Is there a USB flash drive that's fast enough for Blu-ray movies? Obviously,
none will have enough capacity, even at the 8GB... I'm just wondering if
there's one capable of such speeds. (30MB/s or better?) Again, for Blu-ray
movie only.

Thanks for any info! :)

Well if it's not on a Blu-ray disk it's no longer a Blu-ray movie is it?

I don't think you could do Blu-ray on a flash drive. But one could put HD movies aon their and stream them someware

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=2153

There's an example there from August of USB flash memory having a max read rating of 30MB/s and write of 27MB/s.

I have a feeling that when USB 3.0 hits, it may open up a bit more (even though technically USB 2.0 should have more than enough speed).

USB 2.0 is far and away fast enough to stream 40Mbit like a high bitrate BD title might contain.

Not MB people, Mbit, anyone thinking BD streams 30MB a second needs some quality time with a calculator.

as MEC clearly pointed out....

that little USB drives is 30 MegaBYTES per second (MB/s) which equals to 240 Megabits/s (Mb/S) which is roughly about 6x faster than blu-ray is in data throughput. And for clarifcation purposes, USB 2.0 max data throughput is a staggering 460 Mb/s.

Of course throw in firewire and that can sustain 400 Mb/s all day.

btw the question should not be fast enough. The question should be big enough. To answer the question, Yes there is as introduced in the ibook Air. 64GB SSD. Price though is about $1000.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/10/samsungs-64gb-ssd-better-faster-stronger/

"topping out at about 52MBps read (416 Mb/s) / 32MBps (256 Mb/s) write."

128 GB SSD have also just ben unvieled.

btw this thread should be moved to HDTV Software Media Discussion forum as this does not pertain to blu-ray.

You could fit a Freedom episode on one. They are a little over 7GB each.

16GB USB pen drives can be found on pricewatch.com for $75-80. But for aound the same price range you could get a 100 GB USB pocket hard drive. Or for a $10-20 more you could get a regular sized 500 GB USB external drive that holds 10-15 BD movies in a space smaller than that many BD display boxes.

- Tom

I just came back from Taiwan and when I was there I visited a USB flash manufacture company. They had demonstrated a new USB/eSATA flash drive (at the CES show) which had 128G bytes of memory and the speed was faster than the hard drive. It could replace the hard drive in notebook computer easily. The USB/eSATA interface can take either USB 2.0 or eSATA device with the speed many times fater than the USB 2.0. It has been adopted by several notebook companies including DELL, and Toshiba.

My FIOS DVR has a firewire connection, and a USB connector (disabled). If the right software were written, this could be enabled and tie into the display code for the DVR, passing USB stick based content through.

Since firewire and USB transfer rates are being discussed, if I could ask a tangential question...

Can someone point me to a good comparison of rates for the various USB and firewire versions? And what they would mean in practical terms for my particular (very common) needs? I.e., if I'm looking for an external hard drive for storing my music and video files, is it worth the extra money for firewire 400 or 800? Or is USB already fast enough that I'd never know the difference? I have googled on this with various combinations of keywords and still haven't found the answer.

The throughput of the medium is the issue with flash, not the throughput of the connection.

The throughput of the medium is the issue with flash, not the throughput of the connection.

And for playing HDM neither is an issue. Both are plenty fast.

I just came back from Taiwan and when I was there I visited a USB flash manufacture company. They had demonstrated a new USB/eSATA flash drive (at the CES show) which had 128G bytes of memory and the speed was faster than the hard drive. It could replace the hard drive in notebook computer easily. The USB/eSATA interface can take either USB 2.0 or eSATA device with the speed many times fater than the USB 2.0. It has been adopted by several notebook companies including DELL, and Toshiba.

Unfortunately, right now SSDs (Solid State Disks) are dramatically more expensive than standard drives. Just to give you an example, Dell sells the Sandisk 64GB flash drive for a fraction under $1K.

Until the prices drop by roughly an order of magnitude they won't be a mainstream choice.

Cheers,

Unfortunately, right now SSDs (Solid State Disks) are dramatically more expensive than standard drives. Just to give you an example, Dell sells the Sandisk 64GB flash drive for a fraction under $1K.

Until the prices drop by roughly an order of magnitude they won't be a mainstream choice.

Cheers,

I see 1GB pen drives now for about $9. Anybody remember how long ago they cost > $90? That would be one (decimal) order of magnitude. I'd expect 64 GB drives to follow about the same path.

- Tom

That would be just tremendous if we could replace optical discs with high-capacity USB drives. They'd be smaller, more rugged, much faster, and wouldn't need the forward-error-correction that optical discs need. Flash memory wouldn't necessarily be needed for movie content. Cheaper ROM would be better.

