View Full Version : Solid State solution to record 4 feeds simultaneously?


Mathieu Ghekiere
October 20th, 2012, 04:13 PM
Hello,

we are looking at some solutions that could record for instance, 4 HDSDI feeds on SSD storage for at least a couple of hours (or SSD's that you can hot swap) in a pretty mobile space?

I've heard the Convergent Design is bringing out a Gemini RAW which has 4 inputs, but it only records Avid's codec or Uncompressed. We are looking at XDCAM or a flavor of Prores.

We are now using 4 Nanoflashes. We are thinking about a combination of rMacbook Pro's with SSD's connected and Sonnet Expansion together with a Black Magic Quad, doing 2 streams per laptop writing to SSD's, so they can be quickly offloaded from SSD's in the Studio.
We could use SoftTron software and (I'm not sure if this is possible) write the same timecode to every clip, and write the same audio to all the videofeeds.
There is also the Black Magic HyperStudio Pro, but it can only record 1 stream.

Do people have opinions in what the best solution would be for our needs? If we could get a solution to record 4 feeds in a mobile, reliable way, pretty mobile, and have the same timecode write to all the feeds, and take in 2x XLR audio and write it down to all 4 the feeds, that would be great.

Thanks in advance

David Aronson
October 20th, 2012, 07:34 PM
Blackmagic Design: HyperDeck Studio (http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/hyperdeckstudio/)
4 of these. Never put all fo your eggs in one basket...or record all of your feeds into one box. if you have an issue with one of these, you'll still have the other 3 feeds to work with while you troubleshoot the 4th. if you have the extra cash, get 5 of them.

Chris Medico
October 21st, 2012, 09:26 AM
Hello,

we are looking at some solutions that could record for instance, 4 HDSDI feeds on SSD storage for at least a couple of hours (or SSD's that you can hot swap) in a pretty mobile space?

I've heard the Convergent Design is bringing out a Gemini RAW which has 4 inputs, but it only records Avid's codec or Uncompressed. We are looking at XDCAM or a flavor of Prores.

We are now using 4 Nanoflashes. We are thinking about a combination of rMacbook Pro's with SSD's connected and Sonnet Expansion together with a Black Magic Quad, doing 2 streams per laptop writing to SSD's, so they can be quickly offloaded from SSD's in the Studio.
We could use SoftTron software and (I'm not sure if this is possible) write the same timecode to every clip, and write the same audio to all the videofeeds.
There is also the Black Magic HyperStudio Pro, but it can only record 1 stream.

Do people have opinions in what the best solution would be for our needs? If we could get a solution to record 4 feeds in a mobile, reliable way, pretty mobile, and have the same timecode write to all the feeds, and take in 2x XLR audio and write it down to all 4 the feeds, that would be great.

Thanks in advance

Can you describe the problem you are trying to solve? Why is using 4 nanoflashes not meeting your needs?

Mathieu Ghekiere
October 22nd, 2012, 02:50 AM
Hi Chris,

the Nano's are working perfect for us. It's just that we want to streamline the time of offloading all the compact flash-cards to computers. Having just a couple of SSD's connected trough Thunderbolt with the clips in one run would be more efficient.
We're also thinking about going towards Prores instead of XDCAM (not sure about that one yet).

I think the Nano's are a good price/performance device, and have worked well 2 years for us, but I'm not a big fan of the user interface (which is normal, considering the small screen, it lowers your options)

David, thanks for the advice, we were thinking in that direction.

Kind regards,