CinePorter™ FAQ

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A speculation: perhaps the dual card interface doesn't have anything to do with hooking the Cineporter up to the camera. Maybe it has to do with hooking it up to a laptop...

How great would it be if the Cineporter could be hooked into two Cardbus slots at the same time, and transfer footage using the full bandwidth available to both slots? Offload time could be amazing -- certainly faster than offloading a P2 card.

And a thought about the bad news -- I'm guessing that the bad news will be that either the price will be going up, or a release date will finally be given, but it will be a while from now.


A question for Spec-Comm: When interfaced with a PC, will the Cineporter function as an external hard drive using Universal Mass Storage, or similar?
That would allow us to offload to a laptop running Linux, which would be an excellent ability that cannot be otherwise matched currently except by using the camera as a card reader (which keeps you from continuing to shoot).
 
I am sure you guys are ALL excited about this new feature.... I know it will take some more time to get out.. BUT IMAGINE buying the CP2 and then in 6 months reading that the CP3 was out with removable drives.

P2 Technology has revolutionized the industry and the CinePorter will if not beat BUT bypas the 16gig cards that everyone is so anxious about. Save your money on the 16gig cards and get a CinePorter. Now with the removeable drives you can charge your client for the HDD and then had it over to them. P2 cards wont ever be that flexable.... SpecComm has taken P2 up the elevator, while P2 cards have taken a long rope climb to the top.

Now dont get me wrong I love the P2 cards, and see them a MUST, and will NEVER sell my 4gig cards.
 
SurJones said:
I am sure you guys are ALL excited about this new feature.... I know it will take some more time to get out.. BUT IMAGINE buying the CP2 and then in 6 months reading that the CP3 was out with removable drives.

P2 Technology has revolutionized the industry and the CinePorter will if not beat BUT bypas the 16gig cards that everyone is so anxious about. Save your money on the 16gig cards and get a CinePorter. Now with the removeable drives you can charge your client for the HDD and then had it over to them. P2 cards wont ever be that flexable.... SpecComm has taken P2 up the elevator, while P2 cards have taken a long rope climb to the top.

Now dont get me wrong I love the P2 cards, and see them a MUST, and will NEVER sell my 4gig cards.
Click to expand...

Yeah, these features look pretty appealing, but it all seems to be marketing hype at this point. I think any buying decision also has to factor in the possibility that Spec-Comm will not be able to overcome whatever technical problems they are dealing with and that the product may not come to market any time soon. Fortunately, I have found recording direct to a laptop adequate for my current needs and can just wait to see how this product settles out.
 
If I were to get the single 160gig HHD model, is it more thin than the 360gig model, or is only one of the two slots utilized?

I would like to see a one HHD slim model vs, just a lighter but same dimensions as a 360gig double drive model.

Wow.... summer of 2007?
 
Coup de poker !

Green carpet makes me think about casino game:
The game is "Can we afford to lose (time) ?"

NO

Luckily, 2 jokers in the pack:

- A couple of 16Gig P2 (the 8Gig@550€ rebate announces them pretty soon)
- DV Rack HD on a high end small factor laptop. [Monitor/calibration included]

[By the way, The Airbus A380 has a lot of room but cannot go to the market for technical reasons, so companies buy "smaller/alternate" planes!]

Even nicely/cleverly announced/marketed product cannot resolve today's need.
Anyway, I plan to love the promised product when on the shelf.

Am an airporter, not a cineporter, no more poker, full of ... joker!

Jennyfer.
 
I'm sure this is wishful thinking at this point, but is the non-RAID model upgradeable to become RAID-capable, or are they different units entirely?

Also, are the hard drives loaded into some kind of caddy, or does the unit accept them directly? If they require caddies, are they available seperately?

The pricing for the individual drives is certainly decent, but it would be nice to have the option of getting drives elsewhere (in case yours are sold out, need one the same day, etc) in a pinch.

One last thing -- the batteries on the Cineporter are hot-swappable, but how does this help unless the Cineporter can provide power to the HVX as well? Otherwise, as soon as the HVX's battery runs out, you have to stop recording to change batteries, even if the Cineporter can go forever... Still nice to have for offloading, I suppose.

I'm very pleased with this news. If "Summer 2007" is the worst news that's coming, this is excellent...
 
=Prodigy= said:
If I were to get the single 160gig HHD model, is it more thin than the 360gig model, or is only one of the two slots utilized?
Click to expand...

