Recording Sessions to SD card slot?

[Dism]

Originally Posted by sogwap715

oodelardeet,

did you encounter issues with pro tools not allowing you to designate the sd card as a recording volume? I purchased a ScanDisk Ultra II SDHC card rated a 'class 4' (no class 6 cards at local best buy or office depot) and couldn't record to it due to this. I tried deleting the digidesign databases and reformatting the sd card to NTFS. I still wasn't successful. I would like to be successful in using the SD cards as I am using a laptop with a 5400 rpm internal hard drive, no express slot, not firewire, no pcmcia, only usb ports and an SD slot. Obviously not ideal, but I would still like to be able handle some lightweight projects. I am running Pro tools LE 8.0.

Well, you should start off by finding a class 6 card. The lower rated cards would be too slow to even be useful, really.

[fightingzero]

Has anybody followed up on the notion of using an SDHC card as the volume? Class 10 cards are out now and I see that this thread is two years old.

Class 10's might have more oomphf that we were looking for.

[evilberg]

I have been recording 24 tracks and mixing 60+ tracks from a SanDisk 32GB Extreme SDHC Card 45MB/s class 10 with zero issues. The SD card is now my main mobile recording drive and is plugged directly into the SD card slot on my 15" MBP. Very portable and super stable.

[Felix]

I tried running MacOS 10.8.5 with ProTools 11 from a Transcend Jetdrive Lite 128g. Not sure what Class it is, but the specs seemed fine. It's noticeably slower booting up. And it doesn't perform well.
I tested by skipping the transport around to different areas to see if it would choke up and stop with an error window. Even at 1024 buffer, it still choking. Oh well. Regardless of how fast it claims to be and the alleged speed of the card reader slot, it just doesn't work that well.
And regarding concerns about the card failing, I've using an 8 gig Transcend SDHC in my H2 recorder for about 4-5 years now. Recording hundreds of long rehearsals, shows, meetings, etc. and erasing and reformatting, and removing from H2 to computer and back. I can't imagine the thousands of hours this has been used for. It still works fine… Never failed me. (maybe now it will:)

[JFreak]

I have also tried this; however, even though some tests have been successful, there are times when the memory card just "flips" and suddenly it ejects itself.

Locking connectors are golden.

[aaquilato]

Any updates to this thread?
I'm having varied results and would like to try an narrow down why I can sometimes record with no problem and sometimes not.

Here's my setup:
MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015)
OSX 10.10.5 (14F27)
ProTools 10HD (10.3.8)
2.8 GHz Intel Core i7
16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
SanDisk Extreme PRO SD (64GB-280MBs)
7 processors set @ 99%
Buffer set @ 512
No more than 24 tracks via firewire from an Avid Profile or SC48.
(This involves a FF 800>400 cable and the Apple Thunderbolt adaptor.
Seriously not sure about this Apple!)

No plugins.

Somedays it works and somedays it just randomly stops recording.

Anyone want to chime in on this?
I would appreciate any feedback.

Thanks,
A.

[aaquilato]

I started another thread about this a couple of days ago.

Re: DAE -9073 error with SanDisk SD card.
This is still very hit and miss.

Avid, would you chime in about this.

I have recorded via Dante, USB and Firewire into my MBP all with different media and different results.
I'm using PT10(HD). There is never any monitoring involved so latency is not an issue.

Recording media aside, I'm finding that larger H/W buffer sizes work better.
That makes sense, but oddly enough the error can pop up at any given point in the recording.

I know (as I've been told so many times by others here on the DUC) that the SD card is not the medium to be recording on.

I'm using it for two reasons.
1) The card reader slot uses it's own bus (lane) which is an advantage.
And it's more than fast enough.

The new MBP only has thunderbolt and USB connections. Two of each.
Those lanes are shared.
Meaning if you are using one of the USB ports for something else, it's bandwidth is lessened.
The same goes with the Thunderbolt ports.

I have had my Thunderbolt HD randomly eject many times for no reason whatsoever. It seems very unstable.
This even happens when I'm backing up a time capsule HD and not doing any work on the MBP. I come back to see the error message that the disk was removed, blah, blah, blah...

The SD card never "ejects" itself and even though the recording time varies (DAE -9073 error) all the media on it is always good and PT sessions open and play as they should.

I know this is an old thread. SD cards are getting faster and less expensive.
There is a portability factor that cannot be denied here.

Avid, what's the deal here?