Ask Focus for a direct-to-disk controller

B

Barry_Green

Moderator
Hey all, if you're interested in a direct-to-disk controller for the HVX200, consider writing to Focus and asking them to produce it. If we let them know the amount of demand there will be for something like this, it could sway them to produce the product we need.

For the record, here's my take on it: the FireStore FS-4 is a great product, but a DVCPRO-HD-capable FS-4 is *not* necessarily what we want or need on the HVX. With the HVX, I (and many other shooters) want the ability to hand over a hard disk at the end of the shoot. Instead of delivering a box full of tapes to the producer, I want to hand them a fully pre-digitized hard disk.

In order to do so, it looks like we'll need some sort of controller product. Maybe something that plugs into the firewire port, or the USB2 port, or perhaps even into a P2 slot. It should be a product that has controllers and file systems that can take the output stream of the HVX and control an external, off-the-shelf hard disk and write the data to that hard disk.

The FS-4 is very nice, but an HD-capable FS-4 might cost $1500, and that's not something you can hand over to a producer at the end of the shoot. Whereas buying a $80 off-the-shelf USB2 hard disk, shooting onto it, and handing that over is eminently do-able -- that's way less than the cost of DVCPRO-HD tape!

So, if you want to see a similar type product developed, let your voice be heard. Write to "support@focusinfo.com" and tell them what you want to see. With enough votes, perhaps they'll design exactly the product we're looking for.
 
i love the idea of a product that can plug right into a P2 slot, and basicly just use a hard drive as a giant P2 card. and just let the camera do what it would do normaly with a P2 card...to a hard drive...

that would be righteous!
 
im thinking something like this...

p2thingy.jpg



something that just slides into the P2 slot, and then goes into a drive...something that tricks the cam into thinking there is a P2 card installed

Barry is similer to what you were thinking about?
 
That's exactly what I'm talking about, yes. And if the physical size of the connector makes it impractical to use off of the P2 card, maybe we can just get something that connects to the USB2 or Firewire port, has the processing electronics and file system electronics in it, and then connects out to a firewire or USB2 drive.
 
..i wonder what the power consupmtion requirements of the p2 card is as well, and if the port supplies enough juice to run an external HDD. .. but i love barrys idea of having an intermediate device on the firewire port that runs a FW ext HDD instead of firestore integrating the drive into the device.. they should save the cost, and let people buy their own FW drives to attach to the controller. that way you can hand it over, and also dont have to buy additional firestores to record longer. you just buy additional FW or usb2.0 drives.
 
Digital Mag...

Digital Mag...

Whadya think? I slacked and didn't put the cord from the P2 bay to the mag...

hvx_200_side_a_digimag.jpg
 
Maybe mounted underneath would be better. It would be difficult to carry around and would block view very much on right side of scene.

johnc
 
Having the device on top allows for the operator to still "parallax" view with his left eye past the mag, while his right eye is on the viewfinder. This method allows the 1st asst. to use the footage marked LCD and follow focus on the operator's left side as is standard.

Putting the mag at the rear or under interferes with the viewfinder or mounting respectively. I think there's a reason 100 years of cameras favored the top. With the exception of rear-mounted coaxial mags for Steadicam work, and horizontally-mounted rear mags for VistaVision processes, this has always been the case.

Viewfinders, parallax or reflex almost always were located camera left - favoring the operator's right eye.

e
 
Barry_Green said:
For the record, here's my take on it: the FireStore FS-4 is a great product, but a DVCPRO-HD-capable FS-4 is *not* necessarily what we want or need on the HVX. With the HVX, I (and many other shooters) want the ability to hand over a hard disk at the end of the shoot. Instead of delivering a box full of tapes to the producer, I want to hand them a fully pre-digitized hard disk.

In order to do so, it looks like we'll need some sort of controller product. Maybe something that plugs into the firewire port, or the USB2 port, or perhaps even into a P2 slot. It should be a product that has controllers and file systems that can take the output stream of the HVX and control an external, off-the-shelf hard disk and write the data to that hard disk.

The FS-4 is very nice, but an HD-capable FS-4 might cost $1500, and that's not something you can hand over to a producer at the end of the shoot. Whereas buying a $80 off-the-shelf USB2 hard disk, shooting onto it, and handing that over is eminently do-able -- that's way less than the cost of DVCPRO-HD tape!
Click to expand...

That would be a great product to have, but I think we're going to have a hard time convincing Focus to do it. After all, if they just make HD capable FS-4's they can probably sell several of them to each HVX owner at $1500 each (assuming we want several hours of HD footage). If they make a P2 HDD controller, they would only sell 1 of them to each HVX owner, for maybe $1000 max. It just doesn't make sense financially.

Now if we have an entrepreneur or another company who doesn't have an existing market to protect, that would be a different story. They can just come in and take over the entire market. That would get Focus to move. But I don't think that anything will happen until there's competition or threat of competition.

So for now, we may just have to get used to the idea of shooting to FS-4HD, and copying the data to a portable HDD.
 
Yes, but if Focus made the same profit margin on each device. I'd say they sell more of what Barry wants so in the end they'd make more money.
 
Like Barry Green said in the thread about direct writing to a hard drive, I think the big problem here is not technical exactly. It's that people are going to use cheap, slow drives, and then they will complain mightily when they lose footage. If I were a product manager at Panasonic or FireStore, this is what I would be afraid of.

One solution is for FireStore to sell certified hard drives that they know are fast enough to work. This would inevitably cost more than buying hard drives from CompUSA, but it could be cheap enough to still have the benefit of being able to hand the drive over to the producer at the end of the shoot.
 
There you go. You pay $100 bucks instead of $80.

Look at all the extra business they'll get. Maybe its time to buy stock.

Just have to have buy a few hard drives at a time so if a job comes up you don't have to pay for fast shipping.
 
And they can actually test these drives to make sure there's nothing wrong with them, I'll pay the extra 30-50$ to know the drive is ok and not find out while I'm shooting
 
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