Tapeless Acquisition -- various topics

[Wayne Morellini]

What cheap SD capture solutions are available? I would like to record the SD footage in 4:4:4, RGB or RAW, in lossless or near lossless (well below 5:1) from the visual out (component, Svideo, video).

Thanks

[Daniel Kohl]

Riley Harmon suggested in a previous thread, a possible solution for people having trouble getting M2T files into FCP5.

Here is a link:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macos...treamclip.html

I just thought it aught to have it's own thread.

[Matt Davis]

Maybe this thread belongs in the same corner as General Magic's DV Rack, but on the other hand...

Has anyone got experience of vara software's products?

http://www.varasoftware.com

WireCast can take a few DV camcorder FireWire inputs, cut them together along with some DVE moves and record them to hard disk.

VideoCue does live chromakey, with vision mixer cues stored in a prompter script: as each cue passes as you read the script, the software does cuts, DVE moves and transitions to preset sources.

Both preport to record directly to hard disk.

Now, having played with the demos, I note that my 1.33GHz PowerBook 17" isn't studly enough. Has anyone else put this software to work on a G5?

[Wayne Morellini]

Hello

I am interested in the different modes I can record direct to disk from video cameras, compressed and uncompressed. I have noticed claims that Firewire has video formats that are different than that of MiniDV's 25Mb/s. I have even heard of recording uncompressed from SD camcorders etc.

My question is, what are the different format and data rates of different video modes available over Firewire, and USB 2.0 . In particular, those sent by SD and HD video cameras.

Thanks

Wayne.

[Dan Lim]

Hi !

It's to use with my xl2 ...i really need a HDD at 7200rpm speed (tapeless) with firewire connection ...for many reason !
100% compatible ...

Do you have some idea ?

thanks a lot

Daniel Limoges

[Trevor Allin]

Hi

I have been looking at the whole anddromeda thing for the DVX100 and am now considering buying the camera in order to get Andromeda fitted! It boasts 444 uncompressed aquisition. I have one big question though, hope someone can help.

I thought that uncompressed files were huge in size. But the Andromeda signal travels down a USB2 wire and is captured on a normal SATA drive, without a raid or anything? How can that be?

Normal mini DV is 25mbps, sure Andromeda must be in excess of 50mbps (easily)?

Thanks

Trevor

[Seth Chambers]

Hi all, I am with a church in Fresno, CA. We will soon be creating a remote video based venue that will allow alternate worship style, while still having the same sermon as our live venue. We will be shooting in HD (Sony HDR-FX1) and doing a wireless push to another building on the campus.

We would like the availability to time-shift the feed to allow the remote venue to start at any time after transmission. What we would need is at least two HD based DVR's (one on the transmission side for archival purposes and one on the reception side for re-broadcast). We might even need a third unit for redundancy purposes on the rebroadcast side.

I have some questions that I was hoping you might answer (hopefully leading to a purchase in the very near future). What I am most interested in is:

1) What card would you suggest for HD input?

2) Are there any HD cards that have HD capable inputs other than Coax for Antenna / Cable? All the cards I have seen (MDP-130 for example) only have SVid and Composite input. Ideally I would like component as well as HDV inputs.

3) What output card would be needed? Is there any card that sends out a direct video feed without the computer interface?

4) Does the speed of a 7200RPM IDE HDD allow for 2 HD feeds to be recorded at once?

5) How are files stored locally when they are recorded? As MPG-4?

6) If a standard DVD-RW is available, is there an easy way to transcode the HD feeds in REALTIME to SD for standard DVD playback?

Thanks for your time regarding these questions. I really appreciate it!!

[Mark Twittey]

G'day
I want to use a DTD device on my Sony Z1,
I will be using HDV tapes, but want to record on to the DTD in Pinacle AVI
to put into Liquid pro for editing, I would use the HDV tapes only for
archive.
It must be able to mount it on the camera

Any recomendations?
I'm going to IBC in amsterdam next week, I would like some advice
before visiting the stands.
Thanks

[Dan Gonzales]

I videotape motorsports at some very dusty place. By the end of the races there is almost always a thick layer of dusty dirt on the camera. Would a dte be a good idea in a place like this?

[Eric Wotila]

Well, my camera ate yet another tape today, and this time, it's one too many.

I was considering getting a proper playback deck, but considering I'm shooting on HDV, I'm looking at $2000 for a deck... and I still have the potential for more eaten tapes. So, after looking at pricing, I'm thinking direct-to-disk is probably the way to go.

I have a few questions before I make the move, though.

First off -- I have two cameras -- a Sony FX1 for HD, and a JVC GY-DV500 for SD. I want to make sure I can record both HDV and DV with whatever solution I go with.

I'm editing on a G5 running Final Cut Pro 5, and I don't want to deal with the hassle of transcoding. I'm looking for drag-and-drop simplicity -- as in, I copy the files from the direct to disk recorder onto one of my G5's hard drives, and from there simply drag the files into FCP and start editing.

I've looked at the Citidisk HDV and the Firestore FS-4HD. My understanding is, the Citidisk records to an m2t stream which would need to be transcoded before working with. For the FireStore, my understanding is that if I get the FS-4HD Pro, I can record straight to a QuickTime file that FCP can read. Is this correct?

I guess the only other thing I'd ask would be... any comments regarding my situation? It seems that I've read tapeless is the wave of the future... the way to go. After losing this last tape, I'd have to agree... even when factoring in the cost of archival to hard drive, I'm still not looking at paying much more per hour of footage than I am now.

For those of you who have gone tapeless... has it worked well? Is it one of those "I'd never go back to recording to tape" situations?

Thanks for any advice! :)

[Marshall Levy]

Here's the way I see it...

