5, 10, 18 hours recording time works with F3...

Duke M.

Duke M.

Veteran
Five plus hours recording times. Seems to work just fine for over crank because the hard drive is much faster than even an SxS card.

I built one of these originally for my EX1. As a DIY project its cheap (about $130), fast and easy, but some people reported some media adapter problems so I wanted to test it on the F3. I tried it after the firmware update. IT WORKS! The Sony makes a recorder at several times the cost.

Since it uses a spinning hard drive I think its use should be restricted to something stable like a tripod. Small bumps don't affect it but a hard jolt could make the drive skip.

Here are all the parts for a working recorder:

USB 2.0 to ExpressCard 34 54 Express Card Adapter BC268
(http://www.trait-tech.com/product/T-PCA-5057/) = $7.99
*Ships from China so it takes awhile. For a few bucks more you can buy them on ebay in the US.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Notebook-Inside...668?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2c59548274

USB 2.0 Device Cable (Left / Right Angle) RR-AR4TMBR1-12GL
(http://www.usbfirewire.com/Parts/rr-ar4tmbr1-xxg.html) = $13.50
* this cable while expensive, it has right–angle connectors to minimize snagging the cable. Not necessary though. As I recall the enclosure comes with a split cable that should work, but will leave one end flopping around.

320GB 2.5" Hitachi Travelstar 7K500 7200RPM SATA 9.5mm Notebook Drive with 16MB Cache (HIT0A72333)
(http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Hitachi/0A72333/) = $59.99
*Other drives should work.

Acomdata USB 2.0 2.5-Inch SATA Hard Disk Enclosure HDEXXUP-240-BLK (Black)
(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00292BSFI)=$12.99


DIYRecorderColdshoeS.jpg

NOTES:
1. This nice enclosure is powered by the bus. It doesn't require a power cable.

2. I used JB weld to attach a friction nut (plastic side towards the enclosure) and washers to the bottom. That made the addition of a simple shoe mount work perfectly. I also painted the front and rear of the enclosure flat black because they were chrome.

3. I tried USB3, but it drew too much power and the drive wouldn't start. Stick with USB2.

4. When you format the drive prepare to see a HUGE number of minutes of recording time on the screen. Like over 1,000 minutes.

5. If you wanted to use an SSD drive for shock protection it would just slide into the case and connect.

6. The files are in ordinary XDCAM format as you normally get from the F3.

PS. It was not my original idea, that was by abereut. I'm just testing that it's a viable option for use on the F3 and added a few things.
 
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pretty cool that it recognizes the hard drive as media, and the sxs slot gives out bus power too. wonder why we haven't seen more of this. this with SSD could produce some fun stuff.
 
Just ordered the card from the trait site using the singapore post shipping, how long did it take you to receive the card? It said anywhere from a week to 20 days
 
I understand that a SxS card is basically the same as an Express card, right?
I wonder if that would work for a FS100 too.

Frank
 
The FS100 uses SDHC and its variants so I don't think it will work with that. Nothing to plug the adapter into.

But to answer your questions, both this adapter (to USB) and the express to SDHC adapters (which are USB internally) like the MxR, etc. plug right into the SxS slot.
 
Ah, I see - thanks. Somehow I thought the FS100 would take SxS media, but it´s just memory stick.
It´s my first Sony since the DigiBeta, so forgive me my ignorance, I´m not up to date with the Sony nomenclature.

Frank
 
Viddovation said:
Has anyone tested this with an SSD yet? It'd be great if we had an "approved" list of SSDs for this application...
Click to expand...

If someone takes the time to calculate the camera write speeds for overcranking (maybe 40Mbps) and compares those to the continuous write speeds of the SSD drives it should be pretty easy. However, an SSD of 320gigs might be $1,000, but I don't think I'm using the entire 320gigs of the hard drive.

That being said if someone wants to send me an SSD drive to test I will. :) Anyone have old ones from their notebook?
 
any ssd, and any 2.5" oldschool hard drive will support overcrank data rates. The rates are comparatively tiny, and you'd hit the speed limit of usb 2.0 far before the write speed of a hard drive.
 
Well, power consumption and hardware oddities could be an issue, seeing as these are not devices Sony is specifically supporting. There could be quirks. Or not.
 
The hard drive uses the most power on start up. Keeping the hard drive disk spinning is very little power. A 5,400 rpm sata hard drive is about ten times the data rate that you need. :)

If USB2 interfaces were the issue our MxR type adapters wouldn't be able to write overcrank files even with a fast SDHC card. They can so that isn't a bottle neck

An SSD drive should use even less power, but writes slower than a hard drive. I'd be more worried about SSD continuous write speeds versus burst speeds. Still, I don't think they will be any problem except possibly the very slowest SSD cards. Even those may be fine since I'm seeing write speeds of around 100Mbps in Sata2 SSD drives. Plenty of head room.

Also, I suspect that the Sata3 SSD uses more power (because of the higher throughput) than the Sata2 SSD drives, just like the USB3 cards use more power than the USB2 cards. I haven't tested it but it seems likely.
 
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Remember that the speeds you are seeing for drive write speeds are in megaBYTES per second - 100MB/s is common for slower 5400rpm drives. And I'm not sure where you're hearing that SSD's are slower, they are much, much faster. Sustained write speeds over 200 mega BYTES per second are the norm.

xdcam bitrates are measures in megaBITS per second, lets assume 87.5mb/s for 2.5x overcrank. That's only around 10MB/s. No problem for any hard drive made in the past 10 years - that's less than 1/10th the sustained write speed most 5400rpm drives are capable of and less than 1/20th what a common ssd is capable of.

Also, sata 2 vs sata 3 use the same power consumption, they're just different chipsets. Especially on SSD's, as there's no moving parts to spin up.
 
BTW I have a case similar to the one shown above. Got it a few years ago. If this case is made of solid extruded metal (presumably aluminum) and the drive slides in on metai rails extruded from the metal casing there is NO shock absorption built in for the HD. My drive had a very minor drop in a non-operational state (less than 4 inches) which almost toasted the drive. I was able to extract the material off with great difficulty but the HD was effectively garbage from that point on. I will never buy a case for a portable drive without some kind of shock absorption built into it again. Just a word of caution to those thinking about going with this particular material list.
 
There are anti shock enclosures but I've not tested them. I wouldn't want to post about something not tested. Then again I haven't dropped my notebook computer, my lenses or the myriad other things that will be damaged by a drop onto something hard. As I said in the first post a hard drive shouldn't be bumped.

Then again if you've mounted it on your camera, which is mounted on a tripod and its falling hard you have bigger things to worry about than this drive. If the whole thing is falling a 'shock proof' enclosure isn't going to save it and then an SSD is probably more worthwhile than a shock proof enclosure.
 
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