Cheapest way into HD

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Panamaniac
First, the disclaimer: I haven't seen a post about this, however I have seen mentions and numbers thrown around about it in posts about other subjects. The reason for this post is to start a thread about this technology in particular, with hope to find people that may have additional info to share.

With the release of FS-4 and FS-4 Pro the initial investment needed to get into the HD pool dropped at least an additional ~$600.- That's if you were planning on only getting one 8G P2 card, which would a similar alternative if you carry to the set a laptop with an 80G HDD or an external HDD. Also, there is the benefit of continuously recording the 80Gs on the FS-4 Pro or a still nice 40G for even cheaper. On top of that FOCUS is offering "for a limited time" the HD compatibility software upgrade for under $100.- which makes the FS-4 Pro with HD capabilities come out to a total of $????.-
Just to throw some numbers out, a MAXIMUM of $1,400.- and a "cross-my-fingers-and-toes-but-it-still-won't-happen" (yet) MINIMUM of $1000.-

I just want to try to get a few things straight in my understanding of things, and I know there is a couple dozen guys here that are quite capable of setting me straight:

>> This Firestore device is a HDD with a 10 second solid-state shock safe, how safe is it really? Does anyone know what the warranty is like? P2 cards have a clear advantage in this aspect, correct?

>> 80G gets you... ~more than 3hs in 1080p at 24p... not exact, but it is around there, right? It sounds great when you thing of shooting the #&%#@ out of the morning, and by the end of lunch you have the whole thing offloaded and ready to be filled up again!!! :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

>> Straight up question: Will we be able to view shots from the FS-4 on the camera?

>> You will be able to cover some continuous recording type of events like interviews, and concerts (unless you are shooting 1080 30p or 60i, right?, I forgot how long that is with the 100Mbps)

>> You might be able to film games and offload during halftime. Or will the transfer take too long?

>> You can have an editor give you a preliminary cut of what you shot that morning before the sun sets! However, having two P2 cards has a clear advantage on this aspect since the editor-on-set could have pretty much everything as it is shot. Just like in big productions :beer: , correct?

>> I don't know of any, but it would seem only logic that devices with higher HDD are in the works, or is it too soon for it?

>> This device is compatible with pretty much all editing software out there ( :thumbsup: including FCP 5 :thumbsup: ) and all cameras with a firewire out there which includes the DVX, the Z1 and the soon to revolutionize :evil: HVX :evil: .
 
Sorry to rain on the parade, but: the FS-4 and FS-4 Pro are not compatible with the HVX's HD recording system. They can only record HDV, and even then only after the $299 software upgrade.

If you want to record high-def from the HVX onto a hard disk, you can capture on your computer, using FCP-HD or Avid Express HD (or HD Rack when they update it for DVCPRO-HD.) Or, FireStore is supposed to introduce a new, DVCPRO-HD-compatible drive for use specifically with the HVX. But the FS-4 is not the one you want.

80gb would get you about 1.5 hours of 1080/24p, or about 3.5 hours of 720/24p.
 
My goodness... talk about feeling crushed!!!

Yes, now I remember, 3.5 hs on 720p...

After a little while and a few drinks to numb the pain I can say that at least there IS one like it on the works... any educated guesses on how much it might end up costing or when they might come out?

Ok, I'm gonna go cry again... lol
 
There will definitely be products like what you want, yes. Focus is working on something, and the Serious Magic people have expressed great interest in adapting DV Rack to work with DVCPRO-HD. Those are two companies that have spoken publicly; we don't know how many there may be out there working "behind the scenes"... CitiDisk has updated their drive to support DVCPRO50, so perhaps they'll have an HD version before long as well. And there may be more.

There's still five months or so before the camera comes out; plenty of time for manufacturers to develop and release products.
 
It is great to hear that. You and a few other people here really amaze me when you come forth with such detailed info on what companies are doing and also on technical aspects. Did you learn all about all these company's intentions and such at NAB or do you keep tabs on everyone? Getting waaaaay off subject here, sorry...

So it would seem that products like this wouldn't be too far fetched or hard at all to design and produce. An exelent hard drive with an interface, very little code to be written really... There should definetly be something out there by the time the HVX is out, or very shortly after.

I wonder how big these could get in terms of capacity and what the prices will be within this year ...

Thank you once again for the updated info on yet another subject!
 
