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1374 Review
57 Karma

Review on High-Performance 256GB CFast2.0 CinemaPro CFX310 Memory Card - 530MB/s Read Speed - for Blackmagic URSA Mini, Canon XC10/1D X Mark II and More by Brad Blake

Revainrating 4 out of 5

Great for efficient bitrate recording but has limitations

PROS: Great price. Formats in the camera without problems. Not a single file showed dropped frames or anything like that when shooting UHD BRAW 12:1 with a lot of zooming and panning in the project. He did a great job during the 2 days of shooting this TV show. CONS: The recording speed limits the ability to record lossless RAW codecs above 2k resolution. details below. About photographs. On the screen you can see how the red recording circle changes to a gray circle with an exclamation mark after 14 seconds of recording Lossless Cinema DNG with a resolution of 4.6k. The other photo is just an image of the card in the camera. My experience and more details below. Bought this for a shoot where I used a 4.6k Ursa Mini Pro. In the fine print, and most important on this card, is read/write speeds. I shot with the BRaw codec in UHD format at constant bitrate and 12:1 quality. That's as low as it gets, but it's a much better image than ProRes LT or Proxy. This is a brand new codec and when shooting in RAW I was able to record 140 minutes on this 256GB memory card. It turned out great! We could use a card for a whole day filming corporate video scenes, stylized as the "Office" version, so there's a lot of pan and zoom and sometimes long frames per minute or 2 minutes. The card worked perfectly. So if you're recording with a camera that has access to a high-resolution, low-bitrate recording mode, then this card will suffice. BUT. I just ran some quick and informal tests to make this review more valuable. It won't capture lossless 4.6k in something like ProRes or Cinema DNG for longer takes. When recording in these variants with 60 fps or 30 fps, the card failed after 14 seconds or 40 seconds, depending on the codec. When recording Cinema DNG with an aspect ratio of 4:1 and a resolution of 4.6K, it recorded for 1 minute without any problems. It also records Pro Res 4444 up to 4.6k within 1 minute. This is not an extensive test, but I believe that the card can be used with this codec/compression ratio/resolution if it records for more than 1 minute without the card crashing. The only codec that could record lossless/RAW 4.6k/60fps on this card was Blackmagic Raw. Bottom line: if you get this card, do some research and find out how many MB/s you need to record with your camera to make the project work. as you wish in the mail. If you are doing something that requires high resolution above 2k with high speed lossless recording then this card is not for you. However, if you have the ability to record lower bitrates over 2K resolution like BRaw or ProRes Proxy/LT and it works for your project, this card should help you save some money and get the job done. For the price I would say this is a great and useful map for those with the right projects or cameras to get the most out of the maps. This isn't a 5 star rating because you can't go crazy in any flavor with this card if you're shooting lossless so you're limited by write speeds.

Pros
  • Memory cards
Cons
  • Some minor issues