CinePorter™ FAQ

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If the camera recognizes it as a one big P2 card, it should show the remaining minutes on screen, I guess... Also I think I see a small display on the side of it in those preliminary pictures :) For battery life or capacity also?
 
Spec-Comm said:
A: At this time our intent is to have the different HDD options available at the same time. Hopefully, we'll have the 160/320 available as well.
Click to expand...

You are probably talking of the recently announced Fujitsu MHV2160BT, a 4200 RPM, 160GB 2.5" Serial ATA (SATA) hard disk drive, aren't you?!

Bibo
 
Hey, I see we're now a Sticky! Thanks Jarred!


David,

There is a display on the side of the CinePorter™ that will show you the remaining capacity.

Bibo, Doc,

We are making special arrangements with a particular HD manufacturer for drives that will be best suited for this application. Others have asked this question as well. If it's really important to you guys, we'll make it available when it's nailed down.

Best Regards,

David Linetsky
President
Specialized Communications Corp.
20940 Twin Springs Drive
Smithsburg, MD 21783-1510 USA
800-359-1858
301-790-0103
Fax: 301-790-0173
davidl@spec-comm.com
www.spec-comm.com

************************************************************************
Now taking Pre-Orders on the Panasonic AG-HVX200 HD Camcorder.
Reserve today, and receive FREE Shipping and a FREE cleaning for your new camera.
Visit http://www.spec-comm.com/hvx200.php for details!
 
It doesn't really matter to me, it's all speculation until we get them and the cameras in our hot little hands.
 
I stopped by last week to visit Spec-Comm and place my HVX order. I hadn't realized that we're practically neighbors. In fact, the producer I'm working for has been having his equipment repaired there for years. Anyway, I had a great chat with Andrew. Really nice guy, very down-to-earth. I wasn't able to extract any more info on the Cineporter than what's available here, but was really impressed with how hard they're working to incorporate everyone's suggestions.
 
New CinePorter™ Features!

New CinePorter™ Features!

Hello Everyone,

We would like to sincerely thank all those that submitted suggestions and to let you know that we have just officially announced three new features. IEEE-1394b (FW800), Hot-Swappable Batteries and Detachable Interface cable, available in lengths up to 6 Ft.

Here is the link to the Press Release: http://www.spec-comm.com/Cineporter New Features.pdf

Best Regards,

David Linetsky
President
Specialized Communications Corp.
20940 Twin Springs Drive
Smithsburg, MD 21783-1510 USA
800-359-1858
301-790-0103
Fax: 301-790-0173
davidl@spec-comm.com
www.spec-comm.com

************************************************************************
Now taking Pre-Orders on the Panasonic AG-HVX200 HD Camcorder.
Reserve today, and receive FREE Shipping and a FREE cleaning for your new camera.
Visit http://www.spec-comm.com/hvx200.php for details!
 
Still concerned about offloading. How about this: can you add a USB port that supports MSC, so that a USB-On-The-Go drive could quaff the contents of the CinePorter? That would be a very nice, very valuable addition.

I'm thinking here of the situation of trying to hand off a copy of the footage to someone. If you just put a USB2 port on there that supports MSC (I think that's mass storage class), then any USB-On-The-Go drive could be used to copy the full contents of the CinePorter off. That way if you shot an hour of footage, you could give the client a $70 hard disk/enclosure combo with a complete copy of all the footage.
 
Hi Barry,

We do enumerate as a MSD on any OS via the USB and FW ports. OTG will work as far as seeing us, and we will be doing testing at the appropriate time in the development process to ensure compatibility. It is our wish to provide you with the functionality that will work best for you, thus we will better cover the market.
We are still working on other "offload" possibilities as well as the removable drive request.

You are also welcome to call me anytime if you want to discuss the technical details.

David Linetsky
President
Specialized Communications Corp.
20940 Twin Springs Drive
Smithsburg, MD 21783-1510 USA
800-359-1858
301-790-0103
Fax: 301-790-0173
davidl@spec-comm.com
www.spec-comm.com

************************************************************************
Now taking Pre-Orders on the Panasonic AG-HVX200 HD Camcorder.
Reserve today, and receive FREE Shipping and a FREE cleaning for your new camera.
Visit http://www.spec-comm.com/hvx200.php for details!
 
that removable drive request.. is gonna be a golden ticket if you guys can figure it out. Im impressed how many suggestions you are incorporating into this thing.. Im excited to see it when its available.
 
Superb! Fantastic! Thanks for listening to us, and obviously I'd be more than happy to beta-test for you when the product's ready!
 
Maybe I'm missing something but how is this much different then hot swappable HDs in a raid or server. Couldn't the cine porter be a dock that holds the drives and the drives be in a seperate enclosure that plugs in?
 
Thank you Jarred,

It seems that some think that we don't want to have removable drives for some reason. I think that many feel that since "it's just a hard drive" it shouldn't be that difficult to implement. The CinePorter™ has to meet so many requirements, such as size, weight, price point and, of course, all the functionality. Implementing a removable drive system actually hurts all of the above. Never-the-less, we have assigned one of the Engineers to work on this task.

Just to give you an idea, we have received thousands of suggestions and more are pouring in each day. Having removable drives does come up, but not that often. Not nearly as much as having a longer Interface cable, for example. I personally think, it would be a great feature, just so you know what my vote is on this.

David Linetsky
President
Specialized Communications Corp.
20940 Twin Springs Drive
Smithsburg, MD 21783-1510 USA
800-359-1858
301-790-0103
Fax: 301-790-0173
davidl@spec-comm.com
www.spec-comm.com

************************************************************************
Now taking Pre-Orders on the Panasonic AG-HVX200 HD Camcorder.
Reserve today, and receive FREE Shipping and a FREE cleaning for your new camera.
Visit http://www.spec-comm.com/hvx200.php for details!
 
no i think you read me wrong.. im saying if you incorporate everything above plus made it have hot swap drives, it would be incredible.

Technically, I dont think its gonna be that important if you have a firewire 800 port on there though, as offloading the drive's data onto an external raid array its gonna be pretty fast... probally fast enough for most people.
 
Jarred,

I was actually thinking of some other's posts when I was writing that. I appreciate your's and Barry's support.

David
 
Hi Gopher,

This answer may help,

http://www.dvxuser.com/V3/showpost.php?p=375557&postcount=76


David Linetsky
President
Specialized Communications Corp.
20940 Twin Springs Drive
Smithsburg, MD 21783-1510 USA
800-359-1858
301-790-0103
Fax: 301-790-0173
davidl@spec-comm.com
www.spec-comm.com

************************************************************************
Now taking Pre-Orders on the Panasonic AG-HVX200 HD Camcorder.
Reserve today, and receive FREE Shipping and a FREE cleaning for your new camera.
Visit http://www.spec-comm.com/hvx200.php for details!
 
I certainly didn't mean to infer that you guys didn't want to implement, but from what I remebered from some other posts was the fact of the hard drive carraiage accessibility being a major hurdle in a removable drive. So my suggestion here was simply isolate it in a cartridge of its own, so that the it simple would plug in. I'm not suggestion that it would take just any hard drive, in fact I would suspect it would be a proprietary HD for the reasons you state above.

This would give the ability to reduce costs for those who have to give the client something at the end of the shot, or if you need to send off daily to the editor. IT also would increase reliabilty, if the drivve goes bad just swap it out.

Sorry if my post infered anything to the contrary.

Gopher
 
Gopher,

My apologies. I wasn't thinking of your post either. It was something in another thread. This is what I wanted you to read without re-typing it. Andrew just showed me how to "quote" :)

Spec-Comm said:
You will be able to connect the CinePorter™ to a computer as you would assume. You see, for the unit to work it has to "appear" a certain way to the camera and a different way to the computer. we have to do different "translating" when you connect via the CardBus interface, the usb or the FW ports. Custom Drive formatting and file system are central to how this is possible. So, if you pull a drive out, at this time, you won't be able to read it with a computer. I hope I'm making sense.
Click to expand...

I'm still new to the whole "forum thing", so I apologize for any misinterpretations, which looks like it's easy to do.

I'm curious, how was everyone planning on delivering the P2 material to the client after the shoot, if not on a HDD.


David
 
Thats the million dollar question, thats why I think Jarred is saying the removable HDs are the golden egg. If I can pull out an HD and fed ex it to the editor I'm in big time. However right now the work flow at least in my mind looks something like,

Shoot P2 > download to P2 store or if available a laptop and HD > then ship the HD.

A removable HD just saved me a step and probably a manday on the set, multiply 350 x a 24 day shoot and thats @ 8400.00. I can justify buying a half a dozen swappable drives. Already the cine proter answers the limited capaity of the P2, but it would be hard to justify the initial investment of having enough cineporters on hand to swap out. If I have to download from the cineporter to another HD to ship then I haven't gained anything in the workflow only in storage amount.
 
Spec-Comm said:
I'm curious, how was everyone planning on delivering the P2 material to the client after the shoot, if not on a HDD.
Click to expand...

HDD is pretty much the only reasonable, practical way right now. That's why I keep nagging about hard disk interchangeability or, barring that, a quick & easy self-contained hard-disk copy system.

We just have to find a way to get the contents of the CinePorter to the client.

#1 most-desired way would be removable hard disks. Just let me pop out the notebook drive, put it in a $9 enclosure, and hand that to the client. It's instantaneous and edit-ready, and by far the most preferable solution. It solves two problems: 1) client skittishness about who owns the original footage, and 2) time -- it's instant. It's a direct metaphor for handing over a tape. A 60GB hard disk in an enclosure is about $60 right now. That's cheaper than DVCPRO-HD tape.

A distant second choice, but perhaps workable, would be for the CinePorter to have the ability to dub to an external hard disk like the camera can. A direct offload could be reasonably speedy, but 60gb of data will probably take 60 minutes to dub.

Depending on the integration with the HVX, this may actually be taken care of for us by the camera's operating system: perhaps the built-in dubbing mode will automatically do this?

The third option is the least preferable, but looks like you've already implemented it: let a USB On-The-Go drive quaff the contents of the CinePorter automatically. Implement an MSC-compliant USB2 "B" port on the CinePorter, and a USB On-The-Go drive should be able to control it and copy the contents over. That would mean that when the shoot is wrapped, you plug in the drive and press a button, and it'll automatically start copying the contents over and create a duplicate drive that you hand to the client.

But at a gig a minute, this'll take a while.

Which is why interchangeable hard disks is so highly important and would be such a better option.
 
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