CF cards from local retailers

[Steve Joachim]

As we transition deeper into the world of CF cards, pro audio dealers such as ourselves find themselves in a difficult position. Our customers need CF cards, would more often than not like to patronize their pro dealer of choice to get them but, find that pricing from online sites or big box retailers is significantly better than they can get from us. Specialty retailers such as ourselves, do not buy in the massive quantities that a Fry's or others who can who move huge numbers of them to the consumer world at large do. I currently offer name brand CF cards as a convenience for my customers, and they know they are paying a little bit more to save themselves a trip elsewhere. But I would like to find a way to be more competitive in the market.

Here are my questions:

1) If quality can be assured with an off-brand, how important is it to purchase the name brand?

2) Would a writable label designating it as from the Sound Dept. make it more attractive to you as an end-user?

3) Do you see any value in being able to order CF cards with the rest of your expendables?

4) Or, is getting the cards by other means (internet, Best Buy, Fry's etc.) just so damn easy that I shouldn't even bother?

5) If I should bother, what would you like to see in a "pro audio" CF card? What packaging might be optimal, etc?

Any input you might have would be appreciated.

Thanks

[studiomprd]

" 1) If quality can be assured with an off-brand, how important is it to purchase the name brand? .Quality off brand cards (CF + SD) often come from the same factories

2) Would a writable label designating it as from the Sound Dept. make it more attractive to you as an end-user? nice touch

3) Do you see any value in being able to order CF cards with the rest of your expendables? yes, convenience! same principle as convenience stores...

4) Or, is getting the cards by other means (internet, Best Buy, Fry's etc.) just so damn easy that I shouldn't even bother? and it will be a bother, but it is excellent customer service

5) If I should bother, what would you like to see in a "pro audio" CF card? What packaging might be optimal, etc? " limited selection of current state of the art (capacity/speed) in basic packaging, even bulk packaging. of course anything you can come up with to make it a smoother part of our work-flow would be a value added.

[Eric Toline]

I get my cf cards locally at Compusa. They have them in stock and prices for a 4gb card run about $14 average for Kingston or Transcend brands. Data on the cards are dumped to the clients computer or outboard hd at the end of the day and by the time I'm packed up they're returned to me.

Eric

[ProSound]

If or when production starts wanting to archive the CF cards and not return them to me yes I would love a cheap off brand that is quality tested and be able to order them with my expendables. Until then I will use the 16 and 32 gb cards I already have though it's rare for me to record more then 12gb a day. Only twice has someone wanted to keep the card so I used one of the many 2gb and 4gb cards I have from my Fostex FR2 days

[Jeff Wexler]

It's a very good question, Steve, and I am pleased that as a dealer you are thinking about the ways you can continue to provide good service for us all. At this point, the best thing any dealer can do, I believe, is stay up on what brands, what types, what specs are the most reliable and bulletproof, and offer this media at the best price you can. Many of your customers will buy them from you, probably pay a little more but will have several value added benefits: the understanding that the dealer has done the research band possibly even real world testing and certifies that the media is good and has a good track record using it the devices we typically use; expediting the purchase of the media through production, certainly for those times when all expendable purchases have to go through production anyway; having the dealer also offer accessories to go along with the media, such things as carrying cases, labels, etc.

I don't think the dealers should give up on selling this stuff just because there will be lots of people who find the rock bottom deal somewhere else. One additional thing that I came up against when production was purchasing the expendables on the last movie, and that is the overzealous UPM who doesn't want to get the expendables from Coffey Sound or LSC and THEY go shopping at Fry's, Radio Shack, Best Buy, whatever. When it comes to an "expendable" like the media we are mastering to, I refuse to let production do the shopping. I even have put my foot down on occasion when they have found some great deal on Bingo brand batteries at the 99 Cent Store, this is no way for a professional to work.

[Steve Joachim]

If or when production starts wanting to archive the CF cards and not return them to me yes I would love a cheap off brand that is quality tested and be able to order them with my expendables. Until then I will use the 16 and 32 gb cards I already have though it's rare for me to record more then 12gb a day. Only twice has someone wanted to keep the card so I used one of the many 2gb and 4gb cards I have from my Fostex FR2 days

Whitney's response surprised me. 12gb seems like a lot. Most of the cards I currently sell are 4gb and 8gb and, I was planning to stop there. Is there a need for 16gb or 32gb cards for audio in the field?

Forgive my lack of real-world knowledge. I am just a humble merchant.