If you get a 160gig you can send in and it can be upgraded to the 320gig. Now the benifits for that would includ: Shooting RAID , so it creates to copies, Some client prefer that with this capabilities client can complain.
 
Curious about this line:
*RAID configuration requires CinePorter
for access to the HDDs.
Click to expand...

Specifically, the reason I would want a redundant RAID setup is so that I could eject one of the hard disks and hand it to the client (encased in a proper $9 external USB enclosure, of course) and keep the other drive for safety/backup purposes. So does the line above mean that this workflow would not be possible?
 
Hot Swapable: Well There are a couple thing to consider. First Hot swapable for the CinePorter is good for those who dont have room for Laptop or Desktop to DirectCapture. You camera on AC and HotSwap the CinePorter. Filed shooting- I dont know anyone who would hold a camera without hitting stop for 2 hours, which seems to be a base for the Panny batteries. So hot swapable is not needed. There are other forms of high capacity battery solutions. Anton Bauer, and those ports that allow 2 panny batteies to run which is also hot-swapable.
 
Thanks for picking up the questions Patrick, Barry. I'm on my way out of town and will clarify all questions as I get a chance. Keep'em coming.

David
 
Barry_Green said:
Specifically, the reason I would want a redundant RAID setup is so that I could eject one of the hard disks and hand it to the client (encased in a proper $9 external USB enclosure, of course) and keep the other drive for safety/backup purposes. So does the line above mean that this workflow would not be possible?
Click to expand...

If it is using RAID 1 (which I would imagine would make the most sense), there is no reason you would need the CinePorter to get to the data, as each drive would be an exact copy.

Really, though, since the CinePorter can offload directly to a drive already in a USB enclosure, it wouldn't be that much slower to just do that. Not nearly as cool, though.

Honestly, if the unit doesn't use real RAID 1, I wouldn't want the RAID version, as it would actually be less secure -- While redundancy protects you from a hard drive failure in the CinePorter, using non-standard redundancy would mean that if the CinePorter itself failed for some reason, you wouldn't be able to get to your footage. Considering the CinePorter could be broken fairly easily (ie dropping it), this doesn't sound like a good plan...
 
I think the reason that accessing the RAID drives requires the Cineporter is that RAID drives cannot be used as standalone drives -- there is metadata on the drives that tells the RAID controller (or driver if it's a software RAID implementation) how to access the drive, what array it is part of, the state of the drive etc.

The metadata formats used by different RAID vendors are not compatible, so you can't take a Silicon Image RAID array and connect it to a Intel Storage Matrix controller, for instance. I don't know if Spec-Comm is licensing the RAID implementation from someone or rolling their own (that wouldn't make much sense to me), but there may be some compatibility with an existing RAID system even if it isn't documented. In any case, RAID1 drives are never the same as two separate standalone drives, so you can't just hand one off to a client and keep the other.
 
Spec-Comm said:
Thanks for picking up the questions Patrick, Barry. I'm on my way out of town and will clarify all questions as I get a chance. Keep'em coming.

David
Click to expand...

One question that many have is what has contributed to another six month delay?

Are there technical issues with using essentially a p2 interface, and are these issues eventually going to be relevant to reliability?
 
Now at CP3 (Previously known as CP2) The reasons for the delays are simply to offer the best product and most flexable technology. With the suggestions from this forum and other sources the list grew to what would need to be added in order to make a superior product. With the CP2 It had a differnt Physical Design, but there were still some issues that needed to be addressed. The new chasis was redesigned by a world renowned company, and since that was on the table the limitations of the former design were out the window. If you notice the 4 buttons menu controller, seems easy to implement, however extremely complicated. The removable HDD was the most requested, and with delivering the most requested item and also adding so much more than CP1 offered it take sometime to achieve that. You also have to keep in mind that it takes time for the production of the units as well, and lets not forget testing, to make sure they work to spec. To get a product out of this revolutionary magnitude in basically a year is amazing in itself.
 
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SurJones said:
The reasons for the delays are simply to offer the best product and most flexable technology. .
Click to expand...

I'm not being contentious, but I was curious as to whether you are speaking for the company, or these are your personal opinions.

My question related to issues involving reliability due to the unique nature of a basic p2 interface.

So SurJones (I don't know your name and don't like screen names), do you have unique and accurate knowledge of what is occasioned the delay or is this your personal opinion about the specifics of my question?

(I wish this forum requires real names, such as dvinfo does)
 
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