External recorders for the AF100 any info please :)

EndCredits

EndCredits

Well-known member
Hi Guys,

Im starting a project aimed for tv distribution. So we are looking at getting some sort of external recorder just so we hit the minimum requirements asked for by some stations.

I looked at the BM Hyperdeck Shuttle 2 and it looks good, but... Bit fiddly, bigish, cant tell if its full (I hear)
Any one know if it rolls when the camera rolls?
Any one use it have some feed back on it??

The Convergent Design Nano. Good, but... Pricey :(
Still more expensive than it should be even second hand in my opinion. But its does do every thing it say on the tin, and well.

Atomos samurai. Good, but.. Big. don't really need another screen. Again a bit fidly.

Any one want to chime in with recomendations and or experience/feedback on the current crop of external recorders???

Thanks for the help
 
I have used the Samurai many times with no problems but don't expect to use that screen for anything other than menus or possibly framing.
 
Atomos samurai. Good, but.. Big. don't really need another screen. Again a bit fidly.
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Nothing fiddly about the Samurai at all. It s a dream to use.

"Big" ! ...how small a device are you considering is optimum for your purpose?
 
I have the BMD hypershuttle. It's true you don't know how full it is, but it does sense when you are recording, so if you know what your capacity should be, and you have an SD card that gives you some similar amount of storage, you can monitor your SD capacity and when it's close to full, swap it and the SSD drive out. The BMDs are absolutely the most opaque in terms of UI, but they do what they are supposed to do, which for me means they record natively to ProRes, which skips the nightmare of FCP trying to deal with AVCHD footage. I don't know why, but FCP handles AVCHD like a three year old eating broccoli. A keep sending crash reports in to Apple, and they keep doing nothing, ever, to respond.
 
Shooter said:
"Big" ! ...how small a device are you considering is optimum for your purpose?
Click to expand...

:)
Id like it to magically be so small you dont know its there :)
Thats one of the big attractions of the Nano, the ability to Velcro it to the side n forget. I used a Samurai on a few commercials last year and thought it was good. Agree with many of the comments about the screen but liked it overall. Just consious about how small we want to be on this coming project. Low visibility will be a big benefit so if I can keep my rig small all the better.
 
Also Got my hands on a pix 240 today and the hyperdeck shuttle 2. Man both of them were bigger than I thought they were in the pics. The Shuttle was much lager in person than I thought. And the Pix 240 was very heavy.
 
EndCredits,
I am happy with the nanoFlash. It's built like a tank, and is so versatile. You can choose from a wide variety of Mbps rates. It can record MOV files (good if you edit on a Mac) or MXF files (useful on Windows 7 NLE's, like Sony Vegas Pro), or MPG files (sorry, don't know anything about MPG). It has both SDI and HDMI inputs and outputs. I've been inputing to SDI and using HDMI to play back on a Marshall monitor. I first tried an IndiPRO monitor, but it needs a 30fps signal. I record at 24fps. The nanoFlash does not insert 3:2 pulldown frames, so I had to switch to the Marshall, which understands a 24fps signal.

-- Ken
 
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Dear Friends,

The nanoFlash's MPG mode is a special mode that creates a pre-rendered DVD file (in SD) or a pre-rendered Blu-ray file in HD.

There is at least one DVD Burning software program that will recognize these files and then immediately burn it to the DVD or Blu-ray.

This saves a great deal of time if one needs an almost immediate DVD or Blu-ray disk.

Respectfully,


Dan Keaton
Convergent Design
 
I have a BMD. It's OK. Doesn't do pulldown, so you have to take care of that yourself. It also stops/starts in certain recording modes only with the AF100, and I don't recall off the top of my head which ones. Probably has to do with the SDI protocol. The connectors they use on the BMD side are micro SDI, and they don't really tell you which ones you need to buy, so you have to scrounge around. They aren't readily available. You also must format the drive as a Mac drive, which blows, because I cannot stand Apple and don't own a Mac. I had to buy MacDrive in order to use the BMD and plug it into an SSD dock and read the files with Windows. They also do not include the mounting plate, which is a total ripoff. Who the hell is going to use it unmounted? Nobody. They also have the controls totally backwards. The controls should be on the left side, which is the same side every single freaking video camera has the majority of its controls, but they decided to put their controls on the right side for some inexplicable reason.

Other than that, it works as expected and feels pretty solid. I have never had any issues with it. I suppose it goes without saying that the piece of mind you get knowing the footage you're recording is being dumped to two locations is very, very nice. Even if either the SSD or the SD card bomb out, you have a copy of your footage.
 
If you want small, the Nano (especially with the westside av bracket) is the way to go. It's totally unobtrusive, you don't even really have to know you're using it because it does roll with the camera, and if you get the Swit battery with the power port on it, you can power the Nano from the camera's battery.

The drawback to the Nano (as vs today's newer recorders) is that it's strictly 8-bit, but -- if using it with an AF100 (or FS100 or FS700 or Canon or any other of the multitude of 8-bit cameras) it's no drawback at all. It's only a drawback for when you move on to a camera with a 10-bit output someday in the future.
 
AdamLPhotography said:
I have a BMD. It's OK. Doesn't do pulldown, so you have to take care of that yourself. It also stops/starts in certain recording modes only with the AF100, and I don't recall off the top of my head which ones. Probably has to do with the SDI protocol. The connectors they use on the BMD side are micro SDI, and they don't really tell you which ones you need to buy, so you have to scrounge around. They aren't readily available. You also must format the drive as a Mac drive, which blows, because I cannot stand Apple and don't own a Mac. I had to buy MacDrive in order to use the BMD and plug it into an SSD dock and read the files with Windows. They also do not include the mounting plate, which is a total ripoff. Who the hell is going to use it unmounted? Nobody. They also have the controls totally backwards. The controls should be on the left side, which is the same side every single freaking video camera has the majority of its controls, but they decided to put their controls on the right side for some inexplicable reason.

