear if the USB port on the M3 is 5 or 10Gbps but if 5 you should get about 350MB/s, if 10 about 600 (the port on the computer would need to support 10Gbps as well) if the storage you offload to can take that.

 

[Meta4]

Thanks. It could be my external drive slowing things down then if you are getting 20-40 min. I'm getting about 2.5 hours when the SSD is full. I'll try a faster drive. 30 min to offload would certainly be better. Not as good as 30 seconds to change the card like the I2, but better than 2.5 hours.

The Cine M3 just wasn't designed for serious use.
It's hard to tell what the designers were thinking.

 

[RocketBrew]

I get just over 600Mb/s to my Dell Precision 7760 which has USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C Thunderbolt 4 ports.

I don't have one, going by specs. Not clear if the USB port on the M3 is 5 or 10Gbps but if 5 you should get about 350MB/s, if 10 about 600 (the port on the computer would need to support 10Gbps as well) if the storage you offload to can take that.

 

[RocketBrew]

I was going to use the M3Cine as a backup for the regular M3, as I only occasionally shoot video for a production that requests ProRes (and none so far since getting the M3C in November!).

But after experiencing the write time difference when shooting 5-step AEB photos, then the fast upload to the PC, I have been using it as the primary for over 100 flights and 7,300 photos.

The Cine M3 just wasn't designed for serious use.
It's hard to tell what the designers were thinking.

 

[Saladshooter]

The Cine M3 just wasn't designed for serious use.
It's hard to tell what the designers were thinking.

Any use of ProRes without a CFast card is doomed to be a failure. I opted to go with the regular Mavic 3 for this reason. I still have my eye on the Xdynamics Evolve 2 and If they ever work out all the kinks I may be a buyer.....the ProRes, CFast card slot and Changeable 4/3 lenses all have me drooling. Xdynamics is trying hard to produce a professional drone at a reasonable ($3699) price.... I am still hoping they can succeed.

 

[Pat2021]

What are you using right now as storage? If it's a mechanical HDD then yes no wonder, and 2.5 hours to empty the 1TB drive equates to 111MB/s, which is about what would be expected from an external mechanical HDD.
You'll want either SSDs or a good old multiple drive fast RAID array. If the Inspire SSDs were in budget you can probably buy multiple 1TB external SSDs that will be much cheaper and just use one for each offload and manage them like you'd do with other media. Go with good fast ones that are not QLC.


I don't have one, going by specs. Not clear if the USB port on the M3 is 5 or 10Gbps but if 5 you should get about 350MB/s, if 10 about 600 (the port on the computer would need to support 10Gbps as well) if the storage you offload to can take that.

Thanks. I didn't realize how much slower my standard drives are compared to the SSD's for offloading. I'll only use the SSD drives for offloading from the Mavic 3 Cine from now on. Very helpful answer, appreciate it. 30 min will certainly be better than the 2.5 hours, even if its still not ideal.

 

[MavicAir2Marc]

Any use of ProRes without a CFast card is doomed to be a failure. I opted to go with the regular Mavic 3 for this reason. I still have my eye on the Xdynamics Evolve 2 and If they ever work out all the kinks I may be a buyer.....the ProRes, CFast card slot and Changeable 4/3 lenses all have me drooling. Xdynamics is trying hard to produce a professional drone at a reasonable ($3699) price.... I am still hoping they can succeed.

Every time I see their ads on Facebook, they only show the drone flying, they never show footage from the drone. That was a big red flag for me. I will have to start following the progress now to see if they can get the kinks ironed out.

 

[Saladshooter]

Every time I see their ads on Facebook, they only show the drone flying, they never show footage from the drone. That was a big red flag for me. I will have to start following the progress now to see if they can get the kinks ironed out.

There are plenty of short clips of video from the drone on Youtube.... but not from anyone who isn't associated with the company. They still haven't activated obstacle avoidance, waypoints, point of interest, course lock, etc. They have a few lenses approved for the camera now but not one that has a zoom that can function without adjusting before you take off. Just about all of those things need to be resolved before I would consider jumping in.

There is also a lag in the transmission that was pushing 1.5 seconds at even close range. That amount of time would be the difference between getting a specialty shot in close or overshooting your target and crashing. I want to like the company and their product but even with their small team I can't believe they haven't got it running at near 100%, given the two years they have had to work on it since the Evolve 2 was announced at CES 2020

 

[Tufargon]

What are you using right now as storage? If it's a mechanical HDD then yes no wonder, and 2.5 hours to empty the 1TB drive equates to 111MB/s, which is about what would be expected from an external mechanical HDD.
You'll want either SSDs or a good old multiple drive fast RAID array. If the Inspire SSDs were in budget you can probably buy multiple 1TB external SSDs that will be much cheaper and just use one for each offload and manage them like you'd do with other media. Go with good fast ones that are not QLC.


I don't have one, going by specs. Not clear if the USB port on the M3 is 5 or 10Gbps but if 5 you should get about 350MB/s, if 10 about 600 (the port on the computer would need to support 10Gbps as well) if the storage you offload to can take that.

I've actually taken my original M.2 from my laptop and put it in an external enclosure. Obviously you also need a fast port speed too.

 

[Deleted member 154956]

The Cine M3 just wasn't designed for serious use.
It's hard to tell what the designers were thinking.

Isn't the Mavic 3 marketed as "Prosumer" vice Professional?

 

[MaxE1955!]

The Cine M3 just wasn't designed for serious use.
It's hard to tell what the designers were thinking.

They were thinking “the average users are so wrapped up in gimmickry that they will snatch this overpriced drone up like free donuts without considering it’s usefulness! All we need do is dazzle them with marketing promises and techno babble and they won’t know what hit them”. That’s my opinion at least.

 

[Meta4]

Isn't the Mavic 3 marketed as "Prosumer" vice Professional?

Yes ... but that makes it more puzzling.

 

[ninjafingers]

As others have stated, make sure you are plugged into a fast enough port. USB 3.1 or USB-C/Thunderbolt. Even on the same computer, not all USB ports are created equal. Either refer to the technical specifications of your computer, or try using every port to speed test the data transfer.

 

[eEridani]

I can get about 900MB/s reads and writes off a USB 3.1g2 port and my externally attached NVME SSD. If I go through any 3.1/3.2 hub, that drops to 800MB/s. My typical SATA SSD's run about 450MB/s on USB 3.0, because most SSD enclosures are only 3.0.

My internal drives are NVME on PCIe 3.0 and do about 3.5GB/s reads, 2.7GB/s writes.

I send files to my raid server over 10GbE and the raid controller is hosted on PCIe 2.0 from the CPU and the 10GbE card on the IOCH - so transfers from ethernet to disk slows to about 350MB/s. Disk to disk my RAID controller is doing under 1GB/s because I am using slow cheap drives in a RAID 50 built on 4 spindle arrays.

All that said, large files take time unless you pour thousands of dollars into the process to ensure everything in the data path is designed for hyper speed.