Ultra Portable Laptops for recording HVX200 HD footage?

T

troopercooper

Active member
Hi all,

I've been looking into the use of ultra portable laptops for the use of recording HD footage on the go through firewire rather than using P2 cards (the HDD and the laptop would cost less than a 16 gig P2 card).

Aside from the potential cooling issues, what else could stop this method from being effective? Are ultra-portables not able to cope with the stream and recording of such large amounts of data? Bear in mind I would only be using the laptop to record the footage onto the external HDD - I would be using a main PC at home for editting the footage off of the HDD.

Thoughts?
 
What application are you considering using to do your recording?

I've recently started using onlocation with a second-hand 12" tablet PC and it works great (in studio/stationary situations)
I actually own a DVX, and recording with a notebook PC is way more of a chore than just recording to tape - you have to set everything up on a flattish surface, calibrate the monitor, make sure the firewire cable's routed so it doesn't get in the way all before even composing your shot
... then you can record - but watch out for the notebook's battery life!

If you are running and gunning, invest in a P2 card first - way less futzing around :)


Those ultra-portables are unlikely to be able to manage DVCPRO HD footage, you might get lucky with SD, but I wouldn't count on it.
You'll need plenty of RAM to act as a buffer while the PC writes the info to the disk and processing power to be able to review the clips also.


From Adobe - this is the MINIMUM spec that would make onlocation a safe recorder:

Intel® Pentium® 4 1.4GHz processor (2.0GHz for HDV), Intel Centrino®, Intel Xeon®, or Intel Core™ Duo (or compatible) processor
Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional or Home Edition with Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista™ Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise (certified for 32-bit editions)
512MB of RAM
100MB of available hard-disk space (additional free space required during installation)
5,400 RPM hard drive; 13GB of available hard-disk space for each hour of recording
1,024x768 monitor resolution with 32-bit video card
Microsoft DirectX compatible sound card
OHCI compatible IEEE 1394 port for capture

:)
 
There's another alternative, if your laptop has a PCMCIA slot. If you have 2 P2 cards, you can record to one while you're offloading the other on the laptop. That way, you don't have to have the laptop connected to the HVX. I was reading an article where a guy had a similar setup to shoot a network TV pilot episode (he couldn't say which one because it was being pitched to networks, and the article was from 2006) and he had a runner grab P2 cards and he'd offload them with a laptop to external hard drives. Now, with this setup, you would need at least 2 people working together, so I don't know if that's a deal breaker for you, but I'm trying to talk my Dad into buying a cheap laptop (Barry wrote an article about this) for his company for offloading in the field.
 
It's not so much a deal breaker as a convaluted scheme of sorts - the idea I could pack down my hardware into a shoebox is surprisingly enticing, and also insanely cheap looking at the Asus EeePC:

  • Display: 7″
  • Processor: Intel mobile CPU (Intel 910 chipset, 900MHz Dothan Pentium M)
  • Memory: 512MB RAM
  • OS: Linux (Asus customized flavor)
  • Storage: 8GB or 16GB flash hard drive
  • Webcam: 300K pixel video camera
  • Battery life: 3 hours using 4-cell battery
  • Weight: 2lbs
  • Dimensions: 8.9 in x 6.5 in x 0.82 in - 1.37 in (width x depth x thickness)
  • Ports: 3 USB ports, 1 VGA out, SD card reader, modem, Ethernet, headphone out, microphone in
RAM can be upgraded to 1GB, but I doubt the processor can. Shame.
 
troopercooper said:
Hi all,

I've been looking into the use of ultra portable laptops for the use of recording HD footage on the go through firewire rather than using P2 cards (the HDD and the laptop would cost less than a 16 gig P2 card).

Aside from the potential cooling issues, what else could stop this method from being effective? Are ultra-portables not able to cope with the stream and recording of such large amounts of data? Bear in mind I would only be using the laptop to record the footage onto the external HDD - I would be using a main PC at home for editting the footage off of the HDD.

Thoughts?
Click to expand...


The Andromeda crowd was devising ALL kinds of portable computer solutions with which to stream to while shooting, some of which even mounted to the camera rig. They were mostly using the Mac Mini. The forums people were posting to may still be accessible.

I've been editing DVCPRO HD on an older 15 inch 1.67 GHz Mac G4 laptop no problem.

.
 
MasterP said:
Those ultra-portables are unlikely to be able to manage DVCPRO HD footage, you might get lucky with SD, but I wouldn't count on it.
Click to expand...

DVCProHD at maximum bandwidth is a modest 100 Mbps or 12.5 MB/sec, well within the sustained write speed of most modern hard drives. Having a defragmented drive might be essential, but other than that it shouldn't be a problem - providing there's no system bottleneck to stall the video capture.
 
Nope, not on the HVX. Not live, anway. You can transfer footage off the cards via USB, but not stream live video.

I was looking at the Asus EePC the other day--looks really cool. The 7" model is definitely small enough to mount on a good tripod with your camera. The only downfall is no firewire port--you'd have to get a USB capture device of some sort that accepted firewire or component.
 
Look at the Fujitsu Lifebook too -- they have an ultra-mini version that includes a PCMCIA slot. With something like that you could use it for direct card offloading, or get a PCMCIA firewire card and use it for live capture too.
 
Sorry - forgot to reply about this. Just saw this newer EEEPC with upgraded spec:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/146033

Absolutely tiny with a 1.6gig processor. All it'd needed is a bump in RAM (possible) and it'd be fine. My original question regarding USB was I thought you could get converter cables so a firewire cable could be run through a USB port? Would that be possible to capture live footage through Premiere?

£300 I think I could justify from my total camera setup budget of £3000. The Lifebooks are sadly around £900+ - I've paid £1850 for my HVX200 second hand and looking into sound equipment, tripod and lighting now :)
 
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The Fujitsu U810 Mini Notebook has a Type II Cardbus slot and can be had for under $900.00.

Only minus is a 40 GB HDD.
 
That Asus has a 12 GB solid state drive. You won't be able to capture virtually any footage.

Moreover, any converter, if it did exist, would be limited to USB2 speeds. You may be trying to fit a round block into a square hole.
 
I'm starting to get the idea that an economical recording device I can have in a pouch or strapped to my leg that isn't a firestore is unfeasible :\

And so, the search for P2 cards begins...
 
David S. said:
The Fujitsu U810 Mini Notebook has a Type II Cardbus slot and can be had for under $900.00.
Click to expand...
Are you sure about that? The specs on the Fujitsu site show it as having a CF slot and an SD slot, but I didn't see any mention of CardBus. That'd rock if it had a PCMCIA/P2 slot...
 
Barry_Green said:
Are you sure about that? The specs on the Fujitsu site show it as having a CF slot and an SD slot, but I didn't see any mention of CardBus. That'd rock if it had a PCMCIA/P2 slot...
Click to expand...

Here are the specs:

http://www.computers.us.fujitsu.com....shtml?products/notebooks/tech_specs/u810R_ts

Down the table you'll see:

Card Slots

1 x Type I/II CF Card slot
1 x Secure Digital (SD) Card Reader

It appears I am mistaken because this is a little confusing.

In contrast, the S6510 series seems to have the Cardbus slot.
 
Yeah, that's what I saw. Too bad. Would work well for a Red or an HMC150 shooter, but if that little thing had a PCMCIA slot I'd be all over it... :)
 
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