[stevegrider]

I can't speak for everyone, but I only load a 16GB or 32GB card when i am working reality shows. An 8 GB CF card seems to be ok for a day on a spot or a feature.

Steve Grider

Location Attenuation

[ProSound]

Whitney's response surprised me. 12gb seems like a lot. Most of the cards I currently sell are 4gb and 8gb and, I was planning to stop there. Is there a need for 16gb or 32gb cards for audio in the field?

Forgive my lack of real-world knowledge. I am just a humble merchant.

If I am doing a reality show with 8 channels on my 788t and we roll for 6 hours a day That is 19gb of audio. I don't do it often but would rather have a lot more space then not enough.

[Phil Palmer]

I think 16/8/4 are becoming the norm for daily, and 32 for reality gigs. I roll a 16 track machine and will see more than 8G regularly.

I like the pelican cases, as we can label them up and recycle the media safely and easily. Our post facility has bar coded everything, including the cases to keep track of the coming and going of media.

Works great for us.

PWP

[Nick Jabour]

In our rental stock here, we include a 16 and a 32 in the package or with out 788T it is 2x 32gb. We felt that those were just costly enough to want to rent for one offs and then dump at the end of day, as for short and deliverable it's easy enough to swing by the local Best Buy and purchase a small one on the fly. Though really it's no huge investment till you get to the 64gb cards, so why not carry all the way to 32?

[RPSharman]

I know space is limited, but CF cards are pretty small, so why not stock them.

My advice would be to stock up on one particular brand (pick one and stick to it) when you can get a really good deal. It'll be the only way to be competitive, since buying on line is so easy. Are you allowed to buy retail and re-sell? My Kingston Elite Pro 133X CF cards have performed well for me for years, and I paid around $10 for my 4GB cards and around $25 for my 8GB cards.

As an expendable, the 4GB cards should be fine. That's about what a DVD holds, and that's fine for most of us. The show I am on now would probably have added 4 cards to their expendable order, since we are swapping cards instead of turning in DVDs.

Robert

[studiomprd]

" I even have put my foot down on occasion when they have found some great deal on Bingo brand batteries at the 99 Cent Store, this is no way for a professional to work. "

amazing to see these folks tripping over thou$and$ to save dime$...

I don't let carbon zinc batteries in my gear! (Even when they are labeled "Extra Heavy Duty"...

Not sure how the major players (Kingston, Sandisk, etc) deal with OEM and quantity sales to resellers, and what kind of quantities are involved, but I would think that 4-8-16 GB are the sizes, and that SD, microSD, and CF are the media, and high speed (60MBs/30MBs-class 10) are what ought to be available (Just as I used to always carry some 5" reels)... One tested + trusted brand, or perhaps an OEM / private label deal from a quality source. I'd personally like quantity packaging rather than the single packs that are difficult and un-environmental. Pelicans, etc are fine for recycling, but I'm in favor of one use expendable workflows. 4-8 GB holds more than we did on a 7" reel, and are comtetively priced, IMHO, with the higher capacity, and higher priced alternatives worth the additional cost for the convenience in day-long reality situations. Frankly, I am more comfortable spreading a days work across several rolls, er, cards.

Edited July 16, 2011 by studiomprd

[Jim Feeley]

I like the pelican cases, as we can label them up and recycle the media safely and easily. Our post facility has bar coded everything, including the cases to keep track of the coming and going of media.

Smaller operation here, but I use the pelican CF cases, too. Room for labels, but also have black cases for empty cards and black cases with some orange paint for full cards and labels saying so.

Helps control entropy a little...

[Marc Wielage]

Zero problems with Kingston CF cards here. Users should (you should pardon the phrase) "check with the manufacturer" to make sure certain card speeds are compatible with certain devices. I seem to recall there was a problem with one brand of high-speed 533X cards and the Deva. I've had zero problems with the 133X cards, though I generally don't go over 8 tracks. Also no problems on the Sound Devices 744t with 4 tracks.

--Marc W.

[Eric Toline]

ok, 533x is 4x faster than 133x but would someone explain what that means in real world time and why it's important?

Eric

[studiomprd]

Faster data transfer speeds become important when doing full PCM (.wav) files with lots of tracks.

[Chase Yeremian]

I've bought some Sandisk's from Costco actually in 2 packs. they had a great deal for 2 4gig's so i stocked up.

I don't have a problem with off brands that have their quality assured. A decent speed 4 gig CF card is so trivial to manufacture at this point the factory robots can make them in their robot sleep.

