Lets talk to iOMEGA

[Green Hornet]

I think a company such as Iomega can build a controller/ removable hard disk device to do what we need.

Does everyone remember the infamous zip and jazz drive?
Well Iomega has perfected that system with a sealed removable hard drive type device called the Rev drive. It can hold 35 gigs of data, compressed it can do 95 gigs per disk. The disks are $35.

Now if we can talk them into a P2 interface to transfer the files directly to the rev drive, or make it self contained, I think this could be a soultion for us that would be affordable.

Imagine rev drive with P2 slots on top, just stick the card in and transfer sequentially to the removable disks, hand the disks to the client add the $35 per disk to the clients bill (or charge them x3, as a digitizing fee) and your done


http://www.iomega.com/direct/products/detail.jsp?PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=13991539&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=25718153&ASSORTMENT%3C%3East_id=67&bmUID=1114394622582

http://www.iomega.com/media/direct/images/products/image_detail/det_32927_new_a8e3.jpg

[thisiswells]

It's about time. Bye, Bye DLT. Bye, Bye LTO.

[thisiswells]

No MacOSX.. nevermind.

[johnc]

No MacOSX.. nevermind.

Actually it does say that the extermal Firewire device will support OSX operating systems.

http://www.iomega.com/rev/rev-software.html

Tech spec's state that transfer rates are 12.7MB/sec to 25.4MB/sec (buffer to/from media). Lower number just barely meets the 100Mb/sec requirement. I assume these are sustained speeds since it says that the burst speed is 60MB/sec for USB2.0. It might be up for the task if a controller can be designed and it can be battery adapted.


johnc

[Green Hornet]

No MacOSX.. nevermind.


It currently supports os x
http://www.iomega.com/direct/products/detail.jsp?PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=19092785&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=25718155&ASSORTMENT%3C%3East_id=67&bmUID=1114400472126

I still want it to add the p2 slot, and controller to download to these disks.

[ddh]

This is a really good idea.

[fomoDVXpal]

Johnc, i think you mean 100mega bit, not bytes.

[johnc]

Johnc, i think you mean 100mega bit, not bytes.

Little "b" = bit. Big "B" = Byte. I think I stated it correctly. :grin:

johnc

[moe_snodgrass]

Fine idea; wrong manufacturer. After the problems (and class action suits) that Iomega has had with its products, I would be very reluctant to trust their products, espeially for this application. I owned Zip which had inherent flaws that were not identified and addressed for years after the product release. I owned the HipZip audio player that was a POS right ourt of the box. Pass

[Green Hornet]

Fine idea; wrong manufacturer. After the problems (and class action suits) that Iomega has had with its products, I would be very reluctant to trust their products, espeially for this application. I owned Zip which had inherent flaws that were not identified and addressed for years after the product release. I owned the HipZip audio player that was a POS right ourt of the box. Pass


I understand how you feel. I have been there as well.
I was highly invested in IOMEGA zip and jaz, and they let me down when i needed them the most. I has things that I never could replace on there (mostly celebrity photos and friends).

I think the biggest flaw in the old products was dust and not using
"hard drive disks". I believe the new system uses a sealed system where there is no entry for dust via the spindle shaft. This combined with advanced error corection, and a device that blows any potential particles away from the pick up ( I believe I read this somewhere) make this device sound interesting again.
I am not yet sold, but if IOMEGA ever wanted to get back in the game, I think this is their only opportunity.

They can make this device we will need, and for a price that is affordable for us. At $35 a disk, I would be much happier giving that away at the end of the day, then giving away a hard drive at $100.

My desired workflow would be like this:
Capture to P2
Download from P2 to IOMEGA (if it had a p2 slot and controller to do so)
Reuse P2 cards
Hand off footage to client on IOMEGA disk
(charge 3x the cost of the disk as a digitizing fee).

Then advace to:
Capture to P2
Download or caputure to hard drive,
Back up hard drive to IOMEGA
Hand off the copy (keep the original footage)
store original footage via some blue ray or other high end disk based system for archiving.


If IOMEGA can do it, I am willing to give them one more try.
If not, there really is no other reason to buy an iomega drive unless you have servers that need backing up, and I don't.

