For those (re)considering the FS100

tallrd

tallrd

Well-known member
Considering the Cineporter status, I'm finding many people contacting me (re?)considering the Firestore FS100.

Some users have been very happy with their FS100's, and others have been frustrated by the level of service and support they have been getting from Focus. In lieu of this, I spoke with the head technical contact at Focus Enhancements yesterday in order to discuss a better level of service *specifically to benefit this forum's members.* He is very knowledgeable, and was quick to help me with a couple questions I had on this unit.

Best of all, he was genuinely thankful to have been made aware of the opportunity to help this forum directly from a customer service standpoint (they haven't been actively present on this forum). Based on my experience in other forums, I find vendors who pro actively address questions (instead of reactively) are the ones which earn the best support from the members.

I was told that they would have a rep on this forum as soon as possible to begin to *pro actively* address questions and concerns which surround this and other Focus products. I think this will help ease concerns and afford members a more direct way to solve issues as they arrise directly with the vendor by way of this forum.
 
Hey that is great. Perhaps he can then tell the forum why their product corrupted all my footage after 50 minutes of record time.

This is NOT a good alternative to P2 unless the footage you are shooting can be re-shot when Firestore craps out.
 
I have both the 16GB card and a FS100....

Once I had a corrupted clip on my FS100 when changing frame rates in between shots. After that corruption, I always power down and reboot with the new frame rate already set.

I was shooting this morning on my p2, and I blew the campus security office breaker (I had about 5 lights plus camera/mic on AC power running) It went out in the middle of a take, while recording onto the P2. The clips on the card were fine. I have doubts about whether or not the FS would have held up in such a situation.
 
I purchased 2 80 gig CitiDisk's from ProCon prior to purchasing my FS100.


CitiDisk Problems:
1 arrives good, 1 arrives dead from factory.
- Gets replaced.
- I begin noticing little problems that aren't advertised or mentioned anywhere.
- Will not continuously record further than 4 minutes.
- Will shut off if you take a heavy step.
- apparently these hard drives are so finicky that if you shut them off the wrong way it can make the hard-disk unusable and fried.
- Consult the handbook for help with issues: realize that every single one of their sentences is a run on, hah. Not only that, a sentence will start and abruptly stop at the end of the page, they don't even finish their sentence, point or steps, on the next page - they merely stop half way through their steps because the page length ends.

- 6 hours into filming my major project that these discs were meant for - we realize that the first one has NO footage on it, all 4 hours worth of shooting are misteriously unfound. We check the second one; NO FOOTAGE. 6 hours of footage gone, because by fluke of god both of these units decided to crash at the exact same time on the exact same day during the same project. The becoming little 800 dollar, useless, bricks sitting in my office.

- I send them back to ProCon, get my money back and transfer over to the FS-100. Twice the price, twice as nice.

You can't beat a P2 card for HD media - it's like an HD Brick... But, FS100's are by far not the worst possible solution to consider.
 
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Gregg said:
Hey that is great. Perhaps he can then tell the forum why their product corrupted all my footage after 50 minutes of record time.

This is NOT a good alternative to P2 unless the footage you are shooting can be re-shot when Firestore craps out.
Click to expand...

I read a bunch of posts here and elsewhere from FS-100 users that have no issues.

I don't question that you have, but at least someone from Focus will be here to respond.

That's a welcomed improvement.
 
I can't speak for others on here, but I don't believe in attacking a vendor who wants to provide a better level of service. I know users have had issues with their FS100's here and there, and it's encouraging that they will soon better ensure those issues are minimized and/or addressed.
 
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I have no problems shooting to the HVX 200 and the HPX2000 with the FS 100.
Downloading to Edius Broadcast an FCP
lMue Ferguson
Pumpkin Creek Video
 
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