anybody working with the firestore fs4 ?

I have been using it now for over 4 months.... totally satisfied..... No regrets....no technical roadblocks... no surprises....very efficient workflow.... I have a non-pro 40 GB one, and it can store 3 hours of DV footage...just enough for me.

Hope it helps
 
Aejaz said:
I have been using it now for over 4 months.... totally satisfied..... No regrets....no technical roadblocks... no surprises....very efficient workflow.... I have a non-pro 40 GB one, and it can store 3 hours of DV footage...just enough for me.

Hope it helps
Click to expand...

you re in a pal country, right? is the firestore working in 25p too?
 
24p ntsc

24p ntsc

I heard about some people having problems recording 23.976 fps , anybody
have some bad experiences with that ?
 
I can't say I've used ours very much, but I actually used it yesterday. No problems recording. I used it with ext. recording only, and it worked fine even when triggered from the cameras rec button. The only thing that took me awhile to figure out was that you have to put it in some kind of "hard disk mode" to be able to transfer the files to your pc. Once I figured that out, no problems there either. I guess you could read the manual. ;)
 
Essentially they are the same model to my mind. The NTSC version has the Quicktime and AVI2 formats, whle PAL does not have those. Except that there may not be another major difference. However, some site mentioned of a possible voltage diff. Cant confirm that though.
 
I bought one but had to return it for timecode discrepencies.
It recorded fine and I would have kept it but my use was to become tapeless on my DVX100a. My plan was to shoot everything using the FireStore and keep the tapes just as backups but unfortunately using the DVX plus Final Cut Pro 4.5 left me with timecodes between 50 and 52 frames off from the tapes timecode making the unit useless to me.
 
wim said:
I thinking about buying one.
How are the experiences ?
Click to expand...

I have used the non-pro FS-4 NTSC extensiely and it works very well. The 24p and 24pa AVI2 modes are problematic and it appears that it does not handle pulldown properly. I edit with PPro 1.5 and just upgraded to 2.0 but have yet to try FS-4 footage with the 2.0 PPro upgrade.

From the forums I visit the same problem seems to exist when using QT24 and FCP sofatware.

I contacted Focus Enhancements about this and the aske for my phoe # to speak with me about my experiences and now almost two months and no additional responsse fromm them.

One word of advice. The unit plugs into the Firewire port of any acceptable camera (i have 100a and 100b) and I recommend you becarful not to put unusual strain on the port by the cable pulling at odd angles. This true with any attachement not just FS-4.

The battery life is less than advertised and If you use it extensivey you should get a second battery as the unit is used to charge the battery and is unavailable for use when charging. Also the base model comes only with a belt clip and you will pay extra for the camera hot shoe adapter. I use the belt clip and have 1/2 in canvas keychain holder that I hang from my neck and clip the FS-4 to so it hangs about mid-chest and lets me see the FS-4 LCS and buttons. This leaves plenty of slack for the Firewire cable between the FS-4 and the camera.

Hope this helps.

Stephen Cannon
 
I would second scannon's point about careful use of the firewire port. In fact I have found that a 1 meter firewire cable is more 'safe' to use in his siutaion. This way there is no extra wire hanging around, therefore minimising the chances of being accidentally pulled on either unplugging during operation or damaging the port.
 
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