USB 2.0 is MORE than fast enough. I have 3 500GB hard drives with 12-15 Blu-ray movies on each. Just plug and go. PLENTY fast enough to watch Blu-ray (or HD DVD)....

Since firewire and USB transfer rates are being discussed, if I could ask a tangential question...

Can someone point me to a good comparison of rates for the various USB and firewire versions? And what they would mean in practical terms for my particular (very common) needs? I.e., if I'm looking for an external hard drive for storing my music and video files, is it worth the extra money for firewire 400 or 800? Or is USB already fast enough that I'd never know the difference? I have googled on this with various combinations of keywords and still haven't found the answer.

How many people will be accessing the drive at the same time?

In most cases it should be plenty fast for music. As for movies the size of BD discs, USB2 and Firewire 400 are plenty fast enough in theory, you should easily be able to watch 2 or 3 at the same time... it's just when you get to say 5 or more that things get iffy as not all USB2/Firewire400 (or 800 for that matter) are made equal.

It's the reason why there are differing speeds between different external hard drive enclosures.

Thanks! I seriously doubt more than two machines would be accessing the drive at once, so I guess USB will do me just fine.

In a pinch I work with online HD material off of USB2 and firewire drives.

It can get clunky sometimes. But it's less compressed than BR video would be (avid codecs) and it's multiple streams. So I would imagine if you stripped a BR disc to a jump drive it would play fine.

I'm not sure why this thread was moved out of the Blu-ray section... :confused:

It only has to do with Blu-ray because I was asking about the USB thumb
drives that came with some Japanese Blu-ray titles(placed inside the case).
The HD video clips stored on the drives are 1080p, taken straight from the
Blu-ray discs. I guess that's how some Japanese companies attract buyers
to their Blu-ray titles.(especially anime studios) :) However, these little
thumb drives only have the studio's stickers/decals... no sign of who orignially
made the drive.... so no way for me to find out how fast they are....

I'm not sure why this thread was moved out of the Blu-ray section... :confused:

It only has to do with Blu-ray because I was asking about the USB thumb
drives that came with some Japanese Blu-ray titles(placed inside the case).
The HD video clips stored on the drives are 1080p, taken straight from the
Blu-ray discs. I guess that's how some Japanese companies attract buyers
to their Blu-ray titles.(especially anime studios) :) However, these little
thumb drives only have the studio's stickers/decals... no sign of who orignially
made the drive.... so no way for me to find out how fast they are....

I would be shocked if they we're anything but USB2.

As stated above, USB 2.0 is definately fast enough to support streaming HDM. Windows Vista actually allows you to use flash drives as supplemental RAM instead of using your hard drive as a swap disk.

I have several external hard drives with HD movies on them and because of the large file sizes I am not able to transfer them over USB 2.0 I have to use either the firewire or esata interfaces to transfer the large files. The error that always pops up is (there is not enough disk space.....) This is the same message for all my computers and all of my external hard drives. I am able to watch the files just fine over USB 2. I am just not able to transfer over USB 2. With my dual interface drives it is not a problem because i can load with either firewire or e-sata and and then play over USB, but with my pocket drive (250G) I cannot load HD movies onto it because I get the message that there is not enough space, even if the drive is completely empty. It seems to me that either USB 2 is not compatible with extremely large file sizes or that there are some default windows settings that do not allow these files to be transfered over USB 2.
Has anyone else encountered this problem with their USB 2.0 drives? Any suggestions?

I have several external hard drives with HD movies on them and because of the large file sizes I am not able to transfer them over USB 2.0 I have to use either the firewire or esata interfaces to transfer the large files. The error that always pops up is (there is not enough disk space.....) This is the same message for all my computers and all of my external hard drives. I am able to watch the files just fine over USB 2. I am just not able to transfer over USB 2. With my dual interface drives it is not a problem because i can load with either firewire or e-sata and and then play over USB, but with my pocket drive (250G) I cannot load HD movies onto it because I get the message that there is not enough space, even if the drive is completely empty. It seems to me that either USB 2 is not compatible with extremely large file sizes or that there are some default windows settings that do not allow these files to be transfered over USB 2.
Has anyone else encountered this problem with their USB 2.0 drives? Any suggestions?

I copy large files to USB drives all the time. No idea why you can't.

- Tom

Yeah...

