Cheap recording directly onto Hard drive on the field?

Baluardo

Baluardo

Well-known member
Hi,

i made a search on what the market offers in order to be able to attach an hard disk based device directly to the DVout of my cam, in order to acquire on the field a DV stream (without the tedious process of acquisition in front of PC).

Well, all i found is very expensive and too good for what i need: they feature editing capabilities, and stuff like that. around 1000$ or more.

Ideally i'm expecting to find a hard disk case, with firewire input, and enough hardware to acquire a dv firewire stream in input (and a record/stop button). Ideally battery driven. Maybe 100/150$ worth of electronics (plus the cost of the HD i would choose and place inside)??

Does something like this exist?

Thanks all,
Andrea
 
Nope.

All there are is the nNovia Quickcapture and the Firestore FS-4, at around $800 each. Nothing else works.

The Firestore FS-3 allows for swappable hard disks, but I believe it's more like $1500-$2000.
 
Too bad. i wonder if these costs are actually justified by what's inside... or it's just that the market is still too small..
Maybe some chinese brand will come out and save us :))

Andrea
 
There's a chinese brand out already. See my comment about "not working"...

You gotta keep in mind, it's not about the technology, this is your FOOTAGE you're talking about. It's got to work. It's got to work 100% reliably, all the time, every time. Yes there are cheaper drives (CitiDisk, ADS Pyro, Quickstream) but they don't work reliably. To me that's worse than not having it at all.
 
Barry,
I absolutely agree: footage is the final reason for which I got my camera, for which I'm investing money, and is the reason for the existence of the forum itself. Footage comes before everything else.
But let's be real, even tape is not 100% reliable. dropouts can ruin a perfect take. Obviously taking good care of our tool we can minimize the risk, but there's always a slight chance.
I am sure that the risk of getting unusable footage with the cheap chinese tools is way higher than getting bad footage on tape with a well maintained camera, but my idea was to use both tape and hard drive in a redundant configuration.
Maybe for poor people like me :) a small investment in a cheap and not 100% reliable chinese brand can still result useful, even if not reliable. i will look them up!

Anyway, thanks a lot for suggestions!
:)Andrea
 
Hey, don't get me wrong, I think tape is FAR from 100% reliable. I hate the stuff. I hate dropouts. I can't stand rewinding/fast-forwarding/hunting to find a take, and then running the risk of not fast-forwarding to the end properly, and having to end-search or else getting a "timecode break", etc.

I am so in favor of the complete eradication of tape, you wouldn't even find it funny.

But I have no tolerance for tools that just plain don't work. That make you think they're working and in fact they're not. I haven't met anyone with one of those who's been in the least bit pleased by it. The two times I've seen 'em demonstrated, they didn't work. If you are already as bald as your avatar indicates (i.e., no hair left to pull out in frustration) then by all means, feel free to look into the CitiDisk or comparable products (of course, you'll have to disregard most every user report on the web about how unreliable they are, etc).

If you want reliability, a product that actually works, then you're looking at the nNovia QuickCapture or the Firestore. It'd be great if there were more options, but there aren't.

I think tape is hideous. I can't wait for it to be finally obsoleted and replaced with a disk or solid-state solution. But I can't fathom how someone could be happy using something crappy and unreliable, such as any disk-recording system below the nNovia QuickCapture or FireStore FS-4. Compared to trying to use a QuickStream or CitiDisk, I'd rather use tape.

And that's saying something! :)
 
If you are already as bald as your avatar indicates (i.e., no hair left to pull out in frustration) then by all means, feel free to look into the CitiDisk or comparable products
Click to expand...
:)I think I got your point. They suck.
Guess we poor people will have to wait for a better solution. At the moment i can find about 1250 better options to spend 800-1500$ (just counting the video-related i mean) :)

Again, thanks for the advice!
Andrea
 
Baluardo

I think you will be spending around dollar 1000 in any case, as you have to get your camera heads replaced after 1000 or 1200 hours usage.

so in that sense spending another 750 dollars at this stage is not at all unwise. I am sure u will not repent...at least I did not after getting my FS4 recently.
 
You can get some good deals on older FireStore FS-1s.... they're bigger than the FS-4, and require an external HD (they sell a belt-pack kit)...
 
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