I just talk (or try to talk) to the people at the various companies. Serious Magic has their forum and their phone numbers posted; reps from FocusInfo (FireStore manufacturer) visit DVInfo, so I listen to what they say, ask questions, etc. They visit trade shows, so if I'm at those shows I ask 'em in person, otherwise some well-phrased e-mails can go a long way. Sometimes they can't talk about what they're developing, sometimes they can. Frequently I'll be a beta-tester for products, so by the time the product is released I might know a little more than the average user simply because I've been using it for a while by that point...

As far as how big they'll get... depends on the technology employed. If they use notebook drives, it's pretty tough to get a tiny notebook drive that can sustain DVCPRO-HD data rates. There are some 100-gb drives now that spin at 7200rpm.

If they use 3.5" hard disks, those can easily support the data rates, but then they have other issues -- they draw a lot more power, they're way bigger, they're nowhere near as rugged as notebook drives, etc... so it's not so easy as it may sound. CitiDisk and Shining and QuickStream have tried to put out disk recorders for a while, and I don't know if they've ever yet solved their (sometimes egregious) reliability problems. FireStores seem pretty reliable though. And so does the nNovia QuickCapture.

So there are good companies out there, hard at work. Wherever there's a market opportunity, someone will rise to fill it.
 
A lot of work, but at the same time a very rewarding undertaking. I'm just glad that you share the info with us. I hope running this forum helps you as much as you put into it.

80G laptop HDDs are preety cheap, the batteries needed for them to run constantly for three hours and a half are also cheap, the additional standby needed is easy to cover since they interface wouldn't use much energy when dormant. The developing of the interface itself can't be that expensive. It should be pretty simple stuff, right? There are allready two companies with products and there should be at least one or two more that will be able to develop such devices easily enough to be interested. There are a couple tenths of thousands of prosumer cameras with Firewire outputs out there allready, and pretty much every single one will from now on. There is a nice little market out there for a product that should easily to develop by many...
I hope and believe the hardware will go down a bit to the barely under $1000.- mark for the 80G devices. Hopefully as soon as the end of the year... Also, the "software upgrade", in mi opinion, is a total rip-off. I believe and hope that it should be no more than the promotional $100.- price that FOCUS is selling it for right now. I actually think if should be much less than that, around $30.- hopefully. That, however, might be way of. It just doesn't seem like it would be that complicated of a program to write.

Do you think all of this is far fetched?
 
As a former programmer, I can tell you that I wouldn't want anything to do with writing the software that controls a hard drive that someone's using to store their footage on! That seems like a liability nightmare just waiting to happen. You'd have to make sure that everything was so absolutely bulletproof and rock-solid (well, I guess some of the drive manufacturers weren't so worried about that, but no naming names!)

You're talking about a device that has to run AV/C protocol to capture the stream, and buffer it, while simultaneously employing some sort of 32-bit Disk Operating System to create file structures on an SBP2 protocol external device, and manage those files. And, ideally, it would also have to have the ability to parse and strip down an incoming DVCPRO-HD data stream to discard redundant frames. And it'd have to support playback, deleting, file locking, etc.

And it would have to operate at speeds of 2.5x as fast as any existing hard disk recorder.

Plus, ideally, it would have to be designed to take hot-swappable (or at least interchangeable) hard disks, unformatted, of various capacities, and be able to power them and interface with them such that it knows when they're dropping frames and can overcome that lag. And have to be able to give feedback to the user about that. And it'd have to have the electronics designed to support powering the drive, plus driving its own LCD feedback system, and you'd have to engineer a battery and power supply to go with it that's adequate to power the various types of drives people are likely to put in it. And it should have diagnostics in it to verify whether a drive is actually fast enough to be used. And theoretically it'd have to support multiple operating systems (i.e., MacOs, WinXP, and Linux). Or, just Fat32, but then it'd have to incorporate file-splitting and file-combining technologies for when file sizes cross the 2gb boundary.

In short, not free & easy. Not overly complex for today's level of technology, but so much more complex than you'd think at first glance. There's probably a reason that there are only three companies in the world making direct-to-disk recorders: Focus (firestore), nNovia (quickcapture, laird capdiv, etc) and Shining (citidisk, ads pyro, mce quickstream). And one of those manufacturers' products has a lousy reputation for reliability, on top of it.

I wish 'em the best of luck, but I doubt this is going to be an arena like homemade micro35 adapters spring up. I think there's going to need to be some serious R&D behind it if there's to be a reliable, serious effort made. I've contacted the two good companies to ask them to make the product we need -- hopefully it'll be forthcoming.

Until then, there's HD Rack -- not as portable, but way more flexible than any all-in-one disk capture solution!
 
> That seems like a liability nightmare just waiting to happen.
Thats what the small print is for in the conditions of usage!

Indy.....
 
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