[thisiswells]

Thanks everyone who pointed out that this will work with Mac OSX. I wasn't seeing well earlier.
Okay, just plain lethargic.. Looks like a good option. My limited grasp of this system invokes an
important question... Can you re-compress compressed video data into a compression form to
save data onto one of these Iomega discs? Says they're 35GB uncompressed or up to 95GB
when compressed and I'm just not certain what that means for the purposes of video data
that is already compressed.. Anyone have any experience or firsthand knowledge on this?

Thanks.
brian wells

[Bart_Boge]

It would be plum crazy to employ some data compression scheme for capturing a video stream. This drive would be a 35GB drive for HD video capture purposes. If it is even fast enough over the span of the entire disc. Like many of the HD solutions we are all comtemplating, perhaps 50-75% of drive capacity would be the limit of useability, as drives get considerably slower the more data is written to them. So figure it to safely be a 20GB drive for HD capture applications.

The price may be right @ $35/cart, but I, too, have had junk Zip drives in the past. I won't be guinea-pigging a system like that. With HD prices continually falling, why use a cart system at all? A Wiebetech ComboDock FW800 is $170, and 200GB Barracuda drives are $124. It only takes 90 seconds to swap drives out if you take the extra time to attach the metal plate, 10 seconds if you don't. Can't imagine spending the cash on a new system from a questionable company--and a solution that is no cheaper and potentially less reliable than current tech.

It might be time to just use off-the-shelf HDs for archiving and submitting to clients, especially for HD. What does a DVCPROHD deck cost? Tapes? A Seagate Barracuda 200GB conventional HD with great specs and a 5 year warranty can be had for $124:

http://www2.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148033

Am I missing something here? Do any of you think an Iomega product would be more "robust" than a Wiebetech ComboDock mated to a Barracuda drive? Not a bet I would take.

[Mike]

The only problem with hard drives is their fragility. I think hard drives are a great solution overall (great performance and low cost). But did you ever notice how much packaging is used to ship hard drives? I always handle mine with kid gloves. Maybe I'm just being too protective?

[Bart_Boge]

You can't "run 'n' gun" with them, but for set shots and truck/dolly shots on a decent-sized rig, hard drives could be carefully secured without much problem. Hard drives are sealed from dust, have workable temperature ranges, and g-shock is the only real worry. Don't bump them and you'll be alright I would think. Hey, they aren't P2s, but 200GB P2 cards aren't $124., either!

[thisiswells]

Um, this Iomega is harddisc.. it's just in a case that kind of looks like DVD-RAM, but it's HDD.
The mechnical parts of it must be in the drive itself, but those $35/things are harddiscs.

[Green Hornet]

Also, the removable disks are about the size of a mini disk, or a pack of cigarettes, only half the thickness. These things would be very easy to store.

I do not think they can make this device something to capture on, unless they change a lot of the internals. I think it can only be viable for off loading.

The workflow:
You will need (3) P2 cards.
2 in the camcorder
1 downloading to the Iomega drive.
Rotate when the downloading one is finished.

Later, transfer all the Iomega disks to your workstation, edit and save the finished production to a blank iomega disk.

Current pricing $400 for the drive, $35 for the disks.
Any other means to do this would cost you thousands, not hundreds to do.

Mind you, you can not currently do this with out a seperate p2 reader (maybe a pcmcia reader attatched to the iomega will do)
Hopefully iomega will read this and work with Panasonic to make this a one unit device with proper controller.

A hard drive solution would be better for total storage size, but it would be more difficult to make workable due to the needed controller, that no one makes.
If someone like firestore made it, it would be like their current products and cost in the thousands. They don't make the hard drives in the unit, so that cost is always fixed, and added to the controller/case cost which typically costs in the thousands.

It would also have more mass, and weight like all hard drives do. This mass and weight makes it less durable in the field, and less resistant to shock.

Iomega's current product is street priced at $399 (or less)
the only change would be to make it take the P2 data, which should only add very little to the cost.

This is all speculative though

[mcgeedigital]

:thumbdown I remember Jaz Drives well.

Which is why I would NEVER buy ANYTHING from Iomega again.

There must be some other companies out there with products that do not fail as spectacularly as the Jaz did.