I like the idea of them having some aesthetic characteristic specifically belonging to the sound department, if not just a label on the card but perhaps the plastic the card is made from a bright vibrant color instead of black or that dark blue some come in.

[ao]

ok, 533x is 4x faster than 133x but would someone explain what that means in real world time and why it's important?

Eric

What I find confusing is a manufacturer listing 400x as a speed, then listing read and write speeds that are different between two cards, both listed as 400x. I have a 32gb card that is listed as 400x - 90mb/sec read, 60mb/sec write. Same manufacturer has a 16gb card that has specs of 60mb/sec read, 30mb/sec write. Daily sound files on dramatic projects only run 4gb - 7gb on average, but having the card with the faster read speeds means that I can get the card back from the DMT faster at break-offs and at the end of the day. Others have mentioned problems with the Deva not being happy with cards over 133x. If that is the case, you should steer clear of the faster cards.

ao

[johnpaul215]

Knowing the card worked in my machine (Fusion10) would go a long way in me buying from a specific source. I bought a few different brands when I got my Fusion just to test them all out and make sure they were reliable.

I can't speak for SD machines, but Zaxcom users are always sharing which cards are the happiest on the user email list. I've had great luck with Transcend and Kingston 133x cards. I have one faster card that works (Lexar 400x I think). I bought 32GB Microcenter house brand cards that were 533x or something and my Fusion10 did not like it one bit. I had to return them. I know some people have been trying the 64GB cards to see what happens.

For Deva/Fusions, it seem the 133x is fast enough for the machine. The advantage of speed if if you are copying them at the end of the day. My work flow on a digital shoot (like a Red shoot) is to hand the mirror card to the DIT, they copy it, then I back it up (with a laptop) to a LaCie rugged drive with Firewire connections. Sometimes I also copy the primary card, which takes a while. I don't know where the bottleneck is with that process, but if a faster (yet reliable) card would cut that time down, I would pay for it. Otherwise the 133x cards are fine.

I agree with above that I run 16GB or 32GB cards. I do a mix of docu/reality work and features. On a feature, a ballpark daily average for me can be 7GB a day rolling at 48-24. The data counts get worse with the DPs that don't cut between takes of the same setup (that's another thread, but it means more and more data).

[dfisk]

It's my personal preference to buy everything I need at one place. So if I were walking into LSC, and I needed a few CF cards along with other stuff, and they were a buck or two more expensive from LSC than Target or Fry's, then I'll just buy them from LSC. It's not worth my time to make a special trip to Fry's to pick up CF cards (that they'll most likely be out of stock of anyway). Even when I'm not working, my time is worth money, because every second I'm not at home is a second I'm not with my kids, and that time is very valuable to me. Of course, there are the people out there that will work you over to save 15 cents, which is there perogative.

[Steve Joachim]

Thanks everyone. Our tests on Sound Devices, Tascam and other machines (we are not a Deva dealer) show that 150x speed seems to be more than fast enough to accommodate how fast these machines can write. Any more than that and you may be paying for speed you do not need. We are real-world testing some cards now. These are non-name brand cards that came highly recommended by a mixer in the field who has been using them for years on a network show with no problems. We hope to make a deal for some soon.

Thanks to everyone for their input.

[ao]

Thanks everyone. Our tests on Sound Devices, Tascam and other machines (we are not a Deva dealer) show that 150x speed seems to be more than fast enough to accommodate how fast these machines can write. Any more than that and you may be paying for speed you do not need. We are real-world testing some cards now. These are non-name brand cards that came highly recommended by a mixer in the field who has been using them for years on a network show with no problems. We hope to make a deal for some soon.

Thanks to everyone for their input.

I admire you for trying to provide a service in the face of impossible competition and with the way the mini-X speaker situation panned out. there will always be someone who proudly bleats about getting it cheaper elsewhere but I like your patience to provide a service to those who appreciate it. I tend to buy at the other end (high) of the spectrum :

http://www.hoodmanusa.com

but their compact flash cards are too fast for devas. I like the fact that hoodman makes their product on this continent, and they don't have any recorded failures to date. check out their sd cards. they are waterproof. if the production that I am on had used hoodman sd cards in their gopro cameras, we wouldn't have lost footage to a housing leak. sd card fried. I like to be in a position, if and when I have a catastrophic failure, that I used a premium product. I don't want to be tainted as the guy who bought from walmart and lost a days worth of footage.

ao