At work it's common practice for us to consolidate onlined shows from one online system to another. and since we don't have a unity system (yet) we do thiis with external Lacie & G-raid USB2 drives. We have and have used Fire-wire G-raid/Lacie drives, but for some reason we keep having issues with the drives staying mounted after being used for a few months. Although we do swap them A LOT. But we're talking about moving anywhere from 60 - 800 GB's of HD video in one run.

Not to mention since our tape house is upstate and our edit offices in Manhattan, we also use these drives to digitize all of the show media to(compressed mind you to 20-1) for offline editors. We fedex the drives down and they transfer the media to their internals and send the drives back up. We use USB2 jumpdrives to send the OMF audio files from the show's locked cut sequence to our pro-tool engineer from Manhattan back to the upstate office, where the shows are finished and mastered, before we send the masters to the network for air.

USB 2.0 is MORE than fast enough. I have 3 500GB hard drives with 12-15 Blu-ray movies on each. Just plug and go. PLENTY fast enough to watch Blu-ray (or HD DVD)....

?!?!?! I thought ripping to disc was prevented by BD copy protection?

MEC2

I have several external hard drives with HD movies on them and because of the large file sizes I am not able to transfer them over USB 2.0 I have to use either the firewire or esata interfaces to transfer the large files.

Has anyone else encountered this problem with their USB 2.0 drives? Any suggestions?

What file system do you have on your flash drives? Right Click on the drive and see the Properties.

I have several external hard drives with HD movies on them and because of the large file sizes I am not able to transfer them over USB 2.0 I have to use either the firewire or esata interfaces to transfer the large files. The error that always pops up is (there is not enough disk space.....) This is the same message for all my computers and all of my external hard drives. I am able to watch the files just fine over USB 2. I am just not able to transfer over USB 2. With my dual interface drives it is not a problem because i can load with either firewire or e-sata and and then play over USB, but with my pocket drive (250G) I cannot load HD movies onto it because I get the message that there is not enough space, even if the drive is completely empty. It seems to me that either USB 2 is not compatible with extremely large file sizes or that there are some default windows settings that do not allow these files to be transfered over USB 2.
Has anyone else encountered this problem with their USB 2.0 drives? Any suggestions?

Try a different USB cable.

USB 2.0 is more than fast enough.
Blu-ray needs 54mbps of bandwidth.
USB 2.0 can provide 400mbps theoritically and even it is working at half the bandwidth, it still provides 200mbps which again is 4X the bandwidth of Blu-ray.

When I used to record OTA HD I had no problem using a USB 2.0 external drive and recording two HD streams concurrently, plus watching HD content from the drive on that PC and also watching content over my network with two other PCs. All from that one USB 2.0 external drive, all concurrently without any glitches in playback or recording. I was very surprised.
One BD stream should be a piece of cake.

When I used to record OTA HD I had no problem using a USB 2.0 external drive and recording two HD streams concurrently, plus watching HD content from the drive on that PC and also watching content over my network with two other PCs. All from that one USB 2.0 external drive, all concurrently without any glitches in playback or recording. I was very surprised.
One BD stream should be a piece of cake.

True.
Although I always prefer Firewire for HDD connections (I'm a mac user), but USB 2.0 os robust.
Blu-ray's and HD DVD's bandwidth are a joke compare to USB 2.0's throughput.

True.
Although I always prefer Firewire for HDD connections (I'm a mac user), but USB 2.0 os robust.
Blu-ray's and HD DVD's bandwidth are a joke compare to USB 2.0's throughput.

+1

Also, almost every PC has a USB port and most are 2.0. Fast and Free is much better than paying $200+ for a drive in order to read and write gigabytes of data at a much slower rate.

I myself watch a lot of movies on flash drive on my dvd/usb player. I watch more movies on a flash drive than I do DVD's.. Does flash memory have the speed for a hi-def movie like blu-ray? Ofcourse they do.. Do they have the capacity? Yes they do. I've seen 64 gb of flash memory a bit costier now.. Flash chips will eventually replace blu-ray for sure.. usb 3.0 is due out later this year which will make firewire obsolete. Blu-ray I'm guessing will be out as well...

Just to clarify, USB 2.0 does not necessarily mean high speed. USB 2.0 is the spec, it would have to be called High speed to have the high throughput. And the max theoretical throughput for High Speed USB 2.0 is 480 Mb/s. There is a lot of overhead with the USB protocol unfortunately therefore it can be difficult to implement in its high speed form. But there is definately no problem with streaming a High definition movie with a High Def audio codec.

Just to clarify, USB 2.0 does not necessarily mean high speed. USB 2.0 is the spec, it would have to be called High speed to have the high throughput. And the max theoretical throughput for High Speed USB 2.0 is 480 Mb/s. There is a lot of overhead with the USB protocol unfortunately therefore it can be difficult to implement in its high speed form. But there is definately no problem with streaming a High definition movie with a High Def audio codec.

I have done it with a portable Hard Drive which I suspect is slower than a good thumb drive. I put a full BD movie with lossless audio on a USB2 drive (2.5" 5400) and it played fine on the PS3 with no jerkiness or any other speed artifacts from the AVCHD folder.

I have several external hard drives with HD movies on them and because of the large file sizes I am not able to transfer them over USB 2.0 I have to use either the firewire or esata interfaces to transfer the large files. The error that always pops up is (there is not enough disk space.....) This is the same message for all my computers and all of my external hard drives. I am able to watch the files just fine over USB 2. I am just not able to transfer over USB 2. With my dual interface drives it is not a problem because i can load with either firewire or e-sata and and then play over USB, but with my pocket drive (250G) I cannot load HD movies onto it because I get the message that there is not enough space, even if the drive is completely empty. It seems to me that either USB 2 is not compatible with extremely large file sizes or that there are some default windows settings that do not allow these files to be transfered over USB 2.
Has anyone else encountered this problem with their USB 2.0 drives? Any suggestions?

U sure the drive isnt NTFS and not FAT32

U sure the drive isnt NTFS and not FAT32

Good call! This bit me once also as I tried to copy files > 4G to an empty FAT32 formatted drive and receive this confusing message.

As an aside if we are talking about playing BD movies off USB thumb drives, for the PS3 anywhere, it works great off USB Hard Drives (even 2.5" ones). I have loaded a full 1080p movie with lossless audio backed up from a BD title and the PS3 plays it with no hesitation or jerkiness.

Good call! This bit me once also as I tried to copy files > 4G to an empty FAT32 formatted drive and receive this confusing message.



USB Flash drives can easily be formatted to NTFS, but beware that it won't work in PS3 and most non-Windows Operating systems wont recognize it.

If you're going to copy a full movie to a FAT32 formatted USB drive, you'll have to split it up into 4 GB chunks. The PS3 has an option that will play the next movie in the folder once the current is done... so as long as they are named where they'd show up in order, it's possible to watch an entire movie off a FAT32 USB drive ...on the ps3.

Yes I have been doing that for a while now. I formatted a 80G drive FAT32 and now use that to play my backed up BD movies - load faster than the disc and avoid getting dirt and grime on the discs. But rather than cut and rename manually I am using this cool application called multiAVCHD

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=143744&page=1

It can import a number of m2ts files of any size, cuts them into 4G chunks, names them correctly and inserts them into a AVCHD folder that can be copied to your USB drive for the PS3. Plus it can create menus of the files you have loaded with thumbnail images, custom pictures etc. Pretty cool.

Of course the biggest advantage of playing content like this on the PS3 via AVCHD rather than the XMB is you can retain Dolby TrueHD or DTS HD Master on your backups.

Yes I have been doing that for a while now. I formatted a 80G drive FAT32 and now use that to play my backed up BD movies - load faster than the disc and avoid getting dirt and grime on the discs. But rather than cut and rename manually I am using this cool application called multiAVCHD

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=143744&page=1

It can import a number of m2ts files of any size, cuts them into 4G chunks, names them correctly and inserts them into a AVCHD folder that can be copied to your USB drive for the PS3. Plus it can create menus of the files you have loaded with thumbnail images, custom pictures etc. Pretty cool.

Of course the biggest advantage of playing content like this on the PS3 via AVCHD rather than the XMB is you can retain Dolby TrueHD or DTS HD Master on your backups.

Nice. I'll have to check that out!

+1

Also, almost every PC has a USB port and most are 2.0. Fast and Free is much better than paying $200+ for a drive in order to read and write gigabytes of data at a much slower rate.

Kinda expensive for ARCHIVING data tho.

The key point here is neither usb nor flash is fast enough to do what the majority of people want. Visit a kiosk, make a movie selection and slide your usb/flash drive through the machine like a credit card to copy a full HD movie with all the trimmings. Now that would be FLASH memory. Once it becomes fast enough to transfer 30 – 50 GB in under a second then we are getting somewhere. Imagine having to set in your car for 1 hour before it would start after you tuned your ignition on. We are an instant gratification society and waiting on downloads or media transfers will never work for the majority of users that can’t or wont plan that far in advance.

This is also why flash works good for HD recording in camcorders because to record a 1 hour home movie takes about 1 hour :). This is plenty of time for type 4/6 flash memory to do its job of saving the data to the relativley slow flash media.