I always film with tapes and when capturing to the systems, I use a dedicated deck. With regards to capturing HDV, I actually had the M10 deck but sold it and purchased a handful of the Canon HV10's - they're cheap, decent pocket camera for the family, and work just fine as a deck, and even if it breaks, I have a bunch more and it's still cheaper than a new, dedicated deck. You really shouldn't use your cameras, particularly if you're doing batch capture. If your camera is eating tapes, are you using many different brands of tape and/or is your camera properly maintained, and are you using good tapes or cheap junk you find in a local store on occasion.

As far as HDD recording, I've been using Nnovia drives for about 14-15 months and I haven't had any problems thus far. I have 2 80G drives and 1 100G model. They have performed flawlessly. They are a tad bigger than the competitors (Citidisk and Firestore) but on the mere basis that it's made out of a nice, sturdy metal casing, if it is dropped, there's no way it's going to break that easily. I have heard of several issues with CitiDisk models and I personally think the FireStore's are clumsy. I've tested these and never liked them too much.

I recently sent in all of my Nnovia drives for the free HDV upgrade that will allow them to capture m2t files and just purchased two of the newest models, which are HDV ready and have swappable hard drives - I got the 120G models for only $1900 each. Looking at the cost per gigabyte and the fact that the drives can be swapped out, and that they are very reliable (service is really good, too) I really do stand by these things. :)

I use these drives for every shoot that we do, dump the footage to external hard drives, and store the tapes as backup just in case. Until cameras are solely HDD-based, I will always do tape and drive recording. It's a cheap safety-net.

[Alex Maranda]

Hi, you may want to have a look at this thread
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=84702

this forum may have been a better choice for that topic than the "General HD/HDV Aquisition" forum; if a moderator can move the thread here I would appreciate it.

[Gary Burlingame]

I know there's already been a lot of bad press about these things already but I've had a recent bad experience with mine that I thought I'd better pass along to warn others.

I bought a Citidisk HDV (the120 GB model—FW1256H-120) last October and have had lots of problems with it. It is poorly designed and very unreliable. For example, if you accidentally shut off your camera before you stop recording with the Citidisk (or if the camera battery goes dead or if the IEEE cable comes out) you will not be able to recover any of the footage that you've just captured on the Citidisk unless you send it back to the manufacturer (Shining Technology) and they're able to find the files with their special utility program. I shot a soccer game recently where this happened (i.e. I accidentally turned off the camera before I stopped recording with the Citidisk) and was unable to locate any of the footage when I later attached the Citidisk to my computer. I overnighted the device to Shining and they were able to locate about 40 minutes of the 60 minutes that I had shot, but unfortunately the other 20 minutes are gone forever. Worst of all, my camera tape had run out right when my client's team scored their only goal of the game (and this was also part of the missing 20 minutes on my Citidisk) so now I have to explain to my client why I didn't get it on video. Shining told me they would consider fixing this problem in the future but for right now it looks like all Citidisk owners will just have to learn to live with it. Incidentally, the Firestore FS-4 Pro that I own does not have this problem so I would definitely recommend buying a Firestore (or another brand) until Shining gets this fixed.

To summarize, here are my gripes about the Citidisk:

1. It loses some or all of your footage if something goes wrong.

2. It comes with a very poorly written owner's manual that’s difficult to understand and does not warn you of the problem mentioned above.

3. It has a battery switch separate from the main power switch that you have to remember to turn on and off each time you use it. Because the battery switch is very small and doesn't have a light to warn you when it's on or off it's easy to forget about turning it off in order to prevent wearing out the battery. They should have designed the Citidisk so that the battery powers up automatically when you turn on the main power switch (just like most other electronic devices) rather than having 2 separate switches.

[Sergio Barbosa]

"Veescope Live provides real-time visual feed back on a live video source connected to your Apple MacIntosh computer. Veescope displays real-time chroma key, and high and low video level Zebra patterns. It uses the computer's graphics card, instead of the CPU allowing for much better performance.

Veescope Live works with any Quicktime video input source, such as a DV firewire stream, or a high-definition video capture card. In addition, Veescope Live can display a waveform or vector scope directly on top of the video.

Veescope Live provides industry standard scopes such as, Waveform and Vector. Veescope Live overlays any scope directly on top of the video in order for you to locate problems with the video. The video underneath the scope is changed to black and white, in order to make the scope more visible."
This text was copied from the dvdxdv website:

http://www.dvdxdv.com/NewFolderLookS...e.overview.htm

Haven't tried it yet but sounds promising, for a fraction of the cost of some competitors.

[Neil McLean]

I've been reading with great interest about these not so new Direct-to-Edit recorders and fully appreciate the improvement to my workflow if I buy the correct one.

I'm in PAL land and shoot 99.9% in 1080/50i with my Canon XH-A1s and edit in Vegas 7.0e. From what I understand having read quite a few threads, my options would be to buy either the Focus Enhancements Canon specific FS-C 100GB, or their 100GB FS-4Pro HD.

Given my inexperience with DTE recorders, I'm hoping folk can help me decide which one will best suit my needs by addressing the questions below.

1 Are there any larger single capacity DTEs available, e.g. 120GB?

2 How long does it take to change the reel folder in which you wish to record, e.g. from R0 0 TO R1 1?

3 What is the largest battery capacity available for the respective DTEs?

4 Which DTE has the most accessories?

5 Other than on the hot-shoe, what would be the best way to mount a DTE to a XH-A1?

6 Is it possible, or acceptable to mount a DTE to a pan handle?

7 Can a DTE be used straight out the box or does it need to be formatted and configured via a computer prior to use?

8 Are DTEs susceptable to frame drop like tape?

9 Is the voltage to the DTE power supllies 110~220V and 50~60Hz?


TIA
Neil