Archos AV500/AV700 -- Useful for P2 offloads?

Thanks Barry, good suggestions. Yes, I'll make sure to use the fastest drives. A couple minutes to dump a 4gig P2 card sounds very nice.

I'll use two identical firewire drives set up as I've mentioned, for redundancy. The drives and power supply will stuff into a pocket.

Down the road I'll look into a PC notebook if Serious Magic does an upgrade for DVCPRO.

Final question: Is there any danger of having your previous "dump" data over-written by the next P2 card's dump? Or is the HVX's file naming taking care of this?

Thanks!

Jim Arthurs
 
Every file is named uniquely and individually. I haven't figured out the exact pattern yet, but it works something like this:

0001HQ.MXF

In that scenario, the first four digits reference the clip # on the card, so with 35 clips on the card, the first one you shot would be named 0001XX.MXF, and the most recent one would be 0035XX.MXF. So there's a similar-naming thing in that every card will always have an 0001XX.MXF file on it, unless you delete that take! (understanding that "XX" does not refer to the actual letters "XX" but rather as a placeholder. Then for uniqueness, there's those last two letters. Those last two filename letters can be at least 36 different "digits", being 0-9 and A-Z, so that gives you 36x36 = about 1300 different unique identifying digits. So the odds of having the 1-in-1300 chance of having the same last two digits, compounded by the 1-in-10 (or 1-in-40?) chance of having the same first four, would seem pretty small.

Is it possible to happen? Yes, I'm sure it is. Maybe not with the same camera though -- maybe they have some sort of protection against the same camera assigning the same filename, but in a multicamera shoot maybe it's possible. But the odds are going to be extraordinarily against it happening.

Oh, and just so people know, I just verified that the HVX will show up as an external drive when connected via firewire. That operation is not guaranteed by Panasonic to work with a PC, instead they guarantee the USB port -- but the firewire port does work too.
 
The one who finds the best solution, preferably with a 250 GB drive, could offer it in the DVXuser.com shop. It should be possible to construct something with drive, casing and battery.
 
I think it's best to stick with 2.5" drives if the goal is dumping your P2 to disk in the field, and that means 100gig, with the price being best around 80gig. 3.5" drives might be too fragile for the task. 2.5" drives are engineered to take some abuse.

This should be very easy to do, just buy a drive already in an external enclosure, make sure it takes external power, then either buy the battery pack I mentioned or rig up your own. Of course if someone offered a pre-configured unit, that might be a market for them. DIY on this will be easy, though.

I don't understand what happened to the powered 2.5" firewire drive enclosures. They simply vanished from the market in the last month or so.

Regards,

Jim Arthurs
 
The speculation about the Archos using USB1 may be right. There are two different USB ports on it, a mini-A and a mini-B. Everything about the mini-B calls it "USB2 High Speed", but on the mini-A it refers to it as "USB Host Port", never mentioning 2.0 compatibility. Now, they never mention it being NOT USB2, but they consistently refer to the "B" port as 2.0, so it may stand to reason that the host port is, indeed, 1.1. Too bad, as it's *so close* to being such a useful device...
 
and reformatting an older iPod with Firewire is out of the question?
battery power 20/40/60 gig
(Still I hope Apple lets the new Video iPod work for streaming the HVX)

What about your need to reformat the cards after you dump? then you still need to switch modes on the camera and erase the P2 card...after the minutes in transfer
correct?

now plugging the HVX into a camera will alllow you to erase the cards after transfer...
I still think a cheap/small laptop looks like the better/cheaper solution...

but maybe that's just because I am hoping to use one as a monitor
 
The video ipod won't work under any circumstances. It's a USB device, the HVX controls firewire devices. If Apple left a firewire port on it then you'd have a chance, but because they took it off, there is no chance.

Unless the video Ipod can act as a host USB controller...

Yes, the cards need to be reformatted, which is about a six-second procedure.

The laptop is the far superior solution in almost all ways, yes.
 
Yes Barry,
The iPod wont really work (old ones will, but are slow and there are better solutions)
What I want is a new small lightweight Intel iBook to use as monitor/capture/storage device
I wish Apple had a Tablet...
and it was 5 inches and I could mount it to the top of the HVX...


Where did I hear rumours about a new firestore that had a monitor?
 
If getting an iBook, don't underestimate how much you'll want a PCMCIA slot. You may want to skip straight to the smallest PowerBook that has a PCMCIA slot. For monitoring though, a PC running the (hopefully forthcoming) Serious Magic HD Rack will beat the stuffing out of an iBook...

I have no idea about any firestore with a monitor, never heard that.

For those wanting to offload P2 cards, I'll start a new thread for that. Basically the Archos and the iPod are *not* what you'd want to use, not at all...
 
yes and PC's are smaller too...
...It's just that I am already Mac and will be editing these on someones G5's


If I capture to a small PC (like a tablet or something with HD magic HD rack)
it will be difficult getting the media to a Mac then...
External Hard drives are usually formatted to one or the other...correct?

I think all the iPod desire is spurred by the Apple fetishism that many of us suffer from
Also given how well the HVX and Apple are working together...

Maybe I will see about moving the screen of a 12'' PB to one side of a steadycam sled and the body of a 12" PB to the other...

I am getting delerious
 
Benton said:
yes and PC's are smaller too...
...It's just that I am already Mac and will be editing these on someones G5's
Click to expand...
Should be no problem at all either way.


If I capture to a small PC (like a tablet or something with HD magic HD rack)
it will be difficult getting the media to a Mac then...
External Hard drives are usually formatted to one or the other...correct?
Click to expand...
Nope. Just format the drive as FAT-32, and the Mac can read it natively, easily. We shot all that footage and transferred to a PC laptop, then the editor cut it on a Mac. No problem at all. And IINM, Serious Magic's DV Rack lets you capture the file in either AVI or Quicktime format, I would certainly expect HD Rack to do the same. So no, you should have no problem at all mixing platforms, using the PC to capture and the Mac to edit, as long as you stick to FAT32 hard disk formatting.
 
Thanks Barry,
That's great to Know. I have been coveting the small Sony Viao's for awhile
I nevertheless await MSSF in January:

"The first rumor of an upcoming Intel-based iBook suggested a 13" widescreen model and an anticipated ship date of April-May 2006.
In mid November, ThinkSecret claimed that Intel iBooks would be unveiled at Macworld, citing highly reliable sources. It also suggested a price drop of as much as $200 USD was possible.
In early December, ThinkSecret suggested that a 13.3" widescreen iBook will be released, replacing the current 14" model. This would have a maximum resolution of 1280x720, compared to 1024x768 on the current models.
Less than a week later, a Taipei Times report of unknown reliability suggested that Apple would release light-weight notebooks with a stylish design, with a 12" model at 1.5 kg (3.3 lbs) and a 14" model at under 2 kg (4.4 lbs).
Most recently, ThinkSecret claimed that Apple will release new iBooks at Macworld, using a dual-core low-voltage 1.5 GHz Yonah processor."
 
Yesterday I bought an ASUS A6 notebook with 15.4" 16x9 display, 1394, 4 USB 2.0, 802.11, 1.73 GHz processor (just a bit slower than my 3.0 GHz desktop editor!), DVD burner, blah, blah, blah. Cost just $1450, though I saw that you can get it for around $1200 in the US.

It's not exactly small (it's large, but thin), but it'll make a great capture and monitoring machine.

I'll be doing some tests later to see how well it captures from Firewire to a USB drive.

Native screen resolution is 1280x800, so it's good for 720P.
 
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