Other than that, it works as expected and feels pretty solid. I have never had any issues with it. I suppose it goes without saying that the piece of mind you get knowing the footage you're recording is being dumped to two locations is very, very nice. Even if either the SSD or the SD card bomb out, you have a copy of your footage.
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Aee you using the Hyperdeck Shuttle 2? If you are then I'm sorry but part of your statement above us inaccurate. Have you updated the Shuttle to the latest firmware? I ask this as it works fine in windows with SSDs formatted to Ex-Fat. I'm an Apple guy but the DIT station on a recent short wasn't, I formatted the SSDs to EX-Fat the night before and they worked fine on the Windows 7 station. Am I missing something?

I'm with you on the mounting plate but a rip off? I'd say that's a little harsh on a £225 recorder. The recorder is so cheap I don't really mind the extra cost, on the other hand if it was not being mounted to the camera, say in a rack configuration then I guess not having to pay for the plate helps those customers? But yeah, included or just plain built in would be a nice option.

Never had a problem buying the micro SDI to SDI cable, the official one is a high £60ish in the UK (and is a ripnoff) but an alternative is easy to find at around £20ish.

With the plate mounting the Shuttle on rods at the back of the camera the controls are fine and face me but does mean any battery you want to put on the plate sits between the camera and the deck, instead of hanging off at the end.

I don't complain much about the Hyperdeck and for the little improvement it makes to the image I'm glad I didn't pay the price of some of the other recorders out there, worth thinking about endcredits if you're not using this device on every job.
 
The Blackmagic is a steal for the money. I recently used it on a live streaming shoot to convert the hdmi on a hmc 150 to sdi. Very handy.
 
Barry_Green said:
If you want small, the Nano (especially with the westside av bracket) is the way to go. It's totally unobtrusive, you don't even really have to know you're using it because it does roll with the camera, and if you get the Swit battery with the power port on it, you can power the Nano from the camera's battery.

The drawback to the Nano (as vs today's newer recorders) is that it's strictly 8-bit, but -- if using it with an AF100 (or FS100 or FS700 or Canon or any other of the multitude of 8-bit cameras) it's no drawback at all. It's only a drawback for when you move on to a camera with a 10-bit output someday in the future.
Click to expand...

My biggest issue with external recorders on the AF100 (besides seeing very little difference between internal codec and say for example the ProRes 422 HQ from a samurai) is that you can't simultaneously use an EVF (eg, HDMI zacuto EVF). This is because you can't send a 24psf signal to an SDI recorder and use an HDMI EVF at the same time. And even if you use an SDI evf (or alternately use both HDMI recorder and EVF) you can't tell if you're recording by looking at the evf anymore because you have to turn off the on screen display to use the recorder. My confidence level has dropped significantly. Has anybody else run into this issue?
 
joshdstanton said:
My biggest issue with external recorders on the AF100 (besides seeing very little difference between internal codec and say for example the ProRes 422 HQ from a samurai) is that you can't simultaneously use an EVF (eg, HDMI zacuto EVF). This is because you can't send a 24psf signal to an SDI recorder and use an HDMI EVF at the same time. And even if you use an SDI evf (or alternately use both HDMI recorder and EVF) you can't tell if you're recording by looking at the evf anymore because you have to turn off the on screen display to use the recorder. My confidence level has dropped significantly. Has anybody else run into this issue?
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I haven't found it to be an issue on the Samurai as it will record 23.976fps via a 3:2 removal if you set it for such, so, therefore, I don't see the need to set the camera to PSF.
 
John B. said:
I haven't found it to be an issue on the Samurai as it will record 23.976fps via a 3:2 removal if you set it for such, so, therefore, I don't see the need to set the camera to PSF.
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Ok, cool, I'll have to mess with my settings. Still a bummer about not seeing a rec icon in the evf. It totally kills my confidence level when shooting doc style.
 
The recorder can't send a "record" signal back to the camera. But you can basically accomplish the same thing by just keeping an SD card in the camera too. That way you get backup recording, and if the onboard media is recording then the signal will have been sent to the external recorder too, and so the "REC" signal you get should be relatively accurate. And in any case, you'll definitely know you're recording to the onboard, so it's not like you'll miss a shot.
 
joshdstanton said:
Ok, cool, I'll have to mess with my settings. Still a bummer about not seeing a rec icon in the evf. It totally kills my confidence level when shooting doc style.
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Just a couple things, with the Shuttle you have both HDMI and SDI pass through and recording so if you want to record 24psf while using a Zacuto EVF or smallHD you can, you'll also monitor the actual 24psf output. When you hit record the Shuttle begins recording and a thumbnail size recording button glows red, really obvious and confidence expiring.

I haven't tried it but I'm sure you need an SD card in the camera for when you press record in order not to get the "NO SD CARD" error message? As I said, I've not recorded without the backup card in the camera but its worth looking into maybe?
 
Barry_Green said:
The recorder can't send a "record" signal back to the camera. But you can basically accomplish the same thing by just keeping an SD card in the camera too. That way you get backup recording, and if the onboard media is recording then the signal will have been sent to the external recorder too, and so the "REC" signal you get should be relatively accurate. And in any case, you'll definitely know you're recording to the onboard, so it's not like you'll miss a shot.
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Hi Barry. Yes, I always record internally and externally simultaneously, for the sake of backup. What i'm not understanding is how to get the little rec icon to show up in the hdmi evf, because you have to turn off the on screen display for the sake of the external recorder. Or am I missing something here? From what I understand, any on screen display will be recorded by the sdi recorder. Or is there a way around that?

Thanks for your help!
 
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