Shoot. Ingest. Edit!

By Adam Hull | Business Manager, Holdan

Now that pretty much every camera captures to digital media, choosing the right kind of reader has never been more important. For 35 years Sonnet has pioneered innovative and award-winning products that enhance computer performance and connectivity. This blog looks at Sonnet’s expanding range of professional media readers.

SF3 Series

Sonnet’s SF3 Series Pro Card Readers feature dual card slots and 40Gbps Thunderbolt interfaces, enabling them to ingest files from two cards simultaneously at maximum speeds. Their rugged aluminium enclosures and dual Thunderbolt ports enable users to stack and connect up to six readers in a daisy chain to their computer through a single cable. Not only are they stackable, but rack-mountable too. The threaded mount point securely attaches two readers side-by-side on a rack tray in just 1U of rack space. All Pro Card Readers also ship with a Thunderlok 3 retainer clip to prevent the Thunderbolt cable from accidentally being unplugged.

CFast 2.0 Pro Card Reader

With the increasing popularity of professional digital cinema cameras from Canon, ARRI and Blackmagic Design, the use of CFast 2.0 memory cards has soared, and with it demand for a high-speed card reader. With current CFast 2.0 cards rated read speeds nearing 550 MB/s, USB readers just don’t have the bandwidth, and that’s where Sonnet’s CFast 2.0 Pro Card Reader comes in. Featuring a 40 Gbps Thunderbolt™ 3 interface, this device quickly ingests footage from CFast memory cards to any Mac or Windows computer with a Thunderbolt 3 port—on location, in the studio, or in the edit suite—at the fastest speeds the cards will support. The bus powered CFast 2.0 Pro Card Reader is compatible with M1 Macs and Windows computers with Thunderbolt 4 ports.

CFexpress/XQD Pro Card Reader

When you are capturing 4K at 60P RAW video footage to CFexpress memory cards or shooting hundreds of photos in a session and saving them to XQD memory cards, the file sizes generated are huge, and cards fill up fast. Moving those files to your computer for editing is a must, but if you use the wrong tool, you will spend a lot of time waiting. But not with a Sonnet CFexpress/XQD Pro Card Reader – it’s the ultimate tool for getting the job done fast.

RED MINI-MAG Card Reader

If you are shooting on a RED camera, the likelihood is that your footage is captured to RED MINI-MAG media. With the move to shooting in 8K and at high frame rates, those cards fill up faster than ever before and the need to offload footage from multiple cards as quickly as possible is greater than ever, too. The Sonnet RED MINI-MAG Pro Card Reader is the ultimate tool for the job. Featuring a dual-port, 40 Gbps Thunderbolt 3 interface, this RED-approved reader ingests footage from RED MINI-MAG memory cards to any Mac, Windows, or Linux computer with a Thunderbolt 3 port. The RED MINI-MAG reader is also compatible with M1 Macs and Windows computers with Thunderbolt 4 ports.

SxS Card Readers

The latest additions to the Sonnet card reader range are the Thunderbolt 3 Card readers for SxS Pro X Media. Sonnet offer a mains-powered dual slot 40Gbps Thunderbolt 3 card reader and a single slot bus-powered reader.

New Single SxS Card Reader

The SxS Pro X Single-Slot Card Reader is small, ultra-fast and supports all generations of SxS media up to the latest Pro X cards. Additionally, these readers support XQD cards with the Sony ExpressCard Adapter for XQD Memory Card (QDA-EX1) or SD cards with Sonnet's SDHC Adapter for SxS Slot (SON-SDSXS-E34).

New Dual SxS Card Reader

The Dual-Slot Card Reader takes advantage of Thunderbolt 3's 40Gbps bandwidth to ingest files simultaneously from two cards at maximum speed—more than double the average ingest speed of USB 3.0 card readers. Using the Sonnet SxS reader enables you to ingest footage from multiple cards in much less time for a significantly